If your system works for you, keep doing it. Is organization all about neat files, a clean desk, a fancy day planner? No. To me, being organized is all about being able to work well.

Finding things when you need them. Are you able to put your hands or eyes on something you need within a minute or two (assuming it’s in your work space and not in archival storage)? Do you need to backtrack to remember where you put things, or is your system logical (for you) enough that you know where things are? To me, it’s knowing relatively quickly where I put something and that item actually being where I thought it was.

Scheduling time for efficient work. A project doesn’t get done by just throwing time at it. You need a plan. A working list of what needs to be accomplished. Randomly doing tasks in hopes something will get completed by the end of the day gets you nothing except a few checks on your to-do list.

Meeting your goals. Define what you’re working towards. What are your business goals? Personal goals? Is the work you’re doing each day truly getting you closer to your goals? If they aren’t, you need to stop and figure out why you’re spending precious time on them. Once you know what you want to accomplish, define how you’re going to get there.

These are just three things that define organization for me. What about you? What do you think being organized is all about? Are you working on it, or do you feel like you’ve got it under control? Does it feel like it’s something you can achieve?

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Of course, I’m not talking about planning out your daily schedule for the next year, or even your weekly schedule. Think bigger picture. Where do you want to be a year from now? What do you want to accomplish?

I don’t really plan out “resolutions” starting in January. Resolutions are usually sound bites that just set you up to fail. But they don’t have to be, if you use them as a starting point.

Now is a perfect time to dream a little. Or a lot. What’s your ideal year look like? What would you do if you had no limitations? Once you’re done dreaming a bit, capture your ideas on paper. Right now it doesn’t matter if they’re feasible. Just write them down.

Okay. Take a good look at those dreams. In it, you can probably find something you can base a goal on. Was your dream to make six figures? Seven? Great – now how are you going to do it? Does it seem too big right now? Whittle it down a tiny bit, make it a manageable goal, then plan it out. Go for it.

What’s the worst that can happen? You planned to increase your income by 30%, but you only hit 25%. Is that a failure? No. You’ll still see an increase over the previous year, right? That’s great, even if it’s not as high as you wanted.

Don’t set yourself up for failure by making vague resolutions about what you’ll do this year. I’m still working on mine, since we just got back from traveling during the holidays. I need to figure out what I want from this year, too.

So tell me, are you struggling to figure out what you want? Having trouble setting realistic goals? Do you use this time of year to assess where you are, or is there a time that works better for you?

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Did you accomplish what you wanted in 2008? Did you meet sales goals, get new customers and increase your income? If yes, congratulations! Plan to build on that progress next year. If no, it’s time to take a look at what didn’t work and find new ways to do things in the coming year.

Take some time to look at what worked and didn’t work over the past year. Did you keep up with your filing? Expense reporting? Customer retention goals? All of these things (and so much more) are important to your business success. What failed? Do you know why?

Use your experiences this year to improve on your goals for next year. And don’t forget to make those goals SMART so you can track your success. And review those goals at least once a quarter to make sure they’re still relevant to you and your business.

A new year is the perfect time to take stock of how you’re doing things, and make plans for your future success. No one else is going to plan it for you. What do you think is important for you to focus on next year?

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The acronym SMART stands for:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Timely

Each day we went over ways that you can improve your goals by really thinking about what you want and then setting yourself up for successful completion. Your goals should fall in line with your business vision. They should be dynamic and motivating, not unmeasurable and frustrating.

Have you been taking a harder look at your goals? Are you happy with your professional goals? What can you do to make them better? What piece(s) of SMART goal setting will help you the most? How?

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When you set a goal, you must have a starting time. When do you plan to start working on your goal? If you never give it a starting point, it will be easy to keep putting it off until you “have the time.” But if you don’t schedule it and make the time, you’ll never magically find the time.

Your goal must also have an end time. A neverending goal frustrates people. We need a sense of accomplishment from being able to say something is done. Make your goal small enough that you can assign an end point.

Deadlines are a big part of helping people get motivated to finish something.Without a time for completion, long-term projects get pushed aside for day-to-day and urgent tasks. And assigning a deadline to employees can help them plan their workload. An open-ended project sounds nice, but it’s really a project that will probably never happen.

Don’t just assign an arbitrary due date. Take into consideration the steps to accomplish the goal and plan accordingly. Don’t rush yourself, but don’t allow too much time to get distracted with other things.

Do you assign deadlines to your goals? Does it help motivate you to make progress on them? How?

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(myorganizedbiz.com) – We’re getting close to the end of our series about setting goals. And today the topic is making your goals relevant.What comes to mind when you think of a relevant goal? First, it must be relevant to you. It must fit you. And it has to be something that you have control over, that you can complete.

If you set a goal that it’ll be a nice day for the company picnic and that everyone will have fun, it’s a nice goal but it’s not relevant to you. You can’t control the weather. And you certainly can’t control others’ reactions to things. What you can do is plan to have sufficient food and entertainment for everyone without going over a specific budget. Those are things you can work on.

The same thing applies to your employees. Give them goals that they can work towards, but bring your company closer to what you envision it will be. Make sure it’s relevant to them, that it’s an activity that they can have a direct impact on.

Have you been thinking more about your goals with this series? Do you even think setting goals is relevant to you? Your business? Why or why not?

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If you set your goal too high, you can feel like a failure, like you’re not good enough when you don’t complete the task. If you set it too low and you don’t have to work at it, you’ll either ignore the goal or get bored with it. The same goes for your employees. They need to feel that they have a reasonable chance of meeting the goal with a standard or slightly above-standard performance. You want to build their confidence and help them find their strengths.

Have you ever set goals for yourself and then realized they weren’t really attainable? How did you feel? Did you adjust the goal to something more reasonable, or did you just scrap the goal entirely?

Find previous SMART goal posts here: Part I: Specific and Part II: Measurable.

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(myorganizedbiz.com) – To continue our series on SMART goals, we’ll talk about designing a measurable goal. What is that, anyway?

A measurable goal should be quantifiable. You, and your employees, need something to work towards. You need milestones. How will you measure progress if you don’t have milestones?

For example, which of these goals is measurable?

• In the next five years, we’d like to grow our customer base and increase sales.

• In the next five years, we’d like to see a 50% return rate from our new customers and increase sales 10% each year during that time.

Those aren’t perfect examples, but you can tell which one is measurable, right? Once you know how to quantify your goals, you can track your progress. And making actual progress, and being able to see it, is one of the points of setting goals in the first place.

And if you have employees, measurable goals is equally important for them. If you want them to stay motivated, they must have milestones for indicating progress. One of the things that used to frustrate me was having vague goals tacked onto my evaluation. The results were completely subjective, and that certainly didn’t help motivate me to get them done. I’m the type that will do my best to meet them anyway, but milestones would have lessened my frustration and lack of control.

Do you set measurable goals? Do you feel like you make actual progress when you do?

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(myorganizedbiz.com) – In order to set your goals and achieve them, you have to be SMART in your planning. And it starts by being Specific.

Goals that are vague are goals that just sit around. You can’t work towards something nebulous like “success” until you’ve defined what success means to you. Is success working less than 40 hours while still caring for you and your family? Is it a certain dollar amount in the bank? Is it just doing something you love?

Clear, specific goals give you something to work towards. You are setting your expectations of things. Of yourself. If you don’t have an end (or a goal) in sight, it’s easy to get distracted or not realize how much (or how little) progress you’ve made.

Every business needs goals. You want to measure your business’s progress, right? And if you have employees you’ll want to measure their progress as well. Make sure they know what is expected, when, and how much. Specific expectations will help avoid any confusion.

In our next part of the series, we’ll talk about making your goals measurable.

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(myorganizedbiz.com) – Goals are an important part of our businesses. If you don’t set goals, how will you know if you’re progressing? How will you measure your business success?

In order to remember your goals, you should write them down. Make yourself accountable by putting them on paper, on your computer, in your PDA, on your bulletin board. Whatever works and reminds you – frequently – of that goal.

But you should also make your goal attainable. Don’t set yourself up for failure by listing nebulous goals. I will be a successful businessperson within the next 5 years. That’s vague, isn’t it? What is success? How will you get there? What steps do you need to take in those 5 years?

It takes time to think about your goals, what you really want to accomplish. The SMART acronym is a helpful tool in setting goals. And over the course of the next few posts, we’ll talk about SMART goals and how you can design them to fit your needs.

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Timely

If you keep those things in mind during your planning, you’ll have a much better chance at meeting your goals. Stay tuned to find out the details of each characteristic of a well-planned goal.

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