Interesting way to view all your Goals

I use Omnifocus for my GTD app of choice, and created a context called "Goals". In each project i have i've placed a task with "Goal: xyz" and added a context of Goal to it. So its a simple way of viewing ALL my goals thought all my projects as one nice list. BUT i still found that... well.. boring to look at. So i took all the goals and placed them in a Mind Map. i placed each goal under a theme or area of focus, after doing this i step back and got to really really look at the whole picture. After look at the mind map i deiced it wanted even more goals in certain areas :P mind sweep time !

I just thought i would share that, and if anyone else found a interesting way to view your goals post below !

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Originally Posted by Tado

i placed each goal under a theme or area of focus, after doing this i step back and got to really really look at the whole picture. After look at the mind map i deiced it wanted even more goals in certain areas :P mind sweep time !

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That sounds really smart - a nice way to look at the bigger picture.

The goals that you added under certain areas of focus... were they tied to specific projects? If not, how will you know you've achieved those goals?

Dena

I put the title of the project as child nodes . It really does help me see where I need to spend more time defining :)

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Originally Posted by Tado

I put the title of the project as child nodes . It really does help me see where I need to spend more time defining :)

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Got it! Cool! :D

I do something very similar to this. I also use a mindmap and all my 'goals' ... i.e. all horizons of focus are under one of 7 buckets - family & friends, play, work, wealth, organisation & development, health & beauty, and spirit & service. Then I use tons of tags. I have one colored tag type to denote whether it's 50k, 40k, 30k, 20k, 10k or 0k. Then I have another tag type to denote whether it's an active focus (20k, 10k and 0k only). If it's active then 20k's are reviewed during the weekly review, 10k are moved into my list manager and 0k's are moved into my routine checklists. 0k's are habits.

The nice thing, as you said is, that I can see in one map, at any one time, what my 'vision' is for each area of my life. And during the weekly reviewly every quarter, or sometimes every month if there is a lot changing, I ask myself how satisfied I am with each of those high level buckets ... and how satisfied I want to be. Where there are gaps I want to close, I start making sure my active 20k's, 10k's and 0k's are skewed towards those areas.

And like you do Tado, I try to make sure that each branch ends up in one or more 10k's or 0k's. Some end up in 20k's which is ok. This way each branch is ending up in an actionable thing. And if I'm stuck while in "DO" because I'm not quite sure what is priority at that moment, it really helps to be able to scale up my horizons of focus in this mindmap because the links to family & friends versus work for instance are clear. And especially when I ask myself "where are you least satisfied" ... it makes it a LOT easier to make a choice about what to work on.

Very cool.
Do u have one large mind map, one single node in the center? Or multiple main nodes ?

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Originally Posted by Tado

Very cool.
Do u have one large mind map, one single node in the center? Or multiple main nodes ?

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It is one large mind map. The single node in the center probably doesn't need to be there but it is. It just says "Horizons of Focus" which is the same name of the file. Then I have each of the 7 areas off that. From the single main node though I do link to another mindmap which is my vision board. There was too much to put into one mindmap so I have another mindmap of just inspirational pictures. I will probably close the vision board mindmap down though and just create a folder of those pictures and have those rotate as a screensaver on my computer, or as the iPad picture frame feature, ... or both.

In simplest form I have a reference list of 30,000 ft focus areas and a reference list of 40,000 ft areas of focus in my Notes component of Outlook. The assigned category is "Focus Areas". I've used Mind Maps to visualize my areas of focus but I prefer having larger goals in a simple list.