I've often found myself having trouble staying motivated and seeing my goals through. The best way I’ve found to accomplish things is to set out a schedule; the more incremental and specific, the better. At gap intelligence, gappers have access to an incredible piece of software that helps us keep track of those goals called “High Five”…but more on that later.
Goals that NEED to get done
One point to make is that when I’m talking about goals I mean goals that don’t need to get done. Goals that NEED to get done are usually pretty easy to see through. It’s similar to how you needed to get that essay done at school, or get that blog done at work *cough *cough; you know you need to do it by a certain date and you get it done.
Goals that are HARD to get done
The story is much different when you’re trying to do something you DON'T need to do. This is something that isn’t assigned to you, but is something you’re doing to enrich your life. This could be the skill you’re trying to learn in your free time or a business idea you want to give a shot. When you don’t need to do something, you generally have the thought process that you’ll just work on it when you want to. We all know how that is, you’ll blink and the day is over and you haven’t worked on what you wanted to work on. Those days start to string together into weeks and then months. Eventually you’ll have completely forgotten about what you wanted to accomplish until one day you’re randomly reminded, “oh yeah, I wanted to do that”. That is the way it will stay your entire life unless you make changes to your process.
Staying on Track
The way I’ve found success in accomplishing my goals is by setting small incremental steps for myself. Think of it like a ladder, you need a horizontal slab of wood every 20 inches or climbing up becomes hard. Trying to leap is possible, but makes things harder to see, harder to execute and you can start to lose your way. For certain types of goals this can be easy i.e. being able to run 10 miles. You can stick to a very specific training regimen for a little while and you’ll likely accomplish your goal. However a goal can become more complex when it’s not so easily quantifiable.
High Five
gap intelligence employees have access to a piece of software called “high five” that helps us keep track of our goals. We can create new goals and within those goals set as many increments as we want, dated and described in any way. Let’s say you have a business idea and you want to turn it into a reality. Now, making goals for something like that can be very hard. Just try to find a reasonable end goal and then mentally walkthrough what exactly would need to get done at each level to make that happen. Even creating a set of incremental tasks for something like that is a big project in itself. However, had goals not been made, you’d sit down and be unsure of what exactly to work on that day and overall would lose time without some kind of planning or schedule.
Maximizing High Five Value
One cool thing about High Five is that gappers can look at other gappers past or current goals. Maybe they had a goal that is similar to something we want to accomplish. We can look at how they organized their goals for tips on how we should organize ours. If we also maybe want to do something, but are just unsure of what we want to do, we can look at other gappers goals for ideas. It’s a great place to make progress towards accomplishing our goals.
Takeaway
If you’re interested in accomplishing something but haven’t quite made it happen, you might want to try this technique. There's nothing worse than looking back when you’re old and remembering that there were so many things you wanted to do, but never did.
For more than 16 years, gap intelligence has served manufacturers and sellers by providing world-class services monitoring, reporting, and analyzing the 4Ps: prices, promotions, placements, and products. Email us at info@gapintelligence.com or call us at 619-574-1100 to learn more.
