How do you manage several major goals?

Question

I purchased the 59 Seconds book I've heard so much about on here. I'm going through the Motivation section, specifically the goal writing. In thinking about this, I realized I have so many things I would like to accomplish. Things like moving to an apartment, learning to cook well, learning a new technology, exercising and losing weight, and more. Just thinking about all the things feels a little overwhelming, even when dividing them into subtasks. It all feels like a lot to keep track of.

Answer 1

I'm going to throw GTD at you. This space is too short to cover that in its entirety, but the short version is, for your concern, you should break down your targets into different horizons. The one's suggested by GTD are:

• purpose and principles
• vision
• goals
• areas of focus and responsibility
• projects
• next actions

And the GTD model then offers a way to organize that.

Of course, if you just write down two dozen "goals" and then don't know what to do with that, you'll be overwhelmed. It's just like someone having the neat idea of writing a "todo" list of 150 items and then feeling overwhelmed. You need to have something at the top that drives the goals (purpose, principles, vision) and something at the bottom that moves the goals forward and gets them done (projects, actions).

As an aside, I think not everything you listed as goals in your question are actually "goals" in this model. Some of them might be visions, some of them projects.

If you want to read up on that, I recommend David Allen's second book Making It All Work, which covers this aspect better than his first book Getting Things Done.

Alternatively, the even shorter version is, break your goals down into projects, break your projects down into actions. Don't worry, everyone will have a lot of those. Just make sure you clarify the actual actions, because you can't "do" a goal, but you can "do" an action.

Answer 2

It looks like you have got the approach of dividing in to sub tasks however getting it through in practical situation is causing some friction. A few cents from my side - have a look to "Win at Work: Navigate the Nasties, Get Things Done and Get Ahead " http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0749457112/buythisbooks-20 much near to ground contents. I used it before few years and observed the theories here have a huge payoff!

Let me know how you think about it.

Thanks Much, Tanmay Soni.

Answer 3

I'm not familiar with 59 seconds but the activities you named requires better organization and discipline than regular tasks. If you have a concrete goal to be reached say by the end of the year, you can estimate how many hours a week are required and arrange your schedule accordingly. What we're doing here is called breaking down a project in smaller tasks, which is the basics to both GTD and Pomodoro techniques.

Estimating can take some time if don't have a considerable experience in the area. In that case, don't bother being very accurate or it may consume a valuable time. Focus on setting specific goals concerning time and lenght of each individual task.

Example:

Search for a good cooking class nearby
from 7pm to 8pm - Sep 05

Schedule another search if needed or set the next step. This can be done for pretty much anything, from raising funds to buy an apartment - say 10% of your sallary - to losing weight - working out 3 times a week, 2 hours a day.