Tim O’Hare
observations, thoughts and useful stuff…Archive for almost books
Hit The Target
The Blurb
Hit The Target was the second mini-book I wrote sometime in the second half of 2005, following quickly on the heels of Ready Steady Go! I can’t pretend for one minute that the idea that it tries to put across (SMART targets) is original, but Hit The Target is my take on a familiar idea and is intended to be the sharpest precision guide to setting effective targets that has ever been written. It comprises a set of five guidelines that are expressed in a total of only five words or just 39 characters and which together take no more than 10 seconds to read (slightly longer to assimilate). If you find that you often fail to achieve personal targets, struggle to make progress with projects or are unable to advance towards your goals then this book is for you. There are no complicated systems requiring lengthy justification, just good old common sense expressed in a direct and forthright manner that commands you to respond.
Take Aim…
Most people have jobs they need to get done, things they would like to achieve or goals they are aiming for. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy for such targets to be missed, leading to frustration, disappointment or criticism from others. Sometimes, missing a target has far-reaching repercussions affecting a whole organization, a large number of people or involving a large amount of money, time or other resources. If you miss targets of this kind others will quickly learn not to expect anything from you and will direct interesting and/or meaningful tasks or work that demands significant responsibility to others. The stream of future opportunities available to you may quickly dry up. Sometimes, the only person that suffers when you miss a target is yourself. However, if you want a successful and fulfilling life it’s best not to value yourself so little that you are prepared to fail to meet your own targets without questioning why?
There are a number of superficial reasons why people fail to achieve their goals, but only one underlying reason. People generally fail to achieve their goals because they don’t actually know what it is they are trying to achieve. Often the goal is little more than an idea that casually enters the brain, sometimes it is a dream, and only rarely is it a carefully defined and fully thought-through target. When a goal is vague, broad, open-ended, over-ambitious, under-resourced (any or all of these) it’s little wonder that successful completion is elusive.
This book aims to help you develop targets that are carefully defined and fully thought-through. It introduces an established set of five guidelines that can be used to ensure that the target is SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE, ACHIEVABLE, RELEVANT and TIMED. In other words, the guidelines help to ensure that a SMART target is set, and a target that is SMART is a target that is much more likely to be completed successfully.
Specific
What’s the difference between a dream and a target? A dream is generally a rather vague notion about something you would like to happen in the future, a target is a description of specific action that you can take to bring about a desired end result. Dreams are about ‘hope’, targets are about ‘action’. If you want to actually make something happen it is better to act rather than to hope.
Making something happen is rather like going on a journey. With a journey you start out somewhere needing to get somewhere else and do so by traveling through places that are somewhere in between. At the outset you usually have a clear idea of where you are heading and the route you are going to take. Not many people go on journeys where they don’t know where they want to end up, although some might try to reach their intended destination without any idea of how to get there! A journey without a predefined end-point or a clearly defined route is likely to take you to a wrong place. If you are lucky it might take you to the right place but perhaps by an inefficient and probably unnecessarily time consuming path. Likewise, without a specific target, which not only says something about the intended outcome but also illuminates the path to that outcome, attempting to make something happen is likely to be a hit-and-miss process that offers only a small chance of success and an even smaller chance of gaining success in a effective manner.
Useful targets are SPECIFIC targets. They define a specific outcome and provide information on the means by which this outcome will be realized. If the goal is modest, a single target may be sufficient to define the action required. If the goal is large (a dream perhaps), then it will be necessary to define a set of targets and perhaps a defined sequence in which they must be achieved. In both cases it is more effective to aim for a target than to shoot hopefully towards goal. Precision is everything.
Measurable
One reason people fail to meet a target can be that the target is set with no way of determining whether it has been achieved or with the possibility for disagreement about whether the target has been achieved. Problems can arise if there is no statement of an outcome that can be measured in any way or if the outcome is expressed simply as an increase, a reduction or a change. For example, if a target simply demands a change, then there is scope to achieve the target without achieving anything worthwhile. If an employer tells an employee simply that they expect increased productivity then a target has been set which can be measured in different ways by the two parties concerned – the result may be a recipe for disagreement, disappointment and disillusionment.
To be useful, a target needs to have an associated criterion or set of criteria that can be used to judge whether it has been met. Such criteria should define a specific outcome or outcomes, the occurrence of which can be objectively determined. Not only do the criteria provide a means of checking whether the target has been met, they also provide a clear focus for the efforts of everyone working towards the goal, and since most people work better when they have something to aim for, the completion criteria can serve as an important source of motivation.
Useful completion criteria take the form of a specific end result or evidence base such as a MEASURABLE change in behaviour, a written report, a list or an absolute or percentage change in some quantifiable parameter (e.g. weight, money). When setting such criteria it is important to ensure that they are ACHIEVABLE given the available time and resources and also that they produce a worthwhile end result. Setting criteria too low results in trivial targets which provide a minimal ‘call to action’. Setting targets too high can be de-motivating when an impossible target cannot be met however much effort is expended.
Achievable
Achieving a target is about moving from the current position to a clearly defined and useful end-point within a specified time frame and so it is easy to put lots of emphasis on the desired outcome without giving enough consideration to the starting point and the means by which the transition to the end-point can be brought about. If you want to travel from A to B it’s generally best to know not only the location of B, but also the location of A, the intended mode(s) of transport and something about the possible routes. Without this knowledge, wrong turns and delays are inevitable .
In the context of target setting, consideration of the starting point is essential because it helps to determine whether the target can realistically be achieved within the specified time frame (which itself depends upon the starting point), it helps to determine whether sufficient resources are available and it helps to assess whether those who are aiming to achieve the target have an appropriate set of skills and attributes. Without such consideration it is very easy to set unattainable targets, and although it is generally a good idea to set ambitious targets as these are likely to be more stimulating than those that can be achieved easily, setting unattainable targets will quickly lead to de-motivation, frustration, loss of self-esteem and unwillingness of others to work towards, or contribute to future targets.
It may not always be easy to assess whether a target is ACHIEVABLE, but it should be evident that thinking carefully about this aspect of a target should always lead to a greater probability that the target is realistic. As a guide, it may be useful to consider four key areas relating to completion of the target, namely the existing knowledge/expertise/state, the match between the available and required skills and attributes, the time required and the resources that can be utilized.
Relevant
It should probably go without saying that there is little point in setting a target if it isn’t relevant. However, with so many possible targets that you could set yourself, many of which might seem like good ideas when you think of them, how can you make sure that the targets you set yourself are worth pursuing? How can you ensure that you don’t waste time trying to hit a target that doesn’t actually produce an outcome of tangible benefit? How can you define a target to maximize its relevance to all those who are involved in achieving it? There are no simple answers to these questions, other than the really simple answer that it is up to you (and anyone else involved) to decide, but because it is so simple it is tempting to ignore this aspect of target setting altogether.
If something is worth expending effort on, then it is worth spending a little time defining why. Before starting to work towards a target you should know how the work involved contributes to your overall goals. You should know why are you going to pursue a particular course of action. Spending time ensuring that a target is relevant is simply a way of reminding yourself where the benefits lie, and if you know this then you have a valuable source of inspiration from which you can gain motivation, overcome inactivity or persuade others to help.
Checking targets for relevance can also enable you to be more effective when others are setting targets for you. If you assess the relevance of externally-set targets to your personal goals you may be able to suggest amendments which enhance the value that the target has for you. The greater the relevance of a target, the greater the chance that you will achieve it successfully, so those that set targets for you are likely to listen to your suggestions in such cases. You may also be able to use relevance as an aid to prioritizing your actions when you are forced to work towards more than one target at a time (most of the time!).
Timed
It would be tempting to believe that as long as you know exactly what you are aiming for and assuming that you are appropriately skilled, there should be no real barrier to hitting the target. Sadly, this is often not the case. Many people’s lives are littered with the debris of unfinished tasks and unachieved goals despite plenty of good intentions and no shortage of effort. Often the root cause of failure to achieve a target that has been set is the absence of a clear time framework within which the task should be achieved.
Lack of a clearly specified time frame for completion of a task can create problems in two key areas. First, most people respond positively to a reasonable amount of pressure and the presence of a deadline or definition of a fixed, pre-planned piece of time for a task to be completed acts as a powerful motivator to getting the job done. Without any time constraint it becomes very easy to put off working towards your target because you don’t feel like it or because other activities seem more important. Second, if you decide in advance when a task should be completed then you have a clear end point and can organize your time to ensure that you implement necessary action by the deadline. If you know you have to complete a task by Friday then you know that you have to allocate sufficient time to it on Wednesday and Thursday rather then putting it off until the following week (and then the following week, and then the following week…..). The presence of the deadline forces you to plan how you will achieve the task, and this planning is likely to significantly enhance the likelihood of you successfully completing it because, for example, it entails you thinking carefully about what the task involves, considering the various stages of the work and examining what preparatory work you will have to carry out before you launch into the key elements of the task itself.
…Fire
Setting SMART targets can require practice. Once you have decided to set a target in a particular area the first thing you should do is write it down. Formalizing a target in this way will increase your commitment to it, and this alone should increase your chances of hitting it. Next, you should use the five SMART guidelines to test the target. Ask yourself five questions, ensuring that in each case you can answer with an unequivocal ‘YES’:
- Is the target SPECIFIC?
- Is the target MEASURABLE?
- Is the target RELEVANT?
- Is the target ACHIEVABLE?
- Is the target TIMED?
It’s not necessary to ask the questions in this order, or in the same order every time, in fact a better sequence might well be to first check that the target is RELEVANT and then to check that it is SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE, ACHIEVABLE and TIMED. Each time you question your target, ensure that if you cannot answer ‘YES’ you examine it carefully and write down a suitably modified version. After you have considered all five guidelines go back and check it again and also step back from the process to consider whether the target actually achieves the desired outcome.
Here are five targets written in both non-SMART and SMART formats. For guidance, letters in brackets (e.g. [S]) indicate which part of each SMART target fulfils the requirements of a particular guideline.
MISSES: Examples of non-SMART targets:
- I want to get fitter.
By doing what? How much fitter? By when? How will you know if you have succeeded? - I need to reduce the time spent at work dealing with junk email.
How will you do this? When will you do this? - I am going to try to save £20 each month.
How will you make the saving? Is it feasible for you to save this amount? - I need to make sure that I don’t lose marks by handing my assignments in late.
What specific action are you going to take? - I’ve always thought it would be good to learn something new like a Martial Art.
How are you going to start doing something about this?
HITS: Examples of SMART targets:
- I am going to become more physically active [R] by increasing the average number of steps I take each day by 20% [SMA] from my current level over the next four weeks [T].
- I am going to save time at work [R] by setting my electronic mail system to automatically delete messages that are identified as being junk mail [SMA] (today [T]).
- I am going to save money [R] by putting aside £1 each weekday instead of buying a cup of coffee at lunchtime [SMA] (review in four weeks time [T] when total money saved should be £20).
- I am going to avoid losing unnecessary marks on my course [R] this year [T] by ensuring that I submit all of my assignments on the day before they are due in [SMA].
- I am going to explore a possible new interest [R] by spending some time this week [T] identifying three weekly Martial Arts courses that I could attend [SMA].
Ready Steady Go!
The Blurb
I wrote Ready Steady Go! in mid-2005 after it occured to me that is ridiculous that so many books on time management are so long and, therefore, take a long time to read – surely if a time management book is to function in an efficient manner it should take hardly any time to read and only a little longer to take notice of. So, Ready Steady Go! is intended to be the shortest, quickest to read and most effective book on time management that has ever been written. It comprises a set of six instructions that are expressed in a total of only 15 words or just 84 characters (including spaces) and which together take no more than 10 seconds to read (slightly longer to assimilate). If you struggle to get tasks done, to cram enough into each day, or to do the things that you really want to do then this book is for you. There are no complicated systems requiring lengthy justification, just good old common sense expressed in a direct and forthright manner that commands you to respond.
The Start Line
Almost everyone struggles to use their time effectively at some point in their life. The result can be chaos, confusion or frustration as important tasks are not started, work in progress remains incomplete and dreams stay forever unfulfilled. Yet a quick search along the shelves of any bookshop quickly reveals enough books designed to help us overcome our inability to get things done, get enough things done or get the right things done that such time use problems ought to have long since been banished from our lives. So, what is going wrong?
Using your time effectively is very, very simple. It’s really just a matter of applying some common sense principles to the way you live your life – the only way to stop wasting time is to stop wasting time; the only way not to procrastinate is not to procrastinate; the only way to achieve a long-term goal is to start working towards it. But for some reason, most authors who write about time use like to do so by dressing up their ideas as a complex set of behaviours or as a fancy system that needs to be introduced via a host of case studies, dissected in minute detail or developed through an agonizingly mundane set of exercises for the reader. In short, they like to give the impression that their system is the one that has finally cracked the problem.
This book, on the other hand, aims simply to re-state basic common sense principals that can help you use your time well, with the minimum fuss, minimum words and maximum possible effectiveness. It is written to be quick to read, and only a little slower to assimilate because, after all, reading a book designed to help you use your time more effectively really shouldn’t take up too much of your time! The material is arranged as a set of six instructions each accompanied by a short commentary. They can be followed alone, or all six can be grouped together to provide a general framework for getting things done.
Get Started
You’ve probably heard the expression “Procrastination is the thief of time”. The tendency that many of us have to delay starting a task can be a powerful drain on the time we have available. Rather than being filled with action, our time is stolen by our inactivity.
As you go through life you tend to find that there are two types of people. There are those who think about doing things, and there are those who do things. The first type of person notices the second type and wonders why they can’t be like that; they have dreams, wishes and ideas and wonder why they are just dreams, wishes and ideas. The second type of person accomplishes their dreams, runs their own business or writes their book (sometimes all of these and many more); they notice the first type and know why they are like that.
An inability to GET STARTED can have a number of sources – fear of the task ahead; fear of failure; uncertainty about what we are supposed to be doing; discomfort with some aspect of the task; laziness; more interesting (or easier) alternatives – but whatever its source, our in-built ability to put tasks off and engineer perfectly reasonable sounding reasons to delay has one effective antidote. If you want, or need, to get something done then there is no alternative but to GET STARTED. Even if a task is genuinely scary and gives you the right to feel afraid of what lies ahead, if the task has to be done and the appropriate safety measures are in place the action has to start sometime so it may as well start straightaway.
Of course, some tasks are much simpler to GET STARTED than others. It’s much easier to clean a pair of shoes (though you might well delay doing it) than to build a garden shed. You might need to DIVIDE AND CONQUER longer, or more complex, tasks, but when it comes down to it you will still need to GET STARTED.
Decide What Matters
It’s likely that one of the main reasons that your time use isn’t all that it could be is that you don’t actually know what you are trying to achieve. How can you decide how much time to allocate to a task or when to carry it out if you don’t know whether that task is important in the context of your overall goals? It’s only once you DECIDE WHAT MATTERS that you can take charge of your time and allocate it sensibly to the various tasks you want to complete, or prioritize one task above another and arrive at a specific focus for a given block of time. It’s tempting to think that lots of things have equal importance and try to do them all at once, but most people work best when they focus on one thing at a time, and if you have more than one priority then arguably you have no priorities at all. Over a longer period, you may have several important projects on the go, but for each chunk of useable time aim to focus on just one (that you decide matters).
It’s a strange fact, but many people who complain about not having enough time spend lots of time each day on activities that make little or no contribution to the areas of their life that matter. Activities such as lying in bed in the morning or watching television can easily become examples of ‘displacement activities’ – ways of using up time that could (and often should) be spent on constructive activity in a priority area. Such activities are not necessarily bad, but just like really important tasks, its always better if they are done deliberately. If you are going to spend some time doing something, always try to know why.
One neat way of trimming some of the excess waste off your daily routine is to consider that every hour you spend doing something each day is equivalent to a whole year of the next 24 years of your life. That ought to be quite a motivating thought the next time you awake to the sound of the alarm clock and hit the snooze button…
Focus On Outcomes
You’ve worked hard, slaving every hour you can spare, but you can’t shake the feeling that you’ve little to show for the effort put in. Does this sound familiar? If so, the root cause might well be that you are focusing too much on the effort you are putting in and not enough on the outcome that you are trying to achieve. In fact you may not even know what this outcome is.
Motivation to do more generally comes from positive feedback gained when you finish something; perhaps you feel great about completing a task that has been hanging over you, or someone tells you that you created something really useful, or maybe you finish a job and see the beneficial effect on others. Whatever the source, positive feedback makes you feel good and ultimately makes you want to GET STARTED on the next task. But on the down-side, working hard and getting nowhere fast leads to frustration and de-motivation – what’s the point of putting in all that effort for little or no gain?
When you embark on a task, it’s essential to make sure that you know exactly what it is that you are trying to achieve. It’s also important that you know how important the task is to you (DECIDE WHAT MATTERS) and how much time you are prepared to allocate to it (SET TIME LIMITS), but it’s critically important that you FOCUS ON OUTCOMES. If you can define an unambiguous, achievable and useful outcome then you have a clear direction in which to head, you have a framework to guide your effort and, perhaps most importantly, you will know when to stop, when you have succeeded and when to give yourself (or seek from others) the all important pat-on-the-back that drives you forwards to your next goal. Targets are particularly important when working towards a larger goal, providing stepping-stones with which you can measure progress – even when your crossing is slow, you can see the opposite bank drawing closer.
Divde And Conquer
Think about your dreams (not the ones you have when asleep, but the ones that define the things you want to do with your life). First, the bad news. Despite what some people may tell you, some of your dreams will be impossible and it’s best to identify these and forget about them now. Sadly, it’s easy to feel as if all of your dreams are impossible, and although this might be the case it’s probably not. Now the good news. One of the main reasons dreams remain dreams is that people fail to GET STARTED because they fail to DIVIDE AND CONQUER, for dreams are usually big things and often involve a journey into the unknown.
Away from dreamland, it’s relatively easy to complete smaller tasks, to GET STARTED on a task when you can see the end before you start and to SET TIME LIMITS and FOCUS ON OUTCOMES when the timescale associated with the task is short and the outcome straightforward. But what about longer projects, where the journey to the final destination is one that cannot be made in one dramatic leap? A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and after that comes another step, and another, and another. So, to embark upon a longer journey, to make inroads into that larger project or to move towards the realization of a dream, it’s first necessary to identify some steps.
It may be possible to define a large project at the outset through a series of steps and having done this work through each in turn. For others – ‘quests’ – it may only be possible to identify an initial step and having accomplished this define the way forward. For a large task it might help to break it down into a set number of stages with an outcome for each stage. Such a task could be thought of as being like a year, split into twelve months with one task for each month, or a week with one task for each day or perhaps best of all, a rainbow, with one task for each colour and a pot of gold at the end.
Set Time Limits
Work expands to fill the time available. It’s so easy to spend a bit more time to do a better job, get a smarter finish or find a clearer expression, but though it’s nice to strive for perfection, it’s usually not sensible and almost always not possible. There’s a general principle known as the 80:20 rule which states that 80% of the end result derives from 20% of the effort, or put the other way round, the last 20% of the result requires four times the effort that you’ve already expended! Faced with this, it’s hard not to agree that in most cases there’s little point in making a final push for perfection when you are already four-fifths of the way there.
Whether the 80:20 rule is exactly correct – perhaps it’s 70:30 or 90:10 – there’s merit in the idea. Once an outcome of an activity is good enough, stop and move on to the next task. For example, it’s rarely worth striving for 100% on an exam question, when there are 80%s waiting to be gained on other questions for a fraction of the effort. But what is ‘good enough’? It’s not always easy to answer this question, but usually it is. If you DECIDE WHAT MATTERS and FOCUS ON OUTCOMES then you should be able to define an appropriate end point that matches your needs (or those imposed on you). When perfection really matters there is usually a set of externally imposed standards to define ‘good enough’ and in such cases it pays to heed them.
A useful habit to develop is an ability to decide ahead of starting a job how much time you can (or should) afford to devote to it. Meetings function better when they have a clearly defined end time, and so do other forms of activity. There’s nothing like a deadline to galvanize effort and the trick is to ensure that you value your own self-imposed deadlines just as much as other people force you to value theirs. And if the time that you can afford a task is less than the time you should afford it maybe you need to go back and DECIDE WHAT MATTERS.
Plan
It is hard to argue against the idea that your most valued possession is your time, yet it is easy to journey through life unprepared for the day, week or month ahead, failing to invest even a small amount of time to ensure that you gain good value from the rest of your most precious commodity. It is tempting to believe that being a free-spirit will lead to a stress-free life, but it’s far more likely that ‘to fail to plan is to plan to fail’. So, PLAN.
However you choose to PLAN, keep it simple, do it regularly, use routine and group tasks together. Establishing a routine for regular tasks should result in you doing them efficiently, freeing up time for you to decide what else you want to do. Grouping similar tasks together allows you to concentrate on one type of activity at a time so that once you are in gear you can stay there. Similarly, completing tasks that require you to be in nearby locations together means that you don’t end up wasting time on unnecessary journeys (or not making the journeys at all).
The simplest approach to planning is to list tasks that need to be done (avoiding trivial items which can be used to provide an impression of progress). Items can then be numbered or highlighted to indicate their importance and the priority you wish to give to them. For longer timescales it is hard to beat a diary, as long as it allows you to sub-divide time into sensibly sized sections. Combining a diary with a task list makes it easy to see all of the things (scheduled or un-scheduled) that you have to do. If you are mobile, your plan has to be small enough to stay with you, but a plan written somewhere that you view regularly may serve just as well. It’s also important to PLAN regularly, which could be daily, weekly or monthly depending on who and what is involved.
Finally, it’s important not to strive for perfection and forget to ever GET STARTED. Remind yourself that planning is of no use whatsoever if it doesn’t eventually give way to work…
The Finishing Post
You can use the six instructions presented in this book in any way you choose. For example, if you are a bit of a time waster you might want to remind yourself that you need to DECIDE WHAT MATTERS or SET TIME LIMITS. The most important thing is that once you give yourself an instruction you follow it.
If you are starting from scratch, you might find it useful to follow the six instructions in a sequence something like this:
GET STARTED
DECIDE WHAT MATTERS
FOCUS ON OUTCOMES
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
SET TIME LIMITS
PLAN
GET STARTED
GET STARTED appears at the start and the end because you need to start sorting out how you are going to achieve a task, but having done this, you also have to make sure that you start the task itself. You can play around with this sequence and miss stages out if they don’t seem necessary (for example, you don’t need to DIVIDE AND CONQUER straightforward tasks). Once you get going you should find that it is just a case of reminding yourself of the appropriate instruction if you start to get stuck.
If you are still struggling, then consider that the only thing that could be stopping you use your time better is the fact that you don’t really want to, otherwise you’d simply get started. And since you have read this far that can’t be the case, so…
READY, STEADY, GO!
