Make Your 2010 Goals Achievable with Your PersonalBrain
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” 
-Larry Elder
Whether you have resolved to lose weight or to take your production global in 2010, mind mapping your steps and progress to achieving any goal will help you go from thinking to achieving.
So instead of keeping your dreams and goals in your mind get them into your digital brain. This will let you become architect of your dreams, designing and fine-tuning, visualizing the grand scheme and refining the details for action.
Your goals should be connected throughout your Brain to the areas of your life where they are relevant. You can also create a specific area for “Personal Growth” or “2010 Resolutions”. All your key goals for the year should be linked there.
Outcome Directed Thinking
Outcome directed thinking is a process by which the outcome is the first step in the process. High performers tend to naturally think in an outcome or goal directed way. If this type of thinking comes naturally to you then you will go to town in your PersonalBrain. If this type of thinking doesn’t come naturally to you, you might need PersonalBrain even more. This way you can focus your projects and intentions with an end in sight. The idea is to direct our attention and energy from a set of obstacles to a set of choices: the more specific and definable the choices, the better the chance for success.
For example, under each goal or new year resolution you need to break it down and segment your desired achievement into manageable tasks. For instance, “Living to be 100” is a very concrete goal but unless you define key steps and milestones to get there, it’s just a pipe dream. Under this Thought you might include key research on longevity and health as well as key action oriented Thoughts that will help you achieve your goal such as nutrition, exercise and stress management.
PersonalBrain’s outline view enables you to see all necessary steps for your goal.
Brainstorming for Success
Of course, you might not always know or even think about how to get from A to Z in reaching your goal. And that’s where you can have some fun and surprise yourself by brainstorming and creating new Thoughts that will help you reach your goal. At this point in the process no Thought is off limits. You can always delete anything you don’t like later. By visualizing all paths to reaching your goal you can analyze all possibilities and have clear next steps. I recommend creating Thought Types for “Action Items”, even for personal goals so you can ensure you are proactive in achieving your goals.
Deciding On the Best Path or Action Item to Reach Your Goal
Once you have added child Thoughts for key steps to achieve your goals you can use Thought Types with colors and icons to highlight the best ideas.
Tagging Thoughts as a follow up to your brainstorming session helps clarify the practicalities of your ideas.
In the above screenshot once all ideas for the company’s “Market Expansion” were captured, Thought Types are used to signify a primary attribute of an idea. In this case, something that is a “Greenlighted project” or a “Hot topic” has generated much debate is identified with a Thought Type.
Often the ideas generated aren’t necessarily a clear “yeah or nay” so you can create tags that will highlight the feasibility of each idea. In the example above there are Thought Tags for “Cost” and “Timeframe” because these are key factors on executing these ideas.
By categorizing and further classifying ideas, unconscious reasons why something is a good or bad idea becomes more concrete, and an objective criterion for making decisions can be readily identified and implemented. For more information on brainstorming read: Visualizing Decisions and No Limits Brainstorming.
Integrating all Resources for Action
Sometimes we know exactly what needs to be done but we just need a place to stay inspired and track our progress. With PersonalBrain you can drag and drop all relevant files and web pages. So if you need to track how many miles you run each week and how you feel after your run, create a Thought for this. Attach a spreadsheet or use PersonalBrain’s Notes to keep your fitness log.
Furthermore dragging and dropping sources of inspiration that you read about on the web will enable you to recalibrate and reenergize yourself when you need an extra nudge. This might include key leaders in your industry, pictures of desired results or reference links for your project.
To a Thoughtful 2010…
Thoughtful planning equals intelligent results. I encourage everyone to add some new goals and resolutions to their digital Brain. The Thoughts and connections you make can define and become a prelude to a successful new year.
Additional Resources
- Visualizing Decisions and No Limits Brainstorming: How to Ensure your Best Thinking is Leading the Way.
- Using PersonalBrain for Project Management
- Task Management, GTD webinar
- Go from Zero to Sixty with your Knowledge on Anything Now for more information on self-learning.
