Concrete Goals

These are parts of your plans and what you wish to achieve realistically. Concrete goals are whats written in your what to do list or noted in your planner or calendar. Concrete goals must be the result of your feasibility study or business plan.

It would be better if you always set some goals in planning your activities or in projecting your future. Goals are meant to encourage you in reaching something. But sometimes, goals can be frustrating especially when failures start to enter into the picture. You should not waste time indulging in low-motivational factors such as frustration, low-self esteem, confusion, and anxiety. Instead, you should focus your attention on how you can learn and benefit from such failures.

Goals are set to help you encourage yourself. Goals should be based on your capacity and should be reflected by your strengths and weaknesses. These aims should also be realistic and should be based on your immediate concerns.

As what Abraham Maslow had elucidated in Psychology, behaviors are defined by what we consider as hierarchy of needs or pyramidal structures in which we are predisposed to strive with. There are basic needs like food, shelter and material things that are necessary for survival. This should be met in order to get into the next level, which includes social interactions and the need for love and belongingness. On top of this pyramid is the need for self-actualization or the fulfillment of a person after meeting the more basic needs in life.

Along with this is the assessment of one's spirituality, the higher definition of success, like personal happiness and higher forms of gratification in line with creativity.

Goals should also be set according to the proper way to adjust in case you do not meet your expectations. If youre not able to reach what you initially desired for the first time, try looking at your aim and modify it. For example, you want to buy a sports car from your savings and additional compensation because you are really working hard for such reward. However, during the middle of the year, you learned that you need to spend your money on some very important expenses, like an increased payment for the amortization of your housing loan or an unexpected expenditure. In order to veer away from frustration, what you can do is either delay the buying of your car until you can save the right amount or buy a car with whatever money you have left.

Never let frustration confuse you or give you the terrible feeling of not achieving what you want. Just in case you decided to buy the car by having another loan from the bank, just imagine the additional money you have to earn to pay all your bills. This would only derail you from your initial agenda. Remember that a wise man is patient with his purse and will never spend a dime for stone.

Other things that you should remember in setting goals include:

• 1. Your priorities in life and their order.
• 2. Your strengths and weaknesses in doing things or in executing actions.
• 3. Your personality and the things that should be improved in meeting the demands of your plans.
• 4. Your plans for other people, especially for your love ones that will give you a sense of fulfillment and personal happiness.
• 5. Your past achievements that will pump-up more encouraging spirit in your next struggles.

Keep in mind that goals are guideposts but not necessarily the exact result of what you have in mind for your plans. Sticking with your goals and not adjusting to the changes will give you time-wasting frustrations. A right move would be recognizing the changes and moving on to reach your aims amidst any unexpected circumstances.

Another part of motivational aspect in efficient time usage would be to avoid procrastination. This kind of negative virtue is a result of the loss of motivation because of many factors that surround your work habits and conditions. These include low-self esteem, discouragement from superiors, the absence of concrete rewards or pleasant results, or plainly because of boredom. Procrastination is one big hindrance in achieving your aims or goals. Therefore, you should avoid such feeling or mindset. Here are some basic tips to get away from such negative thought and activity: 

• 1. If you are the type of person who gets easily bored, avoid routines or try to change your daily activities once in a while. These would give you a sense of dynamism and would help you avoid the boredom of familiarity and habit formation.
• 2. Try to accomplish two boring tasks by alternating each of them. They will give you a directional movement to achieve your desired result.
• 3. Reward yourself after doing a very difficult task or a very boring activity, like encoding a private manuscript or filing a card catalog cabinet. You may also think of the reward you will be getting after finishing such activity either in concrete or abstract terms.
• 4. In case you are working on a very uninteresting task along with your other activities, make sure to take note of this by writing it down and posting it at your workstation or at your cubicle. By doing this, you would be reminded of the task even when youre not interested to do it initially.
• 5. Enjoy your work with what motivates you like listening to classical music or going out once in a while to see the natural scenery.
• 6. Never put pressure in your mind. This will just increase your frustration level.
• 7. Talk about your work with your colleague and think about the happiness you feel inside the office. By becoming cheerful and positive, you not only imbibe good mood but also motivate others and yourself to work hard.
• 8. Avoid too much caffeine or sweet foods during pressured moments. They will give you too much energy level that can bring your anxiety level and worries up. However, during a relaxed and comfortable situation, you may sip your favorite coffee and dip your spoon on the luscious caramel-chocolate cake in a caf where you can enjoy time in a relaxed ambiance, especially if you have just finished a very long and challenging day at work.