Working the Hourglass Guide

Releasing personal power through goal setting

By Jeffrey Hansler, CSP

There may never be enough time for you to accomplish everything you wish to accomplish, but there is enough time to begin. The essence of time management is using the time available to accomplish what is most important to you.

Effective time management involves the following steps:

1.  List your goals

2.  Translate your goals into measurable objectives

3.  Prioritize these objectives to accomplish what is most important to you

4.  Define the activities necessary to reach these objectives

5.  Plan your time use to complete defined activities

6.  Help others to help you complete defined activities

7.     Continually monitor actual activities and measure the contribution to objective attainment

The Working the Hourglass Guide is designed to "supercharge" your professional dreams. This same process can be used by anyone wishing to be more effective in their time management.

The most powerful ingredient for achieving objectives is to align professional and personal goals, and translate those goals into measurable objectives. Without clarifying why a goal is personally meaningful, it will be difficult to remain focused and easy to become distracted with ever present interruptions.

Most companies, as part of their business plan, assist you in setting professional goals. It is up to you to determine your personal goals and align them to your professional goals. Finding personal goals is not as obvious a task as it may first appear. In order to complete this task, allow yourself at least one hour of uninterrupted time. The time spent will produce a higher return than you could have ever imagined.

In the Working the Hourglass Guide, you will be rewriting information from one chart to another. This repetition will assist you in reaching your objective by reinforcing your commitment to your objectives.

The key to accomplishing goals lies in setting defined activities that are "bite-sized" pieces. Our Working the Hourglass Guide will focus your efforts on the fulfillment of your personal and professional goals.

Section A-1.  Establish Personal Goals

To outline your chosen personal goals (motivating forces):

Step #1:   Ask yourself: "What's important to me in life?" Write the answers on a separate piece of paper. Circle the items you feel are goals. Make an attempt to rewrite the remaining un-circled items into goals (Don't worry if you are unable to at this point). Summarize each of your goals into single words, and enter these on Chart A-1 under Goal.

Step #2:   Ask yourself: "How will I know when I have reached each goal?"  Enter the answers on Chart A-1 under Attainment.

Step #3:   Ask yourself: "Which goal is most important?" Move down your list comparing the listed goals with this question in mind. The result of this will be the determination of your highest priority goal. Number your goals accordingly on Chart A-1 under Priority.

Section A-2: Establish Professional Goals

If you haven't recently set goals with your company, or if you wish to re-check established professional goals, repeat the procedure used in Section A-1 for personal goals. List your professional goals on Chart A-2 in the same manner.

Example for Charts A-1 & A-2

 Most people are very surprised at the outcome of this exercise

Chart A-1: Establish Personal Goals

Chart A-2: Establish Professional Goals

Oxford Company can assist you and your company in establishing and achieving your objectives.

Section B: Match personal goals to professional goals

List your personal and professional goals in priority order on Chart B.  Search the list for personal and professional goals that are in support of each other.  Be specific and quantify goals with measurable units when possible.

This exercise will help you find any incongruencies in your goal setting. You may decide to re-prioritize either your professional or personal goals based on this exercise.

If there are incongruencies, ask yourself "How can I alter or restate my professional goals to be more supportive of my personal goals or vice versa?". "How can my personal goals multiply the benefit of achieving my professional goals and vice versa?".

Example Chart B  

Chart B: Match personal goals to professional goals

Oxford Company can assist you in supporting personal and professional objectives to achieve your company objectives.

Section C-1: Translate Personal Goals into Measurable Objectives

The difference between a goal and an objective is that an objective is measurable or at least contains measurable elements. A measurable result provides the feedback necessary to make behavior adjustments so that goals are attainable.

Professional goals are regularly given a measurable element or quantified. For example the goal "Being better than last year" is quantified into an objective such as "Making $X income based on $Y sales".

This objective can then be broken into a defined activity that can be accomplished each day or each week. Classifying activities into daily or weekly activities, provides an individual the opportunity to win repeatedly. It also transforms an apparently insurmountable objective into a very believable daily activity.

To transform the objective of "Making $X income based on $Y sales" into a daily activity, divide $Y sales by 50 weeks. Dividing this by 5 days, determines how much must be sold per day. "Being better than last year" has been quantified into a daily measurable activity. Continue breaking down an objective until you hit a defined and measurable activity that is believable and motivating to you.

Although it may not be immediately apparent, almost anything can be quantified with some measure, either directly or indirectly. Be creative - and have fun, you are on the road to releasing your enormous personal power. Be sure to define activities over which you have control. You may not be able to control how many sales you get a day, but you can control the average number of daily calls needed to make those sales.

To transform your personal goals into objectives and defined activities:

Step #1:   Rewrite your prioritized personal goals in Chart C-1 under Goal.

Step #2:  If your Attainment is not already recognizable as a measurable objective, do this now. Enter this in Chart C-1 under Objective.

Step #3:   Mark the date you wish to complete your Objective in Chart C-1 under Accomplish Date.

Step #4:   Break the Objective into defined activities for a specific time period. Pick a time that supports your personality, and make sure you can win. Enter both the defined activity and the specific time period in Chart C-1 under Defined Activity.

Example Chart C-1

Priority	Personal Goal	Objective (attainment)	Accomplish Date	Defined Activity
1	success	$100,000 in stocks	10/1/99	buy $1,000/mo.
2	security	own $395,000 home	11/1/04	pay $500/mo. extra principle
3	family	visit family once a year	12/1/94	save $30/day for tickets

Chart C-1: Translate Personal Goals into Measurable Objectives