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Setting Goals and Objectives and Creating a Path to Achieve ThemSoon after the conclusion of the '02 Tour de France Lance Armstrong was thinking about how to win his 5th Tour. He was looking at the route to see if it favors time trialists, climbers, or team tactics, monitoring Jan Ullrich's recovery from injury, building relationships with his teammates, and looking for ways to exploit his strengths and mitigate his weaknesses. After celebrating his '02 victory and recovery from cancer, he will train on the '03 tour route to visualize every hill, curve, and tactical nuance. This will help him develop his objectives and monitor his progress towards winning his 5th consecutive tour and celebrate again with everyone who helped him get there. In his national bestselling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey outlined 7 habits of successful people. Here are the goals and some ideas for how to apply them to your next pursuit. 1. Be Proactive. Simply put, this means set good goals and supporting objectives. An acronym you'll find in many corporate HR handbooks is SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, and Results-oriented in a specific Timeframe. If you've finished the last 3 STPs in two days with successive ease, STP in one day might be a SMART goal. It's specific: There is a 14 hour time limit to go 200 miles from Seattle to Portland over a specific route. It's measurable: If you get to the finish line before 7PM you're successful. It's achievable: Many others have done it and the 2 day event keeps getting easier for you. It's realistic if you're not trying to start a new business, have a baby, or introduce some other variant from previous years. It has a time deadline: The event occurs in July of '03. Another example of a SMART goal is upgrading from a category 4 track racer to a category 3 by the end of the '03 season. You also have to set good objectives to help you reach your goal. Objectives are much more narrowly defined and easily measurable. Example supporting Objective for STP: Complete century by May 1st. Example track objective: Improve 200M flying time trial time to 13.1 seconds by May 1st. 2. Begin with the End in Mind. This is where you put your plan together. STP is in July so you'll have to backwards plan a training schedule that will allow you to progressively increase your training volume for at least 3 months prior to the event. Tell your spouse, your coach, your teammates and/or your coworkers what your goal is and get buyoff from them to prepare. It involves a lot of thought about sacrifices you and they will have to make to execute your plan. For the STP goal above this might mean a negotiation with your boss to take a long lunch on Wednesdays for a training ride or a negotiating with your wife to do a century the weekend of your anniversary. Remember to include a celebration of reaching your goal with the people who helped you get there. 3. Put First things First. To race on the track you need to complete a training class, get a track bike, get a racing license, and establish an endurance base. One of Covey's metaphors is the school vs. farm train of thought. Many times you can cram for the final exam and still pass it, but if you plant your corn in July expecting a harvest in August, you're going to well on your way to achieving that weight loss goal the following fall because there ain't gonna be no harvest. Write down all the things you need to do, put them in your plan, and do them on time. This is where a coach or mentor can be a real help. When you're accountable to someone, even if it's just yourself writing in your journal, you're more likely to do the most important things first. 4. Think Win-Win. Look for ways to accomplish two or more things at once. Instead of getting frustrated driving home in traffic and not spending time with the kids because you have to do your training ride after work, ride to work. You get your training ride in, you get more time with the family, and you get to smile smugly while you're doing it as you pass others waiting in traffic wasting money on gas and polluting the environment. 5. Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood. When your boss complains that you have to leave early on Wednesday for racing at the velodrome, ask her what end result she desires. If it's for you to stay until 6, you are probably out of luck, but if it's for you to be more productive when the tryptophan kicks in after lunch, you might explain that riding your bike allows you to clear your head and gives you energy to work more efficiently. Note how applying the other habits to this habit makes it easier to accomplish. For instance, if you finish the report for the boss first and nothing or just little things remain, your boss is going to feel a lot better about you leaving early. 6. Synergize. Solicit ideas from your boss, your spouse, and your coach on how to work better, spend more time at home, or train smarter. If you get "buy-in" from them on your plan to be more productive and train for STP, they will support you better. And they might have ideas you hadn't thought of that you can incorporate into your plan. 7. Sharpen the Saw. Trying to cut a log with a dull saw just makes you tired. Take the time to monitor your progress and continually adjust your plan. If your goal is to win races at the track and you continually place 8th, you may need to modify your training, hone your tactics, or update your goal. Life happens. Be flexible and adjust your plan as the situation dictates. To summarize, I'm going to go back to the school vs. farm analogy. The harvest is here. Have a big thanksgiving celebration. After that, decide what you want to harvest next season and prepare the soil during the winter. When spring comes, plant your seeds. Cultivate them throughout the summer and reap the harvest in the fall. Click here to get help in reaping your most bountiful harvest. |
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