Executive Portfolio

This article was written by Karishma K.

Do you have an action plan for your life? We’re talkin’ “personal action plan” for achievement of real objectives. If not, why not?

Have you heard the story of the field goal kicker who never scored a point? He was a great kicker, but his team was broke and didn’t have enough money to put goal posts on their field. So he couldn’t kick the ball between the goal posts. Silly, right? A kicker who can’t score because there are no goals on his football field.

Well, what’s even sadder is a person who can’t achieve his goals because he never took the time to set them. Goals keep you on target and give you direction and purpose. Without them you run hither and yon, to and fro without knowing which direction to go in next. Goals… you KNOW you need them.

Here are the five most relevant attributes of goals in a personal action plan:

1. The goals must be defined. You have to know what the goal is before you can hit it. Write it down. But don’t just write it down, do something that will make it special, like putting it on a poster and placing it somewhere prominent so you will always have it in front of your eyes. This is a biblical principle. It’s true. Habakkuk 2:2 says this “Record the vision And inscribe it on tablets, that the one who reads it may run.” That just means to keep the vision in front of you all the time to remind yourself of what “the vision” is.

2. They must be relevant. This means that you will be working on attaining goals that will help you get better. Don’t write down goals for yourself that don’t have any meaning to you, or ones that will not help you to make your life better in some way. For instance, if you are a salesman, set goals that will help you advance in your career. It could be something like joining the Toastmasters’ Club so you get better at your communications skills. But knowing all the statistics of the top NFL running backs is not a relevant goal.

3. Make your goals measurable. You can set benchmarks for yourself so you know you are on the right path as you pass those benchmarks. The best example of this is a plan to lose weight. If you want to lose 30 pounds, set benchmarks for every 5 pounds. Then give yourself some kind of reward when you hit the mark.

4. The goal needs to be attainable. Set a mark that is challenging, but one that you can hit with the right training and effort. For instance, if your goal is to do more exercise and get into better physical shape, don’t think about climbing Mt. Everest next month if you haven’t made it to the top of your neighborhood’s steepest hill yet. Be realistic, but challenge yourself.

5. Set a time for completion. This goes hand in hand with being measurable. Once you decide what you will accomplish, set a time limit on it. If you want to go back to school and get an MBA, determine how much time it should take, and set that as your goal. If you fail to set a time, you will end up wandering again without direction. Set times to accomplish your benchmark points as well.

Setting goals for your personal action plan is not just a good idea, it is an absolute necessity for success. Each one of us was designed for greatness, we just have to design a set of killer goals so that we stay on course.

Article written by Mark Jimson