Organizing Goals

Organizing Goals

How to organize all the things that need to get done alongside all the things you want to do?

I just had someone tell me “My biggest challenge is that I have too many Goal Categories, not to mention the individual sub-goals within those categories.”

There was so much on their plate they were getting confused about what to do first. They couldn’t identify which was most important or which was most urgent, let alone which one to start with.

My quick reply was to write them all down, but there’s more to it than just that.

Organizing Goals from the Ether

It’s hard to organize something when it’s not tangible. The thoughts are there, and then you see something that takes you off track and you have new thoughts. Trying to recapture the initial idea can become a long and twisted path with all the other ideas tugging at you as you walk through the overgrown forest that is your dreams, responsibilities, desires, and think you have tos.

By writing down your goals, it gets them OUT of your head where you can see them. You can move them around in different groupings. You can crumble them up and toss them, “Yeah, that was a cool idea at the time…but I’m no longer interested in that.”

Organize the Puzzle Pieces

Before you can determine if something is URGENT, Important, or back burnerable, you need to know what it is and how it fits into the picture that is your life. And before you can see how it all fits, you have to KNOW what the individual pieces are.

It’s kind of like a puzzle. You know what you want your life to look like. But you have a bunch of pieces from all the lives you’ve interacted with along the way. Some will fit into the picture you wish to create, and some will not. It is up to you to sort the pieces out.

There are many ways to do so: color, shape, size, etc. You get to pick the pieces that fit for YOUR picture. That doesn’t mean that the piece that worked for your mother, father, sister, brother, or friends aren’t wonderful pieces…just that they don’t work for YOUR puzzle, YOUR picture, YOUR life.

Determine what no longer serves

There may be goals or things that you feel you “need” to do that are completely misaligned with who you want to be and what you want your life to look like. When you write them down and acknowledge their place in your life, you can really assess if it’s something that you want to do or if it was something you didn’t want but it was given to you and now you feel stuck with it.

It is time to let it go. Just because someone handed you something, doesn’t mean you have to take it and keep it. Spend some time, use some sticky notes, write down all the things and put them on the wall. Put them in groups and move them around until it feels right for YOU.

Anything that doesn’t align, thank it and send it on its way. There is someone out there who will love that idea and nurture it. And it’s ok that that person is not you.

Once you have your list of the things that bring you joy and excitement, THEN you can start to determine what’s URGENT, Important, and back burnerable.

If you need help in writing out your dreams and goals in all the areas of your life and/or business, registration for the Goals Bootcamp Intensive for April 2023 is now open. Click HERE for more information.

organizing goals