I’m not being pessimistic here, I’m just acknowledging that I’m lazier than I think or would like to believe. The approach I’m taking instead is to focus on just a few important goals, rather than spreading myself thin across many goals (many of which are just not important). It has been very liberating, because the constraint of having just 1 or 2 goals makes you adjust everything you are doing so they relate to your goals. The other trick seems to be to do just enough towards each goal without overcommitting and getting burnt out. Harder than it sounds, because when you start you’re full of enthusiasm and want to do everything you can! Again this is another constraint, that instead of holding you back actually propels you forward.

So my goal setting strategy is to:

1. Have less of them – just 1 or 2
2. Do less towards them than you initially want to.

Doing less towards your goals prevents you from getting burnt out. It also lets you set a consistent pace towards your goal, because success takes a lot longer than you think. The point here is to build habit(s) that lead to your goal.

For example if your goal is to run 5km in 20 minutes by the end of the year, you first need to build the habit of running 5km on a regular basis. Instead of running every 2nd day, how about running just once a week? Sure you might be able to run 5km every 2nd day but how long will you keep that up before you burnout, stop running and eventually lose sight of your goal? Once you establish the run 5km once a week habit, you can then step up to the next habit that will get you closer to your goal.

This is such a shift in thinking about goal setting that it goes completely against anything I’ve been traditionally taught or told by experts. Note I’m not taking credit for any of this advice (which is the reason for all the links – please read the articles), as this is all information I’ve picked up from a number of great blogs.

Here’s how it looks:

With the use of favicons, its enough in most cases just to use just one letter, e.g. w for wikipedia. This gives you heaps more real estate to fit in your favourite bookmarks. Of course if you have conflicting bookmarks with the same first letter, add a second letter, e.g. fb = facebook, fl = flickr.

What’s more, you can specify keywords that correspond to each bookmark name, e.g. the letter w for wikipedia or the letters lh for the lifehacker site.You simply type the letter(s) in the address bar and you are automatically taken to your bookmark. You also don’t need to remember the shortcut letter(s) – just look at your bookmarks toolbar, find the favicon and pick out the right one. Too easy!

Here’s how to add keywords in Firefox (note the convention, name = keyword):

I think too much effort is spent on being productive rather than just doing stuff. Once you know a task is important and should be completed, the only thing left is to actually complete it, right?

Basically, I’ve been taking the approach of, listing anything I want to do in a big task list. Keep this list simple – paper based or a single text file. Then go through the list and pick out things that are important. Important generally means the task will help towards accomplish a worthwhile goal OR is something you need to do to keep things going (e.g. pay the bills). Then use a timer to chip away at the task. Some tasks can be completed in 20 minutes, others require a number focused attempts to complete.

Remember:

• Focused effort for 20 minutes (no distractions)
• Do things that are important

This is the stuff I’ve picked up from reading a number of productivity blogs, in particular Zen Habits.