One Way to Keep Your Goals in Front of You

Well, it’s January and I am knee-deep in work. Luckily, I’ve also set some time aside to work on my goals for the year. I think the topic of goal setting gets a lot of lip service, but I suspect many of us fall short in actually setting good goals for our businesses.  What about you?

Part of the “gift” of being in business for yourself is that you have control over your work life—and control over the money you earn. Yes, yes. I know it doesn’t always feel that way! Self-employed women can earn less than their salaried counter-parts as we struggle with pricing ourselves right and being visible enough to land customers. But when you look at lists of wealthy women in the United States, you will see a large percentage went into their own business. Oh, the possibility! And what did they all do? Set goals!

Simply put, setting goals is key to earning more money. After all, being self-employed means you are the captain of your own ship. So where, exactly, are you steering your ship? Are you even steering? Or are you simply drifting about, happy that you are not sinking? (Are you pre-occupied with taking on water?) Goal setting is about setting a direction. You may not end up exactly where you thought, but you’ll land someplace really cool if you set the course and actively steer.

Over the years I’ve learned that goal- setting is not an event, but a process. For example, I have a spiral notebook that I carry with me everywhere. The front cover always says “work journal” with the date on it. I use this for to-do lists, ideas, note-taking etc. Not every page is important. But there IS gold in there at times. (Countless times I’ve written down a great idea and then forgotten about it. Later I go back and see it and think, “Wow, what a great idea I had!”) It takes me about six months to fill a notebook. I then put an end date on the cover and file it. I have about 15 of these now in my file cabinet. They are the true history of my business.

Why am I sharing this with you? On the very first page of each notebook I write down my current goals—both personal and professional. I make them “SMART”. (I’ll blog about that later.) Everyday, before I check my email, I open to the first page and read my current goals. I read them three times. Then I go about my day. Whenever I start a new spiral notebook, the first thing I do is re-write the goals into the first page, often changing them, dropping some I’ve accomplished and writing new ones. This makes it a living, breathing process.

 What can you do to make goal setting a process and not an event?

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