By: Dr. Sanjay Kumar Agarwal, Sr. Associate Editor-ICN Group
KOLKATA: In our previous article no. 6 of this ‘Excellence With G.O.P.T.A.’ Series, we discussed about various benefits of ‘goals setting’ in life. You must be wondering, if the goal setting is so good and powerful and if it is so simple, why everybody does not set goals. Now let us see.
Reasons, why people don’t set goals
Most of the people do not set goals due to various reasons listed hereinafter:-The biggest reason is that most of the people don’t understand the power of goal setting. This depends upon your upbringing. If in your family, you have not seen anybody setting goals & achieving the same, you have not experienced the power of goal setting process. Now you need to rewire the brain about this powerful tool.
Most of the people think that ‘goals’ and ‘targets’ are more or less same things; and as they are not in sales or marketing, goals are not meant for them. Here I must tell you that ‘goals’ are not simply ‘targets’ and are not meant for sales or marketing people only. Goals affect your lives. You must understand that you are the outcome of your choices and your actions in life. You are where you are now because of your actions or choices made in the past; and your future will be the direct outcome of your choices made today and actions taken henceforth. Only a concrete well set goal programme may lead you to make correct choices in life.
Another reason is that people don’t know how to set the goals. For such people, here is the good news. The goal setting programme, which I am going to share with you, will remove lack of knowledge and you will learn each and every step of goal setting & achieving process in due course. Right now, I am just working on the mindset towards the importance of goals setting, not the process.
Some people think that they already know their goals and they don’t have to undergo the process of setting the goals. But this thinking is erroneous. They have only desires. Until they do not write the desires; and willingly take necessary actions to materialise any particular desire, the desire will not become their goal.
Another reason is fear of rejection or fear of failure. The fact is that most of the fears are unfounded and never come true.
People think that goal setting is okay for others but it is not workable for them. Their self image is very poor and they do not find themselves worthy of getting the goals achieved.
Another reason is that people pretend that they are so busy that they have no time to set the goals. Here I want you to imagine that you are on a journey of 100 kms. and you have petrol in your car’s petrol tank, which is enough for just 20 kms. Would you say that I am in hurry; I have no time to take petrol; my 5 minutes will be wasted; I will get late? Not at all. In whatever hurry you are, at that time, filling your petrol tank is of utmost priority, otherwise you get stuck after 20 kms. Similar is the situation about the time consumed in goal setting process.
If you choose to invest 20-30 hours in properly setting your goals, you can successfully add at least 3 productive hours to your life, daily, that too for the rest of your life. That translates to about 1000 productive hours a year; or 50000 productive hours during the next 50 years. Is not it smart to invest 20-30 hours or even 40 hours or so for your future?
Imagine the rate of return on investment of your time for planning your future. It is a low, one-time investment of time with huge & recurring returns of time in future. Even otherwise, we are champions of wasting time in useless works or gossiping. Even while planning our pleasure trip for one week, we waste more than 20 hours in planning. Why should not we make a positive choice to invest some time in this productive exercise of planning our whole life, which may create future of our dreams?
If you develop the habit of investing 15 minutes before start of weekend in planning your next week and prioritising the works to be done during the upcoming week, you will surely gain control over your time over next week and your performance will definitely improve. If you develop the habit of investing 5 minutes daily to plan the next day and prioritising your activities, you will save more than 1 hour a day due to organised work, done in lesser time. I have been told by many of the participants of my workshops that their productivity has increased multi-fold by planning the next week beforehand. If you want to see just a testimonial, plan your next week and see the difference yourself.
The good news is that with proper goal setting, you can overcome all of your fears and improve your self-image. Now it is your turn to find out why you have not set any goals in life so far and if set, why you were not able to achieve or under achieve the same.
(Till now, I was working on the mindset towards time utilisation patterns and goals orientation in life, as I believe that without changing our attitude towards time utilisation patterns and goal setting tips are of no use. In the next article, I will reveal my copyrighted concept G.O.P.T.A.© and after that you will come to know in the following articles, how you can utilise G.O.P.T.A. in each walk of your life to add 3 productive hours daily to your life.So, stay tuned every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday and fasten your seat belt for G.O.P.T.A.)
Dr. Sanjay Kumar Agarwal, Creator & copyright holder of the concept G.O.P.T.A.© is an Author, Certified NLP Lifestyle Practitioner, Corporate Trainer & Motivational Speaker and recipient of Honorary Doctorate of Excellence (Management) by prestigious Young Scientist University, California, USA
My book ‘How to Add 50000 Productive Hours to Your Life’ is available at Amazon & Flipkart in English at http://bit.ly/HowToAdd50000ProductiveHoursToYourLife
