There is a battle underway, and most of us are losing. This isn't a battle overseas with platoons strategizing their next move. This is a battle of the mind. A battle for mindshare. To the victor goes our cognitive focus.
We fight this battle daily: hundreds of emails, native ads, social media intrusions—all of which are enabled by the average person's insatiable need to check our smartphone (the latest research suggests we do this at least 150 times per day). For the mathematicians in the house, that's once every 10 minutes over 14 waking hours (at a minimum).
What we sacrifice is focus. Focus is becoming a scarce resource for today's knowledge worker and leader. And when we sacrifice focus we dilute our EFFORT, and therefore, results.
Effort with consistency is like interesting without compounding.
This troublesome dynamic is supported by a mountain of literature, e.g Harvard Business Review's The Cost of Continuously Checking Email.
But there's no value is denying this reality, so we must adapt. Therefore, we'd like to offer our readers a few thoughts on how to navigate this battlefield, particularly when is comes to goals.
In my view, there are two types of goals:
Binary: you either accomplished the goal, or you didn't; it’s a singular, one-time deal.
Recurring: an activity you seek to repeat by (hopefully) forming systems/habits.
For example, a binary goal might be: I will summit Mt. Everest by July 4th, 2017. You are either going to summit Mt. Everest by July 4th (and triumphantly stake an American Flag), or you will fail to summit Mt. Everest. There is a singular moment of accomplishment or attainment. Most executives track their quarterly goals on a goal sheet and cross them off upon completion.
Recurring goals are repeating by nature: you must accomplish the goal routinely, over time. For example: I will practice Transcendental Meditations twice a day for 15 minutes for 5 days per week. A recurring goal is designed to form a habit—a very powerful human ability. We define success as having accomplished 80% of activities you set out to do, e.g. a goal of meditating 5 days per week—or 60 times per quarter—would be deemed “completed” if you meditated 48 times (80% x 60).
Today's digital battlefield of distraction makes recurring goals extremely challenging. To win, we need to extract our recurring goals from our goal sheet into a separate system.
For your consideration, we offer you: The DBT Recurring Goal Sheet.
As the saying goes, If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. How else can you really track a dozen or so recurring goals with any truthfulness? The above framework provides a simple process for tallying your progress for all goals that aren't a singular, binary event.
To get a copy of the DBT Recurring Goals Sheet along with our DBT Goal Sheet (Binary + Recurring on 1 page) within our Leadership Library, please navigate to the Contact page and fill out the form so we can email it to you (we promise not to spam).
We hope you find these two pieces of artillery helpful in the battle for mindshare to accomplish your professional goals.