Goal Setting Guidelines

This week on the Craft Business Challenge:

Follow these smart goal setting guidelines to build a better business and manage your time wisely.

This week, I'm sharing some goal setting guidelines for small business owners.

January always feels to me like a clean slate - a perfect time to look ahead and dream about everything that the new year will bring. It's time to review what worked and what didn't in the previous year and time to make plans for the year ahead.

I've spent the past week laying down the foundation for my own business goals for the upcoming year, and my main focus has been to set better goals. I tend to want to jump into every exciting new project that comes along, but I've been learning that strategy often leads to mindless busyness. Less is often more.

Doing fewer things better is my mantra for this year, and achieving that requires savvier goal setting.

If you want to join me on my mission to set better goals, the articles below will get you started and, hopefully, challenge some of your assumptions about the best route to productivity.

Timely Tips

FOCUS: Goal Setting Guidelines

I've read more than my fair share of time management books, and, frankly, I haven't been a fan of most of them. But there's one that completely blew me away.

Busy by Tony Crabbe is in a league of its own.

Tony Crabbe suggests you shouldn't try to do more. Instead, you should do fewer, more impactful things, better. His book is full of thought provoking and actionable ideas to help you thrive in a world that leaves us all too busy.

I came away from Busy with piles of notes and ideas, and I've shared a few of the key concepts that have changed my approach to running my business (and my life) in the articles below.

How to Avoid Competing on Volume: There's an ingrained tendency to compete on volume. The thinking goes, if you can just be more productive than your competition, you can win.

But as a craft business owner, for the most part, you really can't compete on volume because every item you sell requires your time and attention.

There are alternatives to competing on volume. Here's how to begin to change your priorities to thrive by doing less better.

Forget Time Management, This Skill is More Important: Productivity experts are all about helping you to improve your time management strategies. But what if better time management isn't the most important path to accomplishing your goals?

Find out how to develop the skill that will really help you to achieve more in the time you have.

Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years?: I know, I know! People hate that question. I used to work as a career advisor, and I made clients answer that question every week. Nobody ever enjoyed it.

As a business owner, it's an important question to ask yourself from time to time. All of the smaller decisions you make and projects you plan for the upcoming year will eventually lead to your destination five years from now.

If you know where you want to go, those bigger goals will help guide your smaller decisions.

Here are a series of questions you can ask yourself to determine where you want to be in five years, so you can make better choices now.

Are You Setting Yourself Up for Failure?: This huge mistake people make when setting goals actually sets you up for failure. It's a common misstep that I get caught up in from time to time even though I know better.

Here's how to avoid setting goals that may be destined for failure.

Dream Big Without Fear: Do you limit your goals because you're worried about the risk involved in chasing bigger, dream goals?

It's possible to limit the risks involved in chasing dream goals. Here's how to do it.

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