Mission statements, roles, and goals

Chronographer's time-management concepts are based, in part, on principles developed by Dr. Stephen R. Covey and presented in his books The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and First Things First.  For an in-depth understanding of these principles, read his books.  You can get more information on them and on his other products from his web site at http://www.covey.com/.

Chronographer helps you to organize your life by establishing a hierarchy of roles and goals.  The root of this hierarchy is the mission statement.  The mission statement summarizes who you are, what is most important to you, and what you want to be remembered for.

Out of your mission statement you identify your roles in life.  For many people these will include Spouse, Parent, Child, Worker, Student, Church Member, Volunteer, and Neighbor.   You may also want to use more abstract roles such as Person to ensure to you allocate time for personal development, enjoyment of the arts, and relaxation.

As you identify your roles in life, you may also identify various sub-roles.  For instance, under the Worker role, you might create one sub-role for each of the different responsibilities or projects in your job, or, under the Student role, you could create one sub-role for each class in which you are enrolled.  The sub-roles would help to keep track of how much time is spent on each project or class.

Once you have identified your roles, you can get specific by setting goals for each role.   Every goal is associated with a role.  A goal is a long-term activity that furthers your mission statement with respect to one of your roles.  For example, under the Person role, you might create a goal called Stay Healthy.

Like roles, goals can have sub-goals to provide for more detailed accounting of how time is spent.  For instance, the Stay Healthy goal could have sub-goals called Exercise Regularly, Eat Well, and Get Adequate Rest for keeping track of how much time you're spending on the various activities needed to stay healthy.

Sometimes it may not be clear whether an item should be a sub-role, a goal, or a sub-goal.  The line between them can be fuzzy, but that's not a problem with Chronographer.  Sub-roles, goals, and sub-goals may be freely mixed in the hierarchy. Chronographer treats them all the same internally.  It allows you to establish your own distinctions and naming conventions.