Unleash the Power of Goal Setting: How to Create Goal Pyramids for a Fulfilling Life

Goal pyramids are an incredible tool that connect your long-term goals (mission) to your short-term goals (tasks and actions), paving the way to happiness and success. In this article, we'll guide you step-by-step on how to create a goal pyramid and transform your goal setting process.

1. Discover the Magic of Goal Pyramids

A goal pyramid is a structure that connects your life mission with your key projects and your daily tasks, following this hierarchy:

• Mission level: Long-term life goals like happiness, contribution, and learning.
• Project level: Projects that contribute to your life mission, such as education, career, business, family, health, and spirituality.
• Task level: Tasks you need to complete for successful projects.
• Subtask level: Simple tasks required to accomplish bigger tasks.

Such a goal pyramid is the best way for you to set goals, that will enable you to:

• Get clarity on what you want
• Be super motivated
• Progress faster towards your goals
• Enjoy the progress as you can see how each action leads to your ultimate mission.

Now that we understand the concept of a goal pyramid, let us look at how to establish one.

2. The Two Essential Questions in Goal Setting: How? and Why?

To successfully accomplish any goal, ask yourself two vital questions: How? and Why?

2.1. HOW? The Top-Down Approach

Starting with a big goal, continuously ask "how?" to break it down into smaller, actionable tasks. For example, to become a lawyer, you need to study law, pass exams, earn a law degree, and so on. This top-down approach moves from the ultimate goal to lower levels in the goal pyramid.

2.2. WHY? The Bottom-Up Approach

Starting with your current tasks, ask "why?" to ensure they're relevant to your ultimate goals. For example, you study to pass exams, which then allows you to pass a class, earn a law degree, and eventually become a lawyer. This bottom-up approach moves from the actionable tasks to your ultimate goal.

We have seen that it is very important to regularly ask “how” and “why”. The HOW-question gets you from the ultimate goal to the lower levels in the goal pyramid. The WHY-question gets you from the things you are working on to the ultimate goal.

3. Crafting Your Powerful Goal Pyramid: A Five-Step Guide

To create a powerful goal pyramid, follow these five steps:

1. Create a list of all your goals
2. Categorize your goals into your main life segments
3. Order the list according to goal levels
4. Answer the WHY-question to get to the high level goals
5. Answer the HOW-question to get to the low level goals

3.1. Step 1: List all your goals

Write down a list of goals, including high-level, mid-level, and low-level goals.

3.2. Step 2: Categorize the goals into your main life segments

Next, you categorize the goals into the main segments of your life. These could be:

• Career
• Financials
• Family
• Friends
• Spirituality
• Health

This could looks as follows:

3.3. Step 3: Order the list according to goal levels

Next you order your goals in each category into the form of a pyramid. This can look as follows:

As you can see in the diagram there will be many goals (either high, medium or low level) that are not yet filled in. We have shown these missing goals by empty circles in the diagram above.

It is a bit difficult to order your goals in the exact form of a pyramid. Therefore, you can instead use one of two structures:

• A mind map, or
• An indented task list

In a mind map you start with the highest level goal and put it into the center. Then you draw branches to each of the subgoals. From there you branch out further to the lower levels.

An indented task list is very similar just that everything is in the form of a list and the lower levels are indented. The more indentation the lower the level.

Both mind maps and indented task lists serve the same purpose of connecting small, actionable tasks to larger tasks and projects and projects to the ultimate life mission.

3.4. Step 4: Answer the why question to get to the high level goals

After having organized your goals into different categories and related them to each other in the form of a goal pyramid, you now need to ask “why” for each goal. By doing this you will be able to fill in the missing goals on the higher levels of the goal pyramid.
This is shown in the diagram below.
In the diagram the goals you think about when asking ¨why¨ are indicated in gray.

You have reached the highest level of the goal pyramid, if there is no answer to the question “why”. For example, goals like I want to be happy are at the highest level because there is no way to answer the question of “why”. Why do you want to be happy? Just because of happiness itself!

3.5. Step 5: Answer the how question to get to the low level goals

Finally, you want to ask “how” to each goal in order to fill in the remaining goals that are not filled in on a lower level.
This is shown in the diagram below. The goal you think of when asking “how” is indicated in light gray.

You have reached the lowest level of the goal pyramid, if you no longer need to think about the question of “how”. For example, “call 20 potential buyers” is a goal on the lowest level because the answer to the question “how” is very obvious, just by picking up the phone and calling.

The above process helps you create a goal pyramid.
Doing such a goal pyramid will help you in many ways:

• Get clarity on what you want
• Understand why you want it
• See that certain goals in fact do not make sense because they do not have a strong enough why
• Understand what you need to do to accomplish your top goals
• Make a coherent strategy on how to have a successful life

4. Software Tools for Creating Goal Pyramids

As we have seen, goal pyramids are an extremely important tool for goal setting, staying organized, getting clarity and being productive.
Also, they are easy to implement with an indented task list and continually asking ¨how¨ and ¨why¨. However, current software systems to manage work and tasks do not support goal pyramids.
For that reason we developed a work management tool that enables goal pyramids as an important component. This software is called Workiamo.

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Workiamo is a Work Management Software that is based on the Focus Cycles Productivity System and is extremely simple. It is ideal for anybody that wants to be less stressed and more productive. As you are reading this, you have earned free, lifetime access! Register at www.workiamo.com by entering this code: ILOVEWORK.