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I think that most people would agree that the people who have goals are more successful than those who do not have any.

Leadership and management are the keys most talked about.  Leadership is about doing the right things while management is about doing things right. Often when we study time management, we study efficiency (doing things right) and make the assumption that we have the effectiveness (leadership) solved.

The first step in any time management system should be to work on goals and as such, I use the following 60 Minute Goal Setting Exercise.

Step 1: at the top of a blank piece of paper write down “values” and then spend 10 to 15 minutes writing down everything that you value. There is a great website: www.stevepavlina.com/ that has a list of several hundred values to start your mind thinking in the right direction. After the time is up, stop doing this and move to Step 2.

Step 2: at the top of a blank piece of paper write down “lifetime goals”. This is where you can dream; for example, what places would you like to visit; what experiences would you like to have; what would you like to accomplish within your lifetime. This might include traveling to Australia; getting a university degree; living in an X square foot house, etc. There are no rules to this brainstorming – simply make a list.

I have done this goal setting exercise many times and I tend to use the same list of lifetime goals and add to the list each time I do the exercise.

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Any one who has a goal or plan which is slightly out of the ordinary is likely to be given advice by a panel of ‘experts’. They may well tell you that what you are planning is impossible, dangerous and even ridiculous. In some cases they could be right but quite often they are not. The article tries to assess how much respect we should give to the experts.

Try not to pay too much attention to the experts. They told the Beatles that the time for a guitar group had passed! At least one of them, Paul McCartney, is still going strong. He played at half-time at the Superbowl in 2005. Not bad for someone whose time had passed.

Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with motor neuron disease at the age of 21. He was given two years to live. He went on to get married and have three children and became one of the greatest theoretical physicists that the world has ever known.  He is now Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge – the position once held by Sir Isaac Newton. At least 40 years have passed since he was supposed to have died.

Recently in the UK some mothers have been released from jail. They had spent years of sheer hell in prison for allegedly killing their own children.  The evidence against them provided by a leading ‘expert’ has been shown to be faulty. They are now free but their lives have probably been destroyed irreparably.  The expert has not even been sacked from his job.

The experts probably told Sir Ranulph Fiennes that running 7 marathons in 7 days soon after a massive heart attack was not a good idea. He did it anyway.  Sir Ranulph, who was described as the world’s greatest explorer in 1984 in the Guinness Book of World Records, has the self-confidence to ignore the experts.  He even climbed Mount Everest by the difficult route just last year. The experts probably did not bother to tell him that a man with a heart condition should not try to pass the ‘death zone’ on Everest where oxygen is in short supply.  He was not too concerned. He believes that, if you plan meticulously and take the right person and the best kit and accept the fact that luck is an element, you will do alright.

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A fleeting second can change your life.

Christopher Reeves had everything going for him – fame, fortune and best of all a loving wife and son. Enjoying his favorite sport, he fell off his horse. In a split second, his whole life changed! He is not alone.

In a moment, all dreams can be squashed.

A young man, full of promise gets into an industrial accident. It left him physically disabled. With a young family and the first baby on the way, how does he feel?

There are those who take a severe stroke which leave them with physical disability and rob them of their mobility. They suffer the loss of their independence. Some endure the loss of speech for the rest of their lives. There goes most of their dreams. Life will never be the same.

Some suffer severe financial loss and see everything they worked for taken away from them and there is nothing they can do.

Think of the victims of the Earthquakes, Tsunami and Katrina. Many are making an effort to rebuild their lives – but will it ever be the same?

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