Week three of “10 Weeks to Supreme Productivity” is all about the importance of setting goals.

In weeks one and two, I had you contemplate on how your own beliefs and expectations affect your chances of success, and how supreme productivity begins with a clear and compelling vision of your future. You were told to create the vision of what you want in your personal and professional life, full of riches and successes, and to write it down. People often skip “the vision step,” and blur through life, simply getting through the day, or implementing the idea of the day, without a clear end in mind.

Now, in week three, it’s time to take the first steps to get to that vision! Once you know who you want to be and what you want your organization to become, you must set specific goals and a timetable for achieving those goals. Taking these steps will make success far more likely.

Week #3 Tip: Set Specific Goals with Appropriate Timetables

Goals are great motivators! As the great social scientist, Abraham Maslow, noted, all human beings have a basic need for self-esteem and for self-actualization. When we meet goals, we get to achieve and to get recognition for those achievements. This makes life worth living and work worth doing.

And while we are working on our goals, our goals also work on us. Are you more or less likely to eat chocolate cake when you have committed to lose 5 pounds this week? The fact that you have the goal makes it more likely that you will act in such a way as to achieve that goal.

When setting your goals, make sure they are specific, measurable and tied to a specified time frame. (“I will lose 20 pounds in 6 months.”) Write them down and refer to them daily! These goals should be broken down into manageable increments. (“I will lose a pound a week,” or “I will send marketing prospect letters to 100 potential customers this month.”) Having daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals, as applicable, is better than just having a single year-end goal. “Staging” your annual goals with these interim benchmarks will help keep you on track. And make your goals public. Obviously, the people expected to do the work need to know the end they are striving for.

But even personal goals (like weight loss) will be more likely to happen if you tell somebody else about them. If the goals are for a group, organization or department, there must be sufficient input and general consensus on the goals for the goal-setting to be truly successful.

So, tip #3 is to set clear, specific and measurable goals with appropriate timetables, write them down, make them public, and let those goals work on you, while you work on them.

Next Week: “Create an Action Plan!”