We all have lots of goals in our lives. To be healthy. To be wealthy. To be wise. We don’t always admit them to others, or even to ourselves! But researchers have found that if you write a goal down, you are much more likely to achieve it.
TaskAngel helps you manage your goals – to write them down, to plan how to achieve them, to keep them under review, and to enjoy the satisfaction of achieving them.
Some goals might be things you hope to achieve within a few months, and others can take a whole lifetime. With TaskAngel, you can have three levels of goals:
Lifetime goals
Long term goals
Short term goals
How you use these levels is up to you. For me, a lifetime goal is something that is going to take 10 years or more. A long term goal will take between 1 and 10 years. And a short term goal should take less than a year – perhaps a lot less.
You can link goals of different levels. A lifetime goal can be supported by one or more long term goals, and they in turn can be supported by short term goals.
One of my lifetime goals is “Support my family”. This is supported by a long term goal, which is to help my grandson with his maths, by providing a tutorial every week. And this, in turn, has a short term goal, to prepare him for his maths exam next year.
To achieve the goals, you have to actually do things. In other words, put tasks on your todo list, and complete them. Every time you create a new task, you have the opportunity to assign it to a goal. And you can edit a task to change its goal.
You can review progress towards the achievement of a goal by selecting it using the Filter. You will then see a list of the tasks assigned to that goal. The list also includes any tasks assigned to shorter-term goals that contribute to it.
If you add a new task when you are filtering on a goal, the new task will be automatically assigned to the goal.
When you have finished with a goal, you can archive it. Then the goal will be hidden, and all tasks that are assigned to it, unless you go to Settings and check “Show archived goals”.
Goal setting helps you maintain a sense of direction and focus. But don’t overdo it! You don’t need very many goals. Between 5 and 10 should be quite enough. Any more will most likely confuse you, instead of helping.
TaskAngel will help you set your goals and achieve them. Please let us know how you get on – leave a comment.
Andrew Boswell July 2016