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Choosing your future

We are all moving towards our future goals. However, for many, these goals are not well defined and often not even consciously chosen. The process of goal setting is about consciously choosing where you want to be, creating a plan for getting there, then following that plan. Goal setting is about consciously and proactively choosing your future.

When setting goals for yourself you are charting a course from where you are to where you want to be. This process involves dreaming of your ideal future and devising a strategy for getting there.

Urgent Vs. Important

Life is full of things to do. How do we know what to focus on? In the book Time Management: Proven Techniques for Making the Most of Your Valuable TimeExternal Link, author Marshall J. Cook explains that the activities we engage in fall into one of four area. The following table illustrates this:

  Not Important Important
Urgent Doesn’t touch core values Relates to your core values and needs attending to immediately
Not urgent All the other stuff in life No sense of immediacy

We often spend our time in the top left quadrant doing things that are urgent but not important. By putting our energies here we may be productive but we are not moving forward in our life. We are not moving towards where we want to be.

The quadrant that gets neglected the most is the bottom right quadrant. When there is no urgency attached to an activity, it tends to get overlooked in favor of other tasks that are more urgent. By focusing at least some of our attention on the last quadrant we can slowly move towards our ideal future and creating a life that we enjoy.

More Information

Goal Setting - Misconceptions
Three Characteristics of Goals
Notes On Goal Setting
Motivation towards your Goals
Choosing Goals
Goal Setting Process

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