Best Of, Self Improvement / Healthy Living, Self Improvement / Healthy Living

Target VS Mission: Smaller Goals VS Larger Goals

In the military we’re trained to accomplish missions, and in order to accomplish mission—large scale ones—often, the military will set up smaller targets to accomplish that will eventually lead to the accomplishment of the primary mission.

This can be useful as a way of looking at goals.  If a person has a larger goal, in order to reach that goal, they have a lot of little goals that they, most likely, have to accomplish first.  This is the same as the military strategy of mission and targets.  To accomplish a larger goal, a person needs to know exactly what it is.   What’s the mission?  What is trying to be accomplished?  A new job? More money?  Better health?  You need to know what the mission is.  A soldier always knows what his mission is—and if he doesn’t know, someone screwed up along the chain of command.

Once the larger mission is established, we need to establish a series of targets that we need to get, take down, achieve, destroy, etc; in order for us to achieve our mission.  There may be as many as ten, twenty or thirty targets, or as few as five, three, or even just one.

Make a list of all possible targets that you’ll need to accomplish in order to achieve your goal.  Let’s say that you want to lose thirty pounds.  In order to complete your mission, you’ll need to accomplish certain targets, some examples might be: Get a gym membership, buy some weights, throw out all the junk food in the house, start that first day, keep it up for a week, lose that first five pounds, get a personal trainer, eat healthier, run everyday, etc.  These are all targets that, once accomplished, can help lead you towards achievement of your ultimate mission.

Now, once you have all your targets picked out, you’ll need to refer back to the post I did on the CARVER system—basically, the CARVER system is a military system about figuring out which target to accomplish first, second, third, etc.

Once you know what your first target is, all you have to do is accomplish that one certain thing.  You don’t have to loose thirty pounds, all you’ve go to do is achieve every target and the mission will complete itself.

Let’s say that you go through the CARVER system and you discover that the most important target for you to get first is to throw out all the junk food in the house.  All you’ve then got to do is throw out all the junk food in the house, and you’ve already got one target achieved.  Then go on to the next one, and the next one, etc.

This is pretty much the goal achievement method of the military.  It’s what we use in the hospital, it’s what the infantry guys use, it’s what the Special Forces guys use, everyone uses it.  Whether you’re trying to capture an enemy combatant or just accomplish a personal goal, this is the best way to do it.

Primary Mission VS Secondary Mission

One thing that comes up during missions, and when figuring out what your targets are, is the discovery of secondary targets, or secondary missions.  Keeping with the above example, let’s say that you mission is to lose thirty pounds, but let’s say that your secondary mission is to have a toned stomach.  (Another example would be, say you’re hunting the leader of a terrorist force, the primary objective would be to kill the leader, and the secondary objective would be to kill his second in command, etc.)

Your secondary mission is going to effect how you select and accomplish your targets.  Let’s say that one of your targets is to go to the gym and work out an hour a day.  Going to the gym and working out works on your primary target, but if not done appropriately it won’t help out with your secondary target.  So at the gym, a way to set yourself towards success in both would be to, when working out at the gym, do a series of exercises that focus on calorie burn and focus on building stronger abdominal muscles.

Conclusion:

1)   Write down what your primary mission is.

2)   Select a series of targets that need to be reached in order to accomplish your mission.

3)   Use the CARVER system to see which targets are of the most importance.

4)   Decided if there’s a secondary mission.

5)   Figure out what primary targets correspond with secondary targets that would help with the accomplishment of the secondary mission.

6)   Use the CARVER system again.

7)   Accomplish the first target.

8)   Second Target

9)   Third Target

Mission Accomplished!

Looking for a good book on military targets and goals? Then check out the book “Unleash the Warrior Within,” by Richard Machowitz. It’s one of my favorites!


Related Posts:

The CARVER system Part 1

The CARVER system Part 2

I Will Never Accept Defeat.  I Will Never Quit.

What the Military Teaches About Self-Discipline

Best Of, Self Improvement / Healthy Living, Self Improvement / Healthy Living

The CARVER System For Goals – Part 2

Since my latest blog post about military time management, a lot of people have sent emails asking for a longer description of the military’s CARVER system.  So I decided to elaborate.

As stated in my previous post, the military’s system of time management is broken up into the CARVER system.

  • Criticality –the importance of a task.
  • Accessibility –is it easy to reach? Are the resources needed to do it readily available?
  • Return – What is the return?
  • Vulnerability –How long will it take?
  • Effect – Once the task is done, what will be the overall effect? This is slightly different than return. Will it have a bigger impact on the organization or the well-being of the individual?
  • Recognizability – finally, is the task clear and concise? No task can be done quickly and effectively with incomplete information.

Take your goals and rate them within the CARVER system.  Ex:  Say that you want to loose 20lbs, and you want to learn to speak French.  In the CARVER system, you would take the goals and start off by rating it within the Criticality category.  Let’s say that someone is more concerned with losing weight then learning French.  Losing weight may bet a rating of 4 and learning French may only get a rating of 2.  Then someone would rate their goals within the Accessibility category.  How easy is the goal to reach?  To lose 20lbs a person would have to buy new healthy food, they’ll have to get a gym membership or some type of weights.   To learn French a person may only need to purchase a few CD’s or a book.  The person would then continue within the rest of the categories and see where each goal rates.

(The higher score the better.)

Lose 20lbs Learn

French

Learn How to Cook Clean The

House

Criticality 4 2 4 3
Accessibility 2 4 3 5
Return 5 1 3 3
Vulnerability 2 1 3 5
Effect 5 2 4 2
Recognizability 4 3 3 3
Total: 22 13 20 21

So based on CARVER a person who has the above goals, should put their focus on losing 20lbs – that’s the most important goal with the highest reward; the next goal to be focuses on, or to be focused on simultaneously, would be cleaning the House – since it can be done quickest and easiest with the highest return.

The best thing about the system is that it allows you to objectively look at your goals and see which are the most important – compared to which are the easiest – compared to which produce the highest return.
Related Posts:

Part 1 of the CARVER system

Smaller Goals VS Larger Goals

What the Military Teaches About Self-Discipline

I Will Never Accept Defeat.  I Will Never Quit.

Best Of, Self Improvement / Healthy Living, Self Improvement / Healthy Living

Military Time Management Technique: The CARVER system

Usually we wish that there were more than 24 hours in a day, so that there are more waking hours for us to get our jobs and tasks done. Yet we see others who have as much work as we do, yet they still have plenty of time to have fun and do personal stuff like going to the beach or the mall. A good example of such people is the military. From sunup to sundown, they get things done like a well-oiled machine. They work like ants and get their tasks done like exercises, trainings and assigned chores. Tasks like cooking, paperwork, construction and even combat are done quickly and efficiently and sometimes almost simultaneously. How do they do it? The answer is time management.

Time management is not a new idea. The main concept is to prioritize the most important or most urgent tasks instead of spending a lot of time doing something that may be done later and risking non-submission of the more urgent things. But like many things, the military can do things faster and even more efficiently. In the military, time management works a little differently. In military time management, tasks are practically treated as combatants. The following are the things that need to be considered in military time management.

In military time management, most tasks that need to be carried out point toward a single objective. This objective needs to be clear and well-defined so as to put more urgency in the tasks that lead to it.

In military time management, it is also important to consider the resources that need to be used to accomplish the tasks. These resources also have to be well-defined so as to be used more efficiently.

After determining the objectives and resources, next is to determine the correct priority for all of the tasks ahead. Set which task is first, what resource to use and how much time there is to allocate.

Efficiency is the hallmark of the military. They employ a militarized version of time management based on the total effect of a certain goal or objective. An objective is separated into different aspects like criticality, accessibility, return, vulnerability, effect and recognizability or in short, CARVER.

The goal or task to be done is divided into the previously mentioned aspects and ranked from one to five or depending on the person. After ranking each concept, the ranks are summed up and the task with the highest sum gets to be done first (the CARVER time management system is the system that the Navy SEALS and Army Special Forces, have to become masters in).

For a better understanding of CARVER, let us briefly describe each aspect

  • Criticality – mainly gauges the importance of a particular task. Is it that important and has to be done immediately or can it be put off tomorrow or next week? If it needs to be done sooner rather than later, then it is given a higher rank.
  • Accessibility – The task may be critical but is it easy to reach? Are the resources needed to do it readily available? If the materials needed for the task has to be airlifted from some other state, then the task gets a lower rank.
  • Return – What will be the return after the particular task is done? Will it be a promotion, a commendation or a pat on the head? The higher the return, the higher the rank will be.
  • Vulnerability – Is the task critical and easily done with the available resources? How long can it be done? For tasks that take longer to complete, the lower the rank.
  • Effect – Once the task is done, what will be the overall effect? This is slightly different than return. Will it have a bigger impact on the organization or the well-being of the individual?
  • Recognizability – finally, is the task clear and concise? No task can be done quickly and effectively with incomplete information. Vague projects take a bit longer but you may have to figure them out as the military does if everything else scores high.

The system works with anything, not just military.  I use it all the time for school, work and writing.  It’s just a good tool to have when figuring out what task to take on.

Related Posts:

Part 2 of the CARVER system

Smaller Goals VS Larger Goals

I Will Never Accept Defeat.  I Will Never Quit.

What the Military Teaches about Self-Discipline.