Lesson Twenty — Road Map

All of us have trouble making decisions at times.Some of us have trouble making decisions most of the time.Setting goals and writing them down will help you make decisions, like a roadmap.Goals will also help you prioritize the many things you have to do.They will also help you with time management.

When faced with a difficult choice between two activities, ask yourself, “Which will help me come closer to reaching my goal?”This should become an everyday, normal process for you.Should you take a summer job working at a local fast-food restaurant for $8.50 per hour, or volunteer thirty hours per week at the local hospital?It really depends on what your goal happens to be.Maybe your goal is to save enough money over the winter to buy a pick-up truck and lawn mower so you can start your own lawn-care business in the summer.Not a bad goal.Working at the hospital for free is not going to get you any closer to being a lawn-care entrepreneur.On the other hand, if volunteering at the hospital will ultimately help get you into medical school, and your real goal is to be a doctor, the hospital makes sense.The restaurant job does not.Working an $8.50 per hour job 25 hours a week for the entire school year will only get you about $7,000.00, after taxes.The average physician makes $7,000.00 in about less than two weeks!

Maybe you have a shorter-term goal of improving your Algebra grade from a C to a B.Should you study for the mid-term or go to the basketball game?Should you have lunch with your friends in the cafeteria or go to the library and study Algebra?Which one of these choices will help you achieve our goal?

If you have a goal, and you write it down, and you have a plan to achieve that goal, no matter how small it might be, that plan will help you make these kind of decisions.  It will help you prioritize the many things you can or must do.  It will help you manage your time.  It will help you stay on the right road toward your goal, like a roadmap.