Category: General

GoalEnforcer Hyperfocus 2020 Release

We are pleased to announce that GoalEnforcer Hyperfocus 2020 R0 for Windows has now officially been released.

The 2020 R0 version adds exciting new features to improve your productivity:

  • Enhanced Note Editor with rich text support.
  • You can now create your own custom fields for your unique tracking requirements.
  • You can now create your own custom tags to help you organize and prioritize your goals.
  • The new Tag Filter can help you generate different views for you goals and tasks. It works on map, list and Gantt view modes. You can use the tag filter to display goals and tasks by importance, priority, context, task assignee and much more.
  • You can now attach hyperlinks directly to goals and tasks: web sites, local files, local folders and also emails.

GoalEnforcer for Android Phone and Tablet

Great news for GoalEnforcer users – GoalEnforcer is now available for Android smart phone and tablets!visual-goal-map

GoalEnforcer mobile has been optimized for the small screen and touch interface and it also includes cloud integration. You can easily sync your GoalEnforcer projects between the mobile and desktop versions using the GE cloud.

For further details please check the GoalEnforcer for Android User’s Guide.

Note: the GoalEnforcer for Android app is now available for current GoalEnforcer users, but it will soon be available to the general public through Google Play. If you are a registered user and haven’t received download instructions yet please contact our customer support.

Forming New Habits

So, what’s the secret formula to form a new habit?

Creating a new habit  can be seen as creating a path of worn grass in a public lawn. If you walk through a path once, it won’t do anything to the grass. If you walk for 5 days, you might get something that resembles a path, but if you stop doing it, the lawn will quickly recover and your path will disappear. What if you walk through the same path, everyday, during a month? You’ll probably create a permanent “worn grass” path!

The key is repetition: you have to repeat the behavior consistently, until the pathways become etched in your brain. Avoid skipping, you should do it on regular basis.

How long should it take to get a habit?

It takes time, and you should be patient.  Again, back to the grass analogy, you can’t create a path by stepping on it just once. A week is not enough either. Maybe two weeks?  I’m pretty sure you can do it in three weeks!

What else can you do to facilitate the process?

Reward yourself. Associating some form of reward  during your habit formation will make the process much easier. You can be creative and setup any kind of reward you can think of.   For example, allow you to browse your favorite websites, play  your favorite video game, eat your favorite snack, only after you’ve performed your daily dosage of your “new habit”.

Keeping track of your progress is also a form of reward, it gives you a sense of control. Write down a list stating your progress “Day 1…Day 2…Day 3…” and post it somewhere  in the house where other members of the family can see it. Making others aware of your accomplishments can be a valuable reward.

The Power of Habits (the good ones)

Think about something you can do very well without thinking. How about breathing? Isn’t it amazing? You can breath slower, faster. You can breath deeper, shallower. But even if you don’t think about it, you can still breath. You can read a letter, eat, talk to your friends, drive a car, watch a movie…and still breath.

Imagine if you had to think about breathing all the time: “OK, now I’m going to breath in..OK I’m done, now I’m going to breath out.”. This would be so time consuming that you wouldn’t have time to do anything else. How would you pay attention to a movie if you had to think about breathing in …and breathing out….breathing in … breathing out…. How could you drive cars, read letters, eat, talk to friends… it would be almost impossible. Imagine how exhausted you would feel by the end of the day.

Breathing is not a “habit”, but it is very close to being one. It shares the same properties. A habit is a form of learned behavior that you do without thinking. Breathing is also an automatic behavior, which you can do without thinking. The only difference is that it is innate (you don’t need to learn how to do it, is already hardwired in your nervous system when you are born).

So, a habit is a behavior you learn, which can work the same way as breathing. How powerful that is! You have the power to do it, so take advantage of it. Use it for you own benefit, this feature is sitting there in your brain, waiting for you to program it. Creating good habits could save you so much time and release your brain to do much more interesting things.

Goalenforcer Cloud

The Goalenforcer Cloud is here! This is an important new feature of Goalenforcer, which will allow full integration of the upcoming iPhone, iPad and Android versions of Goalenforcer, coming early next year (Goalenforcer Mobile).

GoalEnforcer Cloud

With the new Goalenforcer Cloud you can now have:

• Access to your GoalEnforcer projects any time, any place.
• Auto-backup and auto-sync.
• Safe encrypted cloud connection.
• Real time information on your hands, anywhere you go.
• One central project location, multiple access. No more need to carry a USB drive.

Check for more details at:

http://www.goalenforcer.com/goalenforcercloud.html

Timeboxing Can Improve Your Time Management Skills

Timeboxing (or Time Boxing, Time-boxing) is a simple productivity improvement technique that sets a specific amount of time to do a job. Time is such an abstract concept that we have a hard time seeing it as a limited resource, like water in a tank or money in your pocket. A Time Box can help you visualize time as a limited resource and retrain your brain to make the most of it.
Here’s how Timeboxing works: Time Box

1. Pick a task you want to work on.

2. Set a specific amount of time to work on the selected task.

3. Stop working on it when the allocated time has elapsed.

4. Re-evaluate.

It sounds simple, but you can learn a lot by following this four-step process. The last step, “Re-evaluate,” is the most critical and you should pay careful attention to it:

• If you finished your task, great, you are done. Reward yourself with a break and then move on to the next task.
• If the allocated time wasn’t enough to complete your task, spend some time re-evaluating and try to understand what went wrong. Ask yourself:

Did I allocate reasonable time to execute this task?

Was my estimate wrong? Why?

Did I waste too much time with distractions? Which distractions? What can I do to avoid them?

Did I try to do too much? What should be eliminated? How can I trim my task?

Was I too perfectionist? Should I be more realistic?

See how you can learn a lot and tune yourself to be more productivity with this simple 4-step process? It’s just a matter of realizing that time is a limited resource and you have to learn how to make the most of it.

GoalEnforcer Hyperfocus 2012 introduces a new built-in Timeboxing Timer control that can help you visualize a “Time Box” and easily implement the 4-step Time Boxing method mentioned above. In order to activate the Time Boxing control, navigate to the Hyperfocus Zone and click the Time Boxing button on the bottom toolbar.

Download a free GoalEnforcer Hyperfocus demo and start playing with the Timeboxing Timer today!

Time Box Timer

Keep Yourself Motivated By Breaking Up Long Term Rewards Into Short Term Rewards

It’s well known that successful people have the ability to stay on track and focus on long term rewards.

However, it’s less known that successful people also have the ability to break up long term rewards into a sequence of short term rewards, and enjoy the ride to success.

Long Term Reward vs Short term Reward
Long Term Rewards can be split into a sequence of Short Term Rewards. Which one makes more sense?

 

A common mistake people make when starting a diet/exercise plan is to look at themselves in the mirror after the very first week. They then get frustrated because they can barely notice any change.

What about looking at the calendar and verifying that all days of the first week have been check marked as successful exercise days? Isn’t that joyful?

Or suppose you have just started your own business and you feel like you won’t be happy until you see one million dollars in your bank account.

How about celebrating after your sales reach $2k a week? Or even better, how about celebrating when the current week sales has been better than the previous week?

The process is easier than you might think; it’s just a matter of breaking up your long term goals into short term sub-goals.

You have to be on track, but the ride should be fun too.

Goalenforcer DownloadGoalEnforcer: Break your Goals into Sub-Goals Today

Managing Multiple Projects

Goal setting information overloadRunning multiple projects at the same time can easily overload you if you don’t use the right approach. The basic successful principle is to keep focus on what matters and make sure that things keep moving forward. In order to do this you need to be able to overview the status of all your projects and quickly pinpoint the critical items that need immediate action.

Imagine this scenario. You are called into an emergency meeting and are requested to explain the status of your projects. You print 250 pages of status reports and now what? Where do you start?

You start skimming the report pages using your pencil as pointer. Thirty seconds have elapsed and you couldn’t find your critical items yet. One minute, two minutes, three minutes. Now you start going back and forth through report pages. Definitely not good, your blood pressure is going up and your heart is pumping faster. You are damaging your health. Looking around at the impatient faces just makes it worse.

GoalEnforcer Hyperfocus now offers a new feature that can make multi project management and presentation much easier. The new Multi-Project Navigator allows you to overview all your projects and quickly identify the ones that need immediate action. You can then navigate further into those projects and use the Map View mode to pinpoint the critical items. Click here for more details on how the Multiple Project Navigator works. Enjoy the power of Visual Multi Project Management made easy!

Generate a Nice Status Report in Word with a Single Click

It’s late at night and you are not ready for your presentation tomorrow. Your boss asked you to present a status report to the group, showing your accomplishments and future task plan (broken down into tasks and sub-tasks). But the hours go by and you are still fighting with Word, trying to get your report nicely formatted.

As a last resort you go on the Internet trying to find a tool that will do it for you. You download a bunch of software trials, but none can generate a nicely formatted status report, showing proper indentation for tasks and sub-tasks. None can give you that perfect final paper layout you’ve been looking for. You also find a lot of Word status report templates, but they are not flexible enough for you. Changing and reordering tasks involve a lot of retyping, cutting and pasting and, once again, formatting mess.

With GoalEnforcer Hyperfocus version 2009 R1 you can now do that with a single click!

Start by composing a work project plan. While working in Map View Mode you can create and freely move tasks and sub-tasks around. Updating the status of your sub-tasks will automatically calculate the status of parent tasks. Moving tasks to different sequence position or levels will cause parent task status info to be automatically recalculated for you.

Once you are ready to generate your Word report, click the software integration button on the bottom toolbar (third button from the left). Then select “Export to Word” and you should see your Status Report open in Word within a few seconds. As simple as that!

Export Goalenforcer to MS Word

Last minute changes? No problem, just add/remove or rearrange tasks, and generate a new report in a few seconds.

Goalenforcer MS Word Status Report

After all bosses like to be kept well informed and that’s your chance to make a good impression!