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I haven’t progressed to the electronic ones because I don’t like having to turn on a computer to find out what I’m to do for the day.  I’m wary yet of having my life displayed on my cell phone. 

We have a system that seems to work well for our family and business at this point, although I’m always open to ways to improve.

• We have a wall calendar with fairly large spaces around the numerals.  There the five of us write appointments, my substitute teaching dates, and family events since they all involves us to some degree.
• There’s a bulletin board nearby where my daughter, son-in-law and I post our weekly work schedules for the local supermarket.  Thus we all know when everyone is working and how to coordinate rides.
• For my blog writing, I have a notebook for each blog with deadlines posted there.  These are kept in a box with current writing notes.
• Business and financial dates pertaining only to my husband and me are kept on a calendar in our office.

This may seem cumbersome to some people, but it has worked for our families for years and seems to be a system that keeps us on track.  Some day, we probably will do more electronically.  However, the one time we put data on an electronic planner, it crashed, so dates, addresses and phone numbers all were lost.

What are your calendar successes?

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• Franklin Planner or similar
• Simple notebook
• Address book with yearly calendar
• Schedule book with calendar
• Wall calendar combined with one in your pocket or purse
• Calendars for different businesses or types of activities
• Calendars for business and family
• Calendars on the computer

What do you prefer?

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Some people say they take time Sunday afternoon or evening to plan their week.  You’ll know, if you have an outside the home job, when you’re working, unless it’s an “on call” type of position such as the substitute teaching I do.  However, I make my plans, leaving the flexibility for getting called.

What goals do you have for your job or your business?  Are there special events happening?  Do you have project deadlines?  (I just e-mailed a newspaper column that’s due every Monday.)

I have some fixed business appointments and plans on my weekly schedule.  I have to allow flexibility for stubstitute teaching.  I have a fixed schedule for a second outside the home job.  I have deadlines for my blog and column writing.  I have certain activities I need to do for a business with my husband.  Then there are family commitments.  It’s a juggling act, but is easier if I have some planning done Sunday night or early Monday morning.

How do you organize your week?

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Since I don’t have a “walk in” business, I didn’t need to have a shop open this morning.  I can sit at my computer and plan.  Or go over with my husband what needs to be done in our joint business, then make phone calls and e-mails.  And get this done in the six hours I have before I go to my job away from home.

So, when you’re going to be away:

• Try to prepare in advance as much as possile. Make sure deadlines have been met and that you’ve planned for future or immediate others.
• Go over your “to do” list for the coming days, as I did last night after arriving home.  This can include personal and family “to do’s” so you can coordinate them with your business.
• E-mail editors and coordinate.  (One editor has set up a weekly reminder, to let me know I need to get my column to him.  We’ve found this works great for both of us.)
• E-mail or phone people I need to interview.

How do you organize and plan when you have to be away from your business?  Do you have some tips to share with us?

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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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