Posted on by Michael Holden

Monthly COMBINED

Monthly COMBINED

To start to break my longer-term goals down into manageable projects, I use a method which incorporates several goal-setting strategies. I call it the  Monthly COMBINED method. This is an acronym for Contribution, Organisation, Money, Business, Interests, Nourishment, Environment and Delegation. These are the life areas, that I alluded to before.

Contribution

These are things relating to family, friends, community or charity. It is what I want to give back.

Organisation

I use this category for items relating to time management, goal setting, computers or IT.

Money

This category includes all my financial goals, such as saving and investments.

Business

I use this area to capture all my career, work or business goals.

Interests

This is anything I do simply because it interests me. I include reading subjects, travel goals or just things for fun.

Nourishment

This is an area I use for health, spiritual or exercise goals.Ie Physical and Spiritual nourishment.


Environment

Any goal related to my physical environment would go in here. Things like home improvements or repairs. I also include things to do with vehicles and clothing.

Delegate

This final area is one I’ve added to make sure that I am delegating things, that I should n’t be doing myself. I go into more detail on this later on.
If you would like a ready made template for your Monthly COMBINED Goals, email me and I will send you one out. My email address is at the end of the book. You can then print this off for your Success Manual.
The beauty of this method is that it ensures the following things:

  1. I am balanced: This means I have to have a goal in each area. Also, I do not leave any blanks.
  2. I am focussed: this means I have only one goal in each of these areas and no more.
  3. The goals on the COMBINED list are sacrosanct. They get top priority. For this reason, I spend a lot of time at the end of each month formulating my next month’s goals. I talk about my Monthly review in the section later on Scheduling.
  4. I am guaranteed to succeed: Each goal is in three levels, a minimum, a target and a stretch. The minimum is more like a single action, which I should be able to achieve easily. This keeps me motivated even on slow months. Similarly, if I easily reach my target, I can still have something more to aim for.
  5. I have intrinsic motivation: I use a scoring system so that it becomes a game to achieve my goals for the month and at higher levels, so I get a higher score.