Day 75 — Productivity series 2/7: “Managing Goal”

Original Photo by Devin Avery on Unsplash

“Put the cart before the horse” is saying something is done contrary to a conventional order. When managing our productivity, one common issue is “working on productivity for productivity sake”, instead of realizing why we’re trying to optimize productivity. Therefore, we need to remind ourselves what the goals are, and if we’re seeing the big picture and managing our process to reach the bigger goal as the real productivity.

In today’s article, “managing goal” for productivity, I’m going to break it down to the following structure:

• Types of Goals
• Goals by Time Frame
• Tools and Methods to Manage Goals

Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash

Type of Goals

Experience, End, and Life Goals

Based on Alan Cooper, the famous author of About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, and it’s goal-directed design framework, there are 3 types of goals:

1. Experience goals: describe how a persona wants to feel while doing things, or using a product/ service. For example, have a good diner in your favorite restaurant, have fun playing board game with your friends.
2. End goals: describes what you want to accomplish with certain tasks. For example, use software to fill your tax, get a Design Thinking certificate
3. Life goals: mostly your long-term desires or motivations. For example: have a healthier diet, retire early with enough money.

When managing goals to optimize productivity, it’ll help tremendously if you have the Why in your mind. For example, if your long-term goals (life goals) is to retire early with enough money, it helps you prioritize your short term goals: after I leave work and go home, do I want to watch TV to relax (short-term experience goal)? or should I use my night time to study in order to get a raise (short-term end goal)? When manage productivity, we should think about which one is the “right horse before the cart”.

What’s our life goals look like? Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash

Short, Mid, and Long Term

In our lives, there are many things we want to accomplish. However, we only have limited time and resource. Therefore a good way to prioritize our goals is to divide them by the time frame, Short vs. Mid vs. Long term goals, and ask ourselves what’s really important to us. Once we start examining what’s crucial vs. what not, we can quickly eliminate those unimportant things in our lives, stop wasting time on them, therefore our productivity get enhanced quickly. Below are some key questions to help you prioritize your goals:

Short term goals

• What are the things you do that will make you, or others happy?
• What are some tasks you’re obligated to complete?
• What are the things that don’t belong to the two categories above, but it’s smart for you to do?

Mid term goal

• What are you doing that is considered world-class level of performance?
• What are the things that make you truly happy, satisfied, and it’s sustainable? (an opposite example could be drinking alcohol, not very sustainable)
• What are the things you’re spending time on that’s not related to the two categories above? Would you consider stop doing them?

Long term goal

• What kind of lifestyle you want to have in 5–10 years?
• What’s an ideal retirement look like?
• Ho will you like to be with your friends and family in the future?

Having these goals written down and remind ourselves routinely keep us staying on track. The clearer we have these important goals in mind, the easier we can prioritize our daily tasks to gradually approach our short/mid/long-term goals.

What are our long term goals? Are we making the right progress? Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash

Tools & Methods

Long-term Goals: Vision board

Vision board is a low-cost, low tech tools to help us stay on track. Simply cut out some pictures from magazines to create a photo collage that consists of what we strive for in our lives. For example, in the figure below, there are key words like “healthy life”, “be here financially”, and pictures like beach and pools, yoga and sports cars, safari and Eiffel tower. The board itself serves as a strong visual clue so that every time we see it, we remind ourselves where we want to go, and how much effort we should put in.

Vision board helps remind ourselves our life goals. Image source: Honest & Well

Short/Mid-term Goals: Task Management Tools

Having a good task management tools help you track the progress of all the intended tasks. For example, Trello (see figure below), is a easy-to-use tool that I use to track what needs to be done, what the required sub-tasks are, and what the latest status is, and the task deadline. Just like other tools, it allows you to quickly glance over all the tasks, and re-prioritize them easily.

Image source: Trello

Conclusion

1. The first step of managing productivity is to understand if we’re heading the right direction — our life goals;
2. By thinking of our short/mid/long term goals, we can enhance productivity quickly by removing distraction from our lives;
3. Tools like Vision Board and task management tools help you stay on track and monitor your productivity.

What are some methods you use for scope management?I’m eager to learn from you.

ABC. Always be clappin’.

To see more

All Daily Agile UX tips

Day 74 — Productivity series 1/7: “Manage What, When, & How”

Day 73 — Creative PM series 7/7: ”Risk Management”

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not represent current or previous client or employer views.