Setting weekly actions is pretty simple but with time we have come to discover that some ways are better than others.
1 – Make your actions clear – Make it easy for you to know exactly when you have achieved your action. Have a clearly defined end. For example “Give the dog a bath”. When your dog is running around your home all wet and shaking himself off then you know that this action is complete. One that doesn’t work is “Work hard this week on limiting negative thoughts”. How do you know when you have finished this?
2 – Put only one action in a weekly action - Make it easier to achieve by having only one action. One that didn’t work very well for me was “Go to bank, pick up dog food, go to library and pick up pens from Staples”. This didn’t work because the day that I went out to do these chores I ran into a big traffic snarl and did’t have time to get to the library. So did I really achieve this action? If I had broken this one into four actions then I would have at least achieved 3 of 4 actions which is much better than not achieving anything.
3 – Put yourself in control – Try to focus the actions on things that are only dependent on you not on others. A good example is “Meet with my Banker”. What if your banker is not available this week? Then you did not achieve the goal. Try “Contact the banker to set up meeting” instead.
There are lots of tips we can give you but these are just a few that can be used to help you in the short term.
Here is a previous post on Sunday Night Success that also has some great ideas on goal setting. Link
Cheers.
Jason
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Excellent points. I quite appreciate and agree with your view points. Thanks for sharing.