4. Just for fun, pretend you set a goal to
double a penny every day for a month.
What would you be worth at the
end of January if you started on
January 1 with 1 penny and
doubled it every day for that
month?
What would you be worth if you
did that in February rather than
January?.
What would you be worth if it was
in a leap year?
M01L01 Slide: 4
6. 1. Determine what you want to
accomplish and set goals to do
so.
2. Write your goals down.
3. Formulate action plans on how
to accomplish your goal.
4. Discuss or send your goal to
someone else so they know
what you want to accomplish.
5. Formally write or generate
action reports identifying how
you are doing with regards to
reaching your goal.
6. Envision what it is like once all
has been done and the goal
achieved.
7. Discovering the Success Mechanism Within
You
Imagination—The First Key to Your
Success Mechanism
Dehypnotize Yourself from False Beliefs
Relax and Let Your Success Mechanism work
for You
The Failure Mechanism—How to Make it
Work for You, Instead of Against You
How to Unlock Your Real Personality
How to Turn a Crisis into a Creative
Opportunity
How to Get "That Winning Feeling"
M01L01 Slide: 7
9. M01L01 Slide: 9
• Make certain you approach
identifying weaknesses positively.
• Engage friends or family to help
you accurately identify where you
need to develop competencies.
• Utilize tools and tests available to
help in this process.
• Don’t feel you have to develop
strengths and competencies in all
areas to become successful.
10. Specifics About “Goal Development”
M01L05 Slide: 10
MotivationalHigh priorities
in your life
SMART
For goals to be powerful,
they must fit this rule
Writing down a goal
makes it real and tangible
Set Goals in
Writing
Make an
Action Plan
Identify how you will
accomplish your goal
Goal setting is an activity,
not a means to an end
Stick With It
11. Long Term Short Term
Long term goals will change in
the long term once they are
reached!
Short term goals are there to
help you achieve long term
goals!
M01L01 Slide: 11
12. Planning and Executing
Goal Setting and Tracking Tools
• Achieve Planner
• Declare-It
• Get Goaling
• GoalEnforcer
• GoalPro
• Goalscape
• GoalsOnTrack
• Lifetick
• MyGoalManager.com
• The Covey Community
12
13. 1. Decide what you want to do
2. Set a deadline
3. Identify obstacles
4. Identify knowledge and
skills you need to get where
you want to go
5. Identify people or groups to
help you hit your goals
6. Make a detailed written plan
7. Take action
Hinweis der Redaktion
While the purpose of this course is to focus on your personal finance, it cannot be done without setting goals to achieve. And, since personal finance is only one segment of the goals you will want to accomplish, we will be discussing goal setting in general and the processes that have proven successful in how to determine, define and establish, track, modify, and achieve goals.
While there are an infinite number of tools which have been made available for effectively creating and achieving goals, the purpose of this module is to introduce you to some of the tools but more importantly provide a general concept so that you can research, establish, and utilize tools and processes which are best for you personally.
Thus we will go over some general concepts and identify one or two tools but you will be creating your goals, disclosing the tools that you will use, and outlining the process you will follow to accomplish your goals.
Before we get involved in the tools that are available for setting and accomplishing goals, it is critical that you create what I will call a goal canvas. A goal canvas is determination of all of the areas that you feel will determine success in your life. Areas, or goal categories, may include any area of your life such as : finances, mental well being, personal needs, physical health, relationships with other, spiritual growth, or emotional well being, etc. Once those areas have been identified (now remember, areas can change as circumstances change), you can begin setting goals and determining processes and tools for establishing those goals. As I mentioned, this is a personal finance class and I want you to make certain that you have financial goals included but along with those financial goals identify 5 or 6 other areas in which you would like to create goals. You will be identifying them in one of the assignments for this module.
Remember, your goal (if you will pardon the pun) is to graduate from Neumont and use that graduating as a tool to help accomplish other goals. So… what are those other goals?
So, what if you set a simple goal to double a penny every day for a month? To see this in a better perspective, you may want to do the penny doubling on an Excel spreadsheet to see the impact. Please upload in canvas your results in the participation assignment called ‘Double a Penny’ which is part of this module.
We will be talking about the importance of obtainable goals in a little bit. And, while the doubling of a penny for a month may not be obtainable, my guess is doubling it for 10 days is easy and maybe even to 15 days is possible. Then, what if you did that every month for a year? Where would you be. This game just put you through a simple goal setting process… that being set a goal (double your pennies everyday), make it achievable (how will you double the pennies daily), write it down (record your end goal, plan for how to get there, and track your progress) etc. The next section will detail how to identify and set goals on more detail but for now, you have established your goal categories and you have played the goal achievement process game in simplified form.
Before we actually have you create your goals – both financial and non-financial, let’s take a few minutes to look at some of the goal setting concepts that you need to consider. Research shows that around 20% of the population that do set goals, 70% never achieve them. Several factors contribute to this but we will discuss 5 common factors (which by the way you can expand upon however you want to make goal setting and achieving more specific to you).
Some research has shown that goal achievement varies but improves based on certain actions. Those actions fall into five categories: decide on what you want, write down your goals, create an action plan for accomplishing each goal you set, talk to a friend or cohort regarding your goal or goals so that you have a help mete at times of need, and then periodically create a report regarding how you are doing in accomplishing your goals.
Brian Tracy – one of the most successful advocate of goal setting has discovered that if you write down your goals you enter the top 3% of people in the world. And, if you read those goals periodically, you enter the top 1% of people in the world.
Franklin Covey in his book titled 7 habits of highly effective people identified that one of those habits was to “begin with the end in mind”. In essence that is another way of saying determine what you want to accomplish. You cannot achieve what you have not defined! One of the best books I have ever read a basketball coach of mine gave to me. I know, you are going to say you thought back when I was young everything was on papyrus but no, books had been invented. The book was titled “Psycho-Cybernetics” written by Maxwell Maltz. Maltz was a physician who became well known as a plastic surgeon. Interestingly enough, he combined psychology to his surgery practice and told his patients who were asking for selective surgery to improve them in some way to take several week prior to that surgery and in their mind imagine very vividly people coming up to them and telling them how good they looked or how they wished they had their skills and abilities. In other words, they were to view in their minds that they were great. As a result of this Maltz said he lost a lot of selective surgery but discovered the reality that the mind does not know myth from reality. If you envision something vividly enough and often enough, your mind thinks it is real. My basketball coach had me read the book and then envision several times a day being on the basketball floor in a game and imagining in my mind everything that could occur and that I scored in spite of what was there. After doing this, what occurred is that in a game, something would happen and my mind said “oh I have see this before and here is what I need to do to score”. The result is I was more successful at scoring because I had envisioned in my mind what I needed to do to score.
Put this same concept into play with regards to setting and accomplishing goals. Envision so vividly what it is like or what you are like when the goal is complete. Do this over and over again so vividly that it looks real and guess what, chances are better that it will become real because you have thought through all the challenges that you can face and envisioned the success after. Your mind does not know what is real and what is not so play the mind game to show it you have accomplished your goals and you will begin to automatically make decisions and take actions that will accomplish your goals. Don’t get me wrong, it is not easy and still takes effort but it is a lot more achievable when you look at life once you have achieved your goal.
As you begin the process of accomplishing your goals, you need to evaluate and understand your core competencies and your weaknesses.
Lets focus first on the positive things for you… core competencies.
What is a competency? By definition, it is the combination of observable and measurable knowledge, skills, abilities and personal attributes that you have and use in every day life. Notice… once again we are focusing on the process of measurable. You will probably hear this team a gazillion times in the goal setting module.
Knowledge we all understand. You are here at Neumont to increase your knowledge. You study at home and if you are smart will study on your own after leaving Neumont to continue to increase your knowledge.
Skill is different than knowledge. Skill is the development of a proficiency or dexterity in mental operations or physical processes often acquired through specialized training.
Branching away from all of the formal definition… competencies are the abilities you have developed evident to both you and others in various areas. Those areas may be things like Adaptability, Communication, Leadership, Inclusiveness etc.
You need to identify what your core competencies are and maybe get validation of that from others to make certain you are being honest with yourself. It may help you to think of an accomplishment you are proud of. What attributes did you exhibit to help you achieve and succeed? These attributes will help you recognize core competencies. Once you identify your core competencies, you will utilize them in helping you accomplish your goals. Remember, even tough this is a personal finance class and you will be developing financial goals… this module focuses on goals in general and you will need to create goals for more than just the financial aspect. You need to create goals pertaining to business desires, personal development, and relational needs. You may take some assessments such as, Myers/Briggs, True Colors, or Jung to help you identify your strengths, and thus core competencies. You will find links to these tests in the course supplemental materials.
From the example list of core competencies in this slide, take some time to identify which of the 3 categories you feel the competency will fit within. Is there a right or wrong answer? No! Is this helping you start to look at core competencies? Hopefully the answer to this is yes.
If your goals are strong, it will push you and you will utilize your core competencies to achieve those goals.
Now that we have built you up with the talents that you naturally possess, let’s do something that will really help you set and achieve your goals. That is to identify your weaknesses. When done correctly, identifying weaknesses is one of the key factors in guaranteeing you will achieve your goals. Keep in mind as you do this that often, our competencies or strengths can create some weaknesses as well and you need to be aware of this relationship as you set not just your financial goals but also you life goals.
Let me suggest that you start a list to help you honestly identify your weaknesses. On the list write down the following questions:
What do I do well and what am I not good at doing?
What have others complemented me on but also what have other told me I could have done better at
What project and tasks are fun and what ones seem to drain my energy
What are my hobbies, why do I like them and what would I never do for fun and relaxation.
Add other questions that identify what you enjoy and what you don’t.
After you have spent this time honestly assessing your weaknesses (from both a positive and reality approach), it is time to get input from those closes to you… a close friend, a significant other, a mentor or a family member.
Write down what they tell you so that you do not forget or minimize their comments.
Lastly, you might want to take some of the standard personality tests, also mentioned to help you find your core competencies, which help you determine areas of strengths and weaknesses. Myers/Briggs, True Colors, Jung etc. These tests can be found for free on the internet and can help you identify areas of weakness as well as strengths. You will find links available in the course’s supplemental materials.
Understanding your strengths or core competencies and weakness will assist you in completing some of the assignments in this module so take the time now to begin thinking about them.
Before you begin thinking that to succeed and to accomplish your goals you need to develop and strength and competency in all areas stop…. In every thing you do, you are not alone. Key to your success is to develop what you can but find others who have competencies in areas you do not and allow them to assist you in accomplishing your goals. While your goals are personal goals, you are not the only tool available out there to help you accomplish your goals. And, guess what, just like others can help you accomplish your goals, you in turn can help others accomplish their goals
While some of this is repeating things we talked about earlier, it adds upon them and details more information you need to be aware of to set and achieve effective goals. Trust me, you can do a great deal of research on goal setting, creation of effective goals, and ways to accomplish those goals. In fact, there is so much available on goal setting and accomplishment that you will be doing research as part of this module to come up with goal setting and achieving processes that will keep you motivated. No one has achieved success in this world without plans and plans identify outcomes aka goals that must be achieved.
Have you thought about what you want to be doing in five years’ time? Are you clear about what your main objective in school is at the moment? Do you know what you want to have achieved by the end of the day?
Goal setting not only allows you to take control of your life’s direction; it also provides you a benchmark for determining whether you are actually succeeding. Lets look at the process for creating meaningful and motivational goals.
You need to set goals that motivate you:
This means you need to set goals that are important to you and that you see the value in achieving them.
If you set goals that someone else wants you to set, you will quickly loose interest in them and thus they will not be met.
Motivation is key to achieving goals
To make sure your goal is motivating create goals that relate to the high priorities in your life. This keeps the number of goals to a minimum so you don’t get bogged down in so many goals you can’t perform.
Set SMART Goals. While there are many variations of what SMART stands for, they all in essence amount to:
Specific – if your goal is not clear and well defined you lose site of what you are trying to accomplish and eventually give up in frustration.
Measurable – include precise amounts, specific dates etc. If you just say reduce spending, how can you know what you have done. If you say reduce spending by 2%, you have measurable outcomes to determine success or failure.
Setting at goal that say I will be rich is not a goal. Setting a goal that says my net value in 5 years time will be $100K is a measurable goal.
Attainable – set goals that push you but are attainable. You want to make certain that goals you set are achievable. If you achieve it early because it was too easy, you can set a stronger goal for the next iteration. Don’t make goals too weak but also, don’t make them out of reach. Goals that push you too hard become demoralizing and eventually you give up on them.
Relevant – Goals should be relevant to the direction you want your life and career to take. By keeping goals aligned with this, you’ll develop the focus you need to get ahead.
Time Bound – goals must have a deadline. You must know when you can celebrate success. A sense of urgency accompanies having deadlines. With a deadline, your sense of urgency increases and achievement comes that much quicker.
Set Goals in Writing
Something that is written becomes real and you can refer to it often
Again, this will put you in the top 3% of the world by doing this
Frame the goal statement positively and use words like ”will” rather than “would like to”. Make it something like “I will reduce my spending by 5% this year” – this is positive, specific and measurable.
Make an Action Plan – This step is often missed in the process of goal setting. You get so focused on the outcome that you forget to plan all of the steps that are needed along the way. By writing out the individual steps, and then crossing each one off as you complete it, you'll realize that you are making progress towards your ultimate goal. This is especially important if your goal is big and demanding, or long-term. If you have a long-term goal, setting small short term goals to reach it helps. For instance if you want to play the piano with a symphony, you can set the goal of making the school orchestra and set another goal of practicing an hour a day to accomplish your goal.
Stick with it – remember, goals setting is an ongoing activity not just a means to an end.
Focusing more directly on the goals that you will establish to accomplish an end-in-mind, there will be two types of goals you need. One set of goals will be long term and the other will be short term. To focus for a minute on personal finance, you need to have budget that is on a daily or weekly basis but you also need to have a budget that is on a long term month, year, lifetime and even post lifetime if you want to be able to leave a legacy to those you love. Trust me when you begin to have kids, they are going to love you when they are young then when they become teenagers they will love you less then when they start to have kids they will love you more then if you leave them a legacy, they will love you long after you leave this reality. You might not care after you leave this reality but it might be kind of cool while you are here to get that enhanced love they will give because they know you are going to leave them some joy. I have to be careful because at my age, my life insurance might be worth more than my earning potential making it so I am worth more dead than alive… out of concern, I have not told my wife I have a life insurance policy.
Reverting to the focus we have discussed on envisioning outcomes of goals being met, you need to do this with both the long and the short term goals. The other thing that is important is that your short term goals in many cases are subsets of your long term goals thus providing a cohesive map of what you want to do.
Short term and long term goals are critical. How much you break them down into medium, level 1,2,&3 etc. is up to you. Create your path according to how you personally need it to be created so that you see goal achievement success. Create SMART goals which take advantage of your core competencies, help you overcome or accomplish things in spite of or by eliminating your weaknesses. Get ready to plan and achieve!
Once you have identified your goals, the culminating step is planning and executing how to achieve those goals. I hate to sound like a business person but since I am, I will. In the business world you look at what will be a successful business (start with the end in mind). You then develop a strategy (establish goals) begin executing (look at competencies, weaknesses and what you need to do to overcome those weaknesses) consult (work with others to help you be successful) and then achieve success (reach your goal). Many tools exist to help in the planning and the executing of goals, tasks etc. Tools such as “Achieve Planner,” “Declari-It,” ”Get Goaling,” “Lifetick,” etc. You will need to research those tools and apply the ones that best fit you. Regardless of the tool you use it will require you to identify the goals you want to achieve, the skills you need to have or develop to achieve the goals, how you will measure the outcome and how you will validate the outcome that has been achieved.
Let’s finish by putting everything we have discussed in this module into a summary slide. Brian Tracy (referred to earlier in this module) has outlined 7 steps to goal achievement which I feel summarizes everything we have discussed very well. My guess is that all of the research you do to personalize your goal setting and accomplishment can fit into one of these steps as well.
Successful goal achievement requires the following occur:
Decide what you want to do
You are the one who determines what you want to accomplish. You need to specifically identify what your goal outcome will be and what your life will be like when that has been accomplished.
To keep you motivated in this, frequently picture in your mind you having accomplished your goal. Make it so real that your mind accepts it as reality.
Part of deciding what you want to do and visualizing it requires writing your goal down. It puts you into the top 3%. Helps you determine what the outcome is that you are visualizing.
Set a deadline
This is a firm deadline. If you achieve the goal by this firm deadline, it is great. If you do not achieve the goal by this firm date, you extend the date but the extension is a firm deadline again.
Identify obstacles
You cannot create an action plan without identifying what the obstacles are that you will face.
Notice that the identifying obstacles I tied into the action plan which we discussed earlier as a key component to achieving your goals.
Identify knowledge and skill you need to get where you want to go
You have some core competencies which you have identified as part of this module. You will call upon those to accomplish your goals.
You identified some weaknesses you possess. You cannot create a reachable plan without truthful self-discussion regarding what you cannot do yourself or what you need to develop.
Identify what you need to do to accomplish outcomes in areas where those core competencies do not exist. Or, identify people who can assist in those areas
Identify people or groups to help you hit your goals.
These people or groups are those who can gap your weakness
These people or groups are those who can support you -- though their knowledge of your goals – toward successful achievement.
Make a detailed written plan
I think we have emphasized this enough through this module. Hopefully you realize that this is key to your success. You cannot accomplish that which you have not planned out. Success does not come by chance or by wishing.
Take action
This module is now at an end, It is time for you to quit thinking and start doing.
As part of this module you have set goals, identified core competencies, identified weaknesses, researched things regarding goal setting and accomplishment beyond what is in this module, and set a plan.
It is now time to implement that plan using tools you have developed to track and execute
There will be several assignments with this module which will require you to do additional research on goals, look at your core competencies and weaknesses, create short and long term goals, generate plans to accomplish those goals and use a tool to tie everything together.
Again, while this is a personal finance class, goals achieved in your personal finance are met the same way goals are achieved in life. Thus you should now be ready to plan your personal finance but more than that, plan your successful life.
