Setting Daily & Weekly Goals
Setting Daily & Weekly Goals To Maintain Progress
This week I had a great conversation with a friend and one topic we discussed was the importance of setting goals, Daily Goals, Weekly Goals, that are smaller steps that help you hit your longer term goals.
Having daily goals, bits and pieces to complete every day. Taking another step as I've been calling it Is so important to maintain momentum and keep on your journey without getting sidetracked. You need to have a plan, a vision for the long term and break that down into actionable steps and tasks that you can complete in a short amount of time!
Before today, I have been tracking goals, tasks, to do's, etc. on paper, notebooks, post-it notes, index cards, you name it! my desk is a mess! Paper is great for brainstorming ideas, drawing mind maps, taking notes during training, etc. But it's terrible for task management! My tasks, notes, to do's, daily goals etc, need simple structure!
I really wanted to look into task management apps quickly. Move tasks from notebook & post-its to a good simple app that supports grouping & recurring/scheduled tasks. Again, paper is great for notes & brainstorming, but it can not copy tasks, schedule them or have you tried recurring paper tasks?!
This was not going to be a shiny object syndrome OR rabbit hole digging moment! I set a 30-minute timer with a goal of reviewing several apps, making a selection and start using it BEFORE time is up. I do this with other things as well, give yourself Saturday and you will take Saturday, Set a time limit and you will get it done!
First 10 Minutes:
I narrowed it down to 2 Apps in the first 10 minutes of searching around! Requirements: Task Management, multiple groups, recurring tasks, and must be free! The main 2 are below but there were a few others like Asana.com and another similar one that have free options but they are way to complex for this purpose! I did a 30-second look of them and nope! moving on! Looked at the Google Tasks mobile app, to simple and no recurring tasks. Skipping other mobile apps for now, there are many! but I really do want this app where my mouse and keyboard are for now.
Next 10 minutes:
I spent a short time comparing how each app organized and treated recurring tasks, and tried to get a feel for how much screen space they took. Just trying to avoid distraction of features I won't use.
Trello - This really is a great free kanban type of task board system. Trello seemed a little overkill but it is way simpler than many others out there. It's just more than I need at this point so I felt it was too much and I would probably just spend hours trying to set it up and play with the features. Will keep it in mind though as I know others that use and swear by Trello. Note recurring tasks were also cumbersome as it requires a third party plugin for repeating and the task repeats whether the previous was open or closed so there is potential for many Daily tasks to stack up!
"if you work on a Mac, disregard the next one!" :)
Microsoft To Do - Enter the FREE tool most people don't know exists. MS silently released this tool a couple years ago and it can be found on Windows 10, 11, or in the Windows App Store. This fits the requirements I have perfectly! It's a clean and very minimalist desktop app specifically for Task Management. Multiple task Lists for different projects on the side bar, tasks can be recurring or scheduled. Repeating will create next only when the current task is closed! NO task stacking! Tasks can be pinned as important, allows sub-tasks, notes, attachments, reminders, etc. Also cloud sync for multi device and backup.
Simply put, MS To Do has everything I need and nothing (or very little) I don't at a glance!
Down to the last 10 minutes.
I setup a Wealthy Affiliate Task List with the following to get started, will add more later:
WA Training - Recurring task to complete the next training, with reminders!
WA Daily - Recurring Daily goals as sub tasks
WA Weekly - Recurring Weekly goals as sub tasks
Also took a handful of my personal to do post-its and added tasks to a Personal group. Quick and easy!
This tool is simple, clean, and very effective for my purpose!
Next on the list, continue clearing my desk of post-it notes and index cards for all the miscelaneous tasks!
Thanks for Stopping By!
Wish You ALL a Prosperous and Happy New Year!
Josh
Recent Comments
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I am old fashioned, I use a handwritten task list in a yearly day planner. It lays open to the week at hand on my work desk.
I can look at it without any electronics. One planner per year and I can compare previous years work and outcomes at a glance.
John
That's great! You found what works for you, that's what's important! I didn't mean to suggest that paper never worked for anyone, just that for me it's a disorganized mess and clutter on my desk.
Thanks for stopping by John, appreciate the comment! And I wish you the best for 2022!
Josh
Wow, Josh! I love your research. Haha, I too have a desk full of paper and notebooks, and you share some great points about the fuss and clutter of this style of notetaking.
And I love how you broke down your time into intervals even looking for the task apps. I have noticed also when searching to-do list apps, they are time-consuming to set up and I too get lost in the app just working it out!
I will be sure to check out your recommendations with the Microsoft to-do list, it sounds great!
Thanks for the article :)
Kind regards
Erica
Thanks for the feedback! appreciate you stopping by to read my book :)
Recommend you check out Trello as well, it really is a great tool and while they do have a premium paid version.. the free one is very good.. it just does more and takes more screen space than I personally need right now.
Happy New Year!
Josh
Your welcome Josh it was very interesting info, especially in this day and age for retiring paper!
Happy New Year to you also!
Erica
Thanks for sharing the Goals tools available Josh this is super helpful! I have personally used my email calendar and MS Excel just to have the tool physically in front of me for my recurring tasks… your vision and experience sharing the tools you researched are perfect as it seems to go along with the trend of being able to manage our personal accountability in one place!
I too will start using one of these tools, also there is a similar one, although not will the same functions yet from my profile… and look at that it’s right at the top before my responses to my profile! Perfect! And I can choose, as you pointed out, to set my goals as private or visible to the community to help me be more accountable to my actions!!
Amazing find, I haven’t been around WA as long as you have and it’s easy to miss these little tools that make a world of difference!
Thanks again,
Teanna
Hey Teanna! I was going to mention that one too in the post for simple tasks its really handy!! but the WA one can not do repeating tasks :( wish it did!! Maybe if we bug Kyle he can add a couple basic features to that.
Take care! Chat soon! :)
Josh
You are amazing and Knowing the WA team they will definitely take the suggestion under advisement!!
See more comments
Some great practical thoughts here. Thanks for sharing.
Your comment on "post it notes" really rang a bell for me. I have not used MS To Do yet. Will have to look into it. I do like your suggestion of taking post it notes content and entering the content into the tool. It makes organizing remembering and usage so much easier. I have used MS Excel to do it until now.
Thanks for the New Years Wishes.
May you have a Prosperous and Happy New Year too.
I have have and do use Excel, OneNote, gsheets, etc. and they each have a purpose. When I use these tools for short term tasks, they always got cluttered out by the notes, brainstorms, and other stuff so i moved tasks to paper. Maybe I'm just not doing it right?!
The other key thing for me is that scheduled tasks or short term daily/weekly goals help hold you accountable to completing them! Say you set a goal of writing 2 blog posts a week, you mentally commit to that and schedule the repeating tasks.
The focus when you login in the AM is different, it's on a short list! Blog Post task shows in your To Do list for the day. If you are successful with that for a month, change it to 3 a week and again the task just shows up in your list!
I'll stop there, maybe I'll write a separate post on task management :)
Appreciate you guys for swinging by and commenting! Happy New Year!!
Josh
Thanks for the extra detail.
We would agree with the importance of a short term goal list.