Small Scale Goal Setting

A strategy for successful home office work approach: when you have a success, immediately stop and savour it for a while. Good time to go get another cup of tea, I thought to myself this morning when I clicked 'run' on my software and tested a new feature and it worked cleanly as I expected.

Reward yourself with something you were contemplating doing instead of working, like getting a snack or a cup of tea.

While we all know that we need concrete goals and timelines, there are some good techniques I've found to deal with the day-to-day effort. I like to set small short term goals often. It's just before noon now, and my SO is awaiting a connecting plane from Toronto to get home. Given that we'll go get some lunch after she makes it here, I have a good short term goal to get the next element of that successful feature working before then.

A midday goal, I find, is more successful than an end-of-day goal. Why? Because if you miss it, you still have some productive time to put it in the bag. If you miss an end of day goal, you then either have to persevere (while already mentally fatigued) to get it done, or quit for the day with the failure on your mind. Neither is a very positive outcome.

So a goal for completion before my late lunch should work out. Then the end of the day work can be seen as bonus time. Or, it can be used to address another, different aspect of your project - ie multi-tasking time. I'll probably use it for more business plan editing/creation. Thus the day can end with both an R&D success, and some business development progress.

Speaking of which, if I don't get on to it, I won't have either.

Researchinator: Nose approaches grindstone.