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Staying in touch with the big picture

Written by: Ciara Conlon

Article Overview: A good way to stay on track and focus on the important work that has to be achieved is to make sure that your actions are in keeping with your goals and values.

Staying in touch with the big picture

A good way to stay on track and focus on the important work that has to be achieved is to regularly ask yourself a couple of questions


Is the job at hand in keeping with my goals and values?

Is this task taking me closer to my goals?

Goals
Setting: goals is a habit shared by all highly successful people it is the first step towards acquiring the life and business of your dreams. Regularly set goals, but remember the fewer goals you focus on the more likely your goals will be realized. If your attention is divided between two goals you are reducing your focus by 50%. Every time you work on something ask yourself is this task taking me closer to my goal? Focusing and Visualizing on your goal will give you more inspiration to complete your daily tasks. If you can visualize your required outcome it is much easier to stay focused.


Values:Do you know what your values are? Values are not morals they are a set of standards that determine attitudes, choices and actions. Values provide answers to important questions such as: What do I really care about? Understanding your values will help you focus on objectives that are important to both you and your employer. There are no right or wrong values, they can be anything that you consider important or maybe something that you couldn’t imagine living without. It is important that your overall goals or the goals of the organization are in keeping with your values, a conflict can cause you to be unproductive and allow your attention to get easily diverted

Planning:
A weekly plan or schedule is mandatory if one is to get things done and accomplish actions. Regardless if the plan varies regularly everyone needs a plan, we need to know what we should be working on if we get distracted or side tracked and we need to know what we should be returning to when the object of our distraction has withdrawn.

Reviewing
The next link in the chain, A daily review will help you to check off items that have been achieved and help you view your progress. Scan yesterdays calendar and be sure that all items have been completed or if not rescheduled. Do the same for yesterday’s to do or task list. Check today’s calendar and become aware of the tasks and appointments for the day.
Do a weekly review and at this review add into your system any work that isn’t currently on your radar.

A weekly mind sweep is a great way of offloading items from your mind and getting your thoughts and plans into your system.
Goal setting, scheduling, planning and reviews will all help you identify and stay in touch with the bigger picture, so that in your daily tasks you can focus on the value adding tasks and not get distracted by tasks that add no value to your organization or life.
Good Luck

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Article Tags: goals, visualizing



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