How do we go about setting goals?

As we go through our lives we do want to profit from this world and we want to accomplish as much as we possibly can to make our existence in this world worthwhile. True, we do face certain opposition however we do want to be able despite the opposition, despite the difficulties that we have, we do want to be able to accomplish as much as possible. For those reasons instead of just plodding along many people choose to set goals so that they know what they plan to accomplish on a daily basis, perhaps even an hourly basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis, an annual basis, and more importantly all of this should start with lifetime goals. What do you plan to accomplish? What do you want to do? What are the big projects that you want to leave behind? And how are you going to go about doing it? For this reason it is important to set your goals using the following systems when possible.

• Deadlines
• Making sure that they are worthwhile
• Matching your life's priorities

As with most other things it is a good idea to generate your list of life's priorities, your own priorities, with the assistance of a trusted confidant or friend so that you will be able to do things that make sense and that are indeed worthwhile. This may be difficult at times but it is important to be able to invest your energy in the right things to do rather than in things that may on a transient basis seem to be important but which in the long run you may have to look back at and wonder why you got involved in such unimportant or trivial issues.

In order to be able to set your goals you should think about your skills, what you have learned, what you have experienced, your background, the things that you enjoy doing, and the things that you are good at doing (they may not necessarily be the same) and then you should evaluate how these fit in with the way you see that your life should be spent in the best possible way and accomplish the best contribution for this world.

Nobody guarantees that you will be able to meet your goals which is another reason why you should have the assistance of a trusted friend so that you can choose worthwhile goals. The younger you are when you set these goals the more you will be able to pursue them with enthusiasm, energy, and the benefit of time. On the other hand, in many cases it takes a certain amount of maturity and age to actually sit down and develop the list of goals that you want to accomplish.

Making Lists

The best way to actually carry out these goals after they are set is by making up detailed lists of the things that need to be accomplished, the steps that need to be done in order to reach the goal. By making up these lists and crossing off items one at a time as they are accomplished you will have a feeling of accomplishment and you will be able to see that indeed your list is doable and you can handle it and you will be able to reach these goals if you are able to do them one at a time. If you do not have this list that you can cross off then it is more difficult to be able to handle or to reach the goals that you want. You do need the positive reinforcement of checking off the list, and you do need to be organized by creating that list so you can see just where you stand and what needs to be done. That list can be handled in various ways. Some people like to arrange it in chronological order, that is the order that you should handle things that need to be done from the first thing to be done to the last to be done. This is the typical way of creating a list for cleaning for Pesach.

Of course, cleaning for Pesach is not a life's goal. It is quite limited and it is also repetitive, you do it year after year. As a result you have an idea of what needs to be done and it's quite easy to make up that list.

But if you just expand that concept of cleaning for Pesach to a larger goal, the goal of succeeding in life, then you can also prepare things in chronological order.

But this is a matter of personal preference. Some people prefer to prepare goals from the small to the large or the large to the small.

Thus, they'll put the simple tasks in the beginning of the list and the difficult tasks at the end, so that when they get started they can see progress and they can say, "Look at that! I've already crossed off several of my items." Other people on the other hand might want to have the tough tasks first going back to the easy tasks so they can say, "Wow! Look at that! The major thing has been done."

Another thing to consider when making up these lists is that in creating your projects there are certain bureaucratic tasks that have to be done that really do not seem to be part of the project itself. For example, if you want to make a database of all the books in your house, there is a certain amount of preliminary work that is required before you can enter the data. The database has to be set up. It has to be verified that it is going to be suitable for the materials that you have. The field lengths have to be adjusted and the relations among the different parts of the database have to be tested to be sure that they work and to make sure that the data can be entered easily. This may take quite a bit of time after which you look at it and say, "Aha! After all of that effort I still don't have anything."

Well, you do have something. The creation of the empty database itself was a major part of the project and it is not fair to put it down and not to consider it as part of the project.

So too with just about any other project. There are behind the scenes efforts that have to be handled before you can actually handle any other project. Those things have to be gotten out of the way but they should be considered part of the project itself and once you have achieved that then you've achieved a certain part of the project that needs to be handled.

The lists that are created can be made in many ways. There are many computer generated programs which help make lists. Some are better than others. You probably have one list program on your computer right now called Outlook. One of the features does help you create lists, but it can indeed be a nusance to move the priorities of one part of the list or lines from the list up and down until you get used to the strange way that Outlook does it.

Another way of making up lists is by using Word. Word has a nice little feature which allows you to handle lists. Here's how it's done.

Just create a list of things hitting enter at the end of each line. Then select the whole list so that it is darkened and click on the bullet icon at the top of your screen. There will be a bullet before each sentence. Then if you want to move a particular item up or down, simply hold down on Alt and Shift and then use the up or down arrows to move it to its new location and you can in this way adjust the list. If you want to delete an item from the list, simply click the cursor at the outside of the margin so that it turns an I beam to an arrow. Then click once and it will light up the entire line. Then press your delete key. If you want to turn an item into a subsidiary of another item, put the cursor in the beginning of the text of that line, not at the bullet but at the beginning of the text, and press Tab. If you want to return it to the higher level, then put the cursor in the same place and press Shift-Tab. You can thus create lists quickly and easily using Word and most readers of this document undoubtedly have access to Word.

There are other programs that create lists, various programs. You might want to try them out until you find the one that's best for you. Other people don't want to lists at all. They prefer to have little pieces of paper. One way that that could be used is by having a 3x5 card holder and you can have all of these goals one at a time on 3x5 cards. Arrange those 3x5 cards in order and then each time you're ready to do the next item on your life's priorities, just take out the next 3x5 card and follow what it has.

The system is less important than the concept of creating a list, creating a list in the way that good for you and convenient for your own way of working just as the priorities itself and the work to be done is based on your own needs and what you are going to accomplish in your own life.