Rhonda Abrams At Gannett News Service:
You can’t reach a goal you’ve never set.” That’s one of Rhonda’s Rules. In order to reach a goal, you have to set a goal.
Right now, at the very beginning of a new year, take a bit of time (perhaps go out for a cup of coffee) and write down your business goals for 2008.
Now, this isn’t your annual business plan. Regular readers of this column know I’m a big believer in doing an annual business plan. In my company, we do one every year, and it’s been the single biggest contributor to growth.
But you may not have time right now to develop a business plan. After all, there’s all that work that piled up over the Christmas holiday season. But you do have time to come up with your goals for the year.
If you’re like me, you have a long list of things you’d like to accomplish. This list is a mix of big things (make more money, find new customers) and small things (install new software, return those phone calls). You probably write many of these down, especially the small, pressing tasks you have to accomplish before the end of the day or the week.
What happens, though, is that the big things often get pushed aside by the small things. Why? Our major goals, such as developing a new sales channel or finding a new trade show to exhibit at, are critical but not urgent. And the small things, such as responding to an e-mail or returning a phone call, are time-dependent even if they’re not very important.
As a result, we often feel unsatisfied even if we’ve managed to check off everything from our “to do” list. And that’s why at the end of the day, we often tell ourselves, “I’m exhausted but I don’t think I really accomplished anything.”
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Photo by lusi.
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