Agile Personal Development

Here is the final evaluation for using the Life Tango website for developing a life list:

Pros:

• Easy to set up an account
• Easy to input goals if you know what they are
• Good recommendation to use the SMART methodology for setting goals

Cons:

• The site was hard to use for brainstorming life goals - it was difficult to review other people’s goals and add them to your own list
• Many of the goals were written too simplistically - they were just one word answers to questions

Lessons Learned

For me, it is really important to have good goals to review and get inspiration from. I have a hard time just coming up with them out of the blue. I also need an easy way to add goals to my list if using an online tool.

Overall Evaluation

I’m not a fan of using Life Tango for developing a life list. There are better methods out there for someone like myself that prefers reading other people’s goals for inspiration. It may work out better for users that already have specific goals that they just want to add on-line.

After using the SuperViva website to brainstorm ideas for my life list, here is my evaluation of this method:

Pros:

• Easy to set up an account and create your list
• Lots of goals to look at for ideas
• Good categories to choose from
• Can add notes and other information to a goal
• Able to select a completed goal

Cons:

• Lots of goals to look at for ideas (need to look at the most popular ones, or plan on spending a lot of time reviewing)
• Initial wording of goals may not be the same as yours (you’ll need to modify later)

Lessons Learned

I learned a lot about what I *don’t* want to do in my life (sometimes as important as what you do want). I also realized that you need to consider some goals as ongoing, such as doing something once a year, once a month, etc. Another good idea is to add a goal to complete items on another specific list (like visit all National Parks).

Overall Evaluation

I really liked this method. I have high hopes for evaluating the SuperViva website for implementing my life list as well. More on that later.

After evaluating the ‘personal vision statement’ method for personal goal setting, my analysis is as follows:

Pros:

• Very clear and concise questions to help you think about your life and what is important to you
• I like the incorporation of personal values into the mix. I think this is a critical element for evaluating the backdrop against your life’s goals.
• Using the Foundation for a Better Life’s list of values to augment the basic method really helped. There are other lists of values out there to choose from, but I like their stories behind some of the famous people that exemplify these values, as well as the quotes for each value.
• I think this method sets a good foundation to start getting into specific goals, the actions that need to happen to achieve them, and how to track progress.
• The different facets of life that were suggested were inline with what I expected, making it easier to categorize the different goals for your life.

Cons:

• The basic method didn’t have good examples of the different values that could be used
• I struggled with how personal strengths and weaknesses (the last two questions) really tied in to the personal vision statement

Lessons Learned:

Even though I had originally thought of this method as a way to determine ‘big-picture’ goals, I now believe that defining your personal vision statement (and values) is a critical step *before* you start identifying specific goals. I still see this step as part of the goal-setting process, but I don’t believe it is the only step. I still need to add another method (or two) to identify some clear goals for strategy development.

Overall Evaluation:

I really like this method, and will incorporate it into my APD Methodology. I give it a thumbs up!