PastorHacks

From (about) a year ago... Achievable goals

From Lifehacker... some good advice on making achievable goals

 

Making achievable goals shouldn't feel like buying art. Reviewing your list of goals should feel more like learning to paint with your hands than walking through a gallery of masterpieces. You should be constantly editing, rewording, removing, and adding goals from your list. Building momentum and confidence is the secret to making achievable goals.

Making achievable goals shouldn't feel like balancing a checkbook. There's a tendency for people to fanatically over-plan their goals. This creates a sort of smokescreen that helps hide the fact that you're not actually doing anything. I've been guilty of this for many goals, until I eventually found out that there was a tangible sense of relief from removing goals that I didn't want to do, but merely wanted to want to do. Most goals don't need a list of next actions, progress meters, line graphs, and customizable excel spreadsheets. Really! The sign of an achievable goal is that it wants to be worked on immediately.

Four tips for making achievable goals:
1. Entertain a mix of ambitious and silly goals. Goals should vary from ambitious (write a book, be financially independent) to silly (consider getting a pet fox, bet $100 on a rock paper scissors match) to novelty-seeking (try a new restaurant every week, go to the opera) to personal (fall madly in love, lose 10 pounds) to world-improving (convert to green energy, give 10% to charity) to educational (learn Italian, read a book a week). Marking off a few silly or easier goals is a good way to build confidence and momentum for larger more ambitious goals. When you've recently gotten rid of your television and spoken in front of a crowd of fifty, it becomes a hundred times easier to pitch your book idea to a publisher, or call someone about a lease on a space for your new business.

2. Make a good number of goals... but not too many. Somewhere between twenty and, say, forty-three. Don't try to go to one hundred or else you'll get more caught up in juggling and organizing your list than actually doing them. Don't have fewer than five or else you might get caught with all super ambitious goals. Add goals that are vague dreams that you can't quite articulate yet... let them sit there for a couple weeks as you figure out a more precise goal that it's a placeholder for.

3. Review your list weekly...

Read the rest here

Goal Setting for Ministry

So how do you do it? I mean, how do YOU do it? I'm really interested.

There seem to be three approaches we could take to setting goals for ministry-
1. The Whole Word In His Hands approach- you know, it's all in God's hands. We're just faithful to teach and preach, we plant and water and God gives the growth. Goals, schmoals.

2. Numbers, Numbers, Numbers- Setting goals for specific results. We'd like to have 20.5 baptisms this year, 100 people in class 101, 75 in class 201, etc...

3. It's Not About The Destination, It's About The Journey- A mixture of the above two. We focus on defining what goes into getting us where we want to be and we do that. RIgorously. For example- you don't set a goal for how many people come to Christ, you set a goal for how many spiritually significant conversations you will try to have, and trust that one leads to the other.

What am I missing here? Are there other ways to think about/do "Goals" for ministry? How does your church set targets? Or do you? I'm genuinely interested- let's talk about this in the comments...

Making Achievable Goals...

From Lifehacker... some good advice on making achievable goals

Making achievable goals shouldn't feel like buying art. Reviewing your list of goals should feel more like learning to paint with your hands than walking through a gallery of masterpieces. You should be constantly editing, rewording, removing, and adding goals from your list. Building momentum and confidence is the secret to making achievable goals.

Making achievable goals shouldn't feel like balancing a checkbook. There's a tendency for people to fanatically over-plan their goals. This creates a sort of smokescreen that helps hide the fact that you're not actually doing anything. I've been guilty of this for many goals, until I eventually found out that there was a tangible sense of relief from removing goals that I didn't want to do, but merely wanted to want to do. Most goals don't need a list of next actions, progress meters, line graphs, and customizable excel spreadsheets. Really! The sign of an achievable goal is that it wants to be worked on immediately.

Four tips for making achievable goals:
1. Entertain a mix of ambitious and silly goals. Goals should vary from ambitious (write a book, be financially independent) to silly (consider getting a pet fox, bet $100 on a rock paper scissors match) to novelty-seeking (try a new restaurant every week, go to the opera) to personal (fall madly in love, lose 10 pounds) to world-improving (convert to green energy, give 10% to charity) to educational (learn Italian, read a book a week). Marking off a few silly or easier goals is a good way to build confidence and momentum for larger more ambitious goals. When you've recently gotten rid of your television and spoken in front of a crowd of fifty, it becomes a hundred times easier to pitch your book idea to a publisher, or call someone about a lease on a space for your new business.

2. Make a good number of goals... but not too many. Somewhere between twenty and, say, forty-three. Don't try to go to one hundred or else you'll get more caught up in juggling and organizing your list than actually doing them. Don't have fewer than five or else you might get caught with all super ambitious goals. Add goals that are vague dreams that you can't quite articulate yet... let them sit there for a couple weeks as you figure out a more precise goal that it's a placeholder for.

3. Review your list weekly...

Read the rest here