A goal is a specific accomplishment that you would like to reach, a place in life you wish to achieve, that point along a timeline where you want to be in the future.
A goal must have:
- A concrete plan of action that you can write down, follow, and complete with specific tasks
- Start and Target dates
- A way of measuring your progress toward the goal
For example, if you want to get an academic degree, you must complete a certain number of required courses, following a plan of action from a start date, when you begin school, until an end date when you graduate. The institution will measure your progress toward the goal, the academic degree, through the grades you receive and the course credits you earn.
You can have all the dreams, desires, wishes, and hopes that you want to have; but until you do something tangible about those dreams, they may never come true. Your dreams, however, may help you to set goals and realize them. (see What is a Goal)
Goals give purpose to life!
According to research by Locke and Latham, goals affect performance through four mechanisms:
- Goals serve a directive function: that is, they direct attention and effort toward goal-relevant activities and away from goal-irrelevant activities. This effect occurs both cognitively and behaviorally. That means goals help you envision change of events and then act to create change
- Goals have an energizing function. High goals lead to greater effort than low goals
- Goals affect persistence. When participants are allowed to control the time they spend on a task, hard goals prolong effort (LaPorte & Nath, 1976)
- Goals affect action indirectly by leading to the arousal, discovery, and/or use of task-relevant knowledge and strategies (Wood & Locke, 1990)
Tasks are things you need to do.
Tasks help you to organize the actions and activities you need to do in order to accomplish a goal. When you set tasks to a particular goal in IamINC you can monitor their progress and develop a better understanding of what it takes to reach a particular goal. For example, if your goal is to lose weight, a task might be taking a brisk daily walk to reach the goal of weight loss.
Contacts in IamINC comprise the list of the individuals you may choose from your address book to help you towards your goal. You get these contacts on board by entering their email address or importing the email address from various sources such as Gmail, Yahoo, and so forth.
Building your list of contacts will help you to:
- Auto complete someone’s email if the person is in the list of your contacts in IamINC
- See who in your list of contacts is a member of IamINC if they set the privacy level to everyone in IamINC
A Mentor is someone who cares. If you care about someone you can be a Mentor.
A Mentor is a person who is prepared to offer you support, encouragement, guidance, insight and so on. Anyone you think can help you achieve your goal in any way possible can be a Mentor.
Following are a few examples of Mentors:
- A Mentor can be someone who can get on your case to make sure you follow through your tasks and do them on time
- A Mentor can be a someone you want to use as a sounding board
- A Mentor can be an expert in the specific goal you have set
- A Mentor can be someone you want to cheer and encourage you as you make progress
- A Mentor can be someone with whom you want to share the goal journey, as well as be there when you need a helping hand.
Anyone can be a Mentor: a friend, colleague, family member, or a professional. Anyone you think can help you achieve your goal.
If you know someone who can benefit from your help, encourage them to set a goal and they may invite you to become one of the 5 Mentors.
You can have up to 5 Mentors for each goal. The same person can be a Mentor on more than one goal.
More than 90% of people fail to reach their goal. One key reason they fail is the absence of Mentors (see Who can be a Mentor?) IamINC prompts you to find and add Mentors to your goal setting activities.
Setting off to accomplish a goal is not a trivial journey to embark upon no matter how easy or difficult you think reaching that goal can be.
Do you think anyone can go through school or college without support from their teachers, professors, friends, or family? We all need Mentors in our life to share the journey with.
Wisdom has demonstrated that five is the right number to help you manage your Mentors’ feedback effectively, as well as create a balanced view.
A Mentee is some you accept the responsibility to Mentor. (See What is a Mentor?)
A Mentee is someone who takes his / her goals seriously, is humble, and understands the importance of having Mentors along the journey in order to achieve goals. (See Why I need Mentors?)
There is no limitation within IamINC. However, the number depends on how effective a Mentor thinks he or she can be to all the Mentees.
There are six levels of privacy
| Myself Only (default): | This is the default setting on all your data |
| My Mentors: | The individuals who are your current Mentors on specific goals |
| My Mentees: | The individuals who are your current Mentees |
| My INC: | All your past and present Mentors and Mentees as well as those with whom you share your personal journal |
| INC Universe: | All IamINC users |
| WWW: | The World Wide Web |
Goal journal entries are the entries related to your goals and tasks that you can share with your Mentors and Mentees if you so choose.
Personal journal entries are any entries that may or may not be related to a specific goal.
For example, you may have a business idea that would like to develop; so you take some notes and explore several scenarios. You may choose to share these thoughts or ideas with a group of people that you invite to develop a business plan with you.
INC stands for Intelligently Networked Communities. You can search the INC Universe and find many individuals willing to share their experience and knowledge with you to help you achieve your goals.
You find such individuals by the goals they have achieved. Their identity will remain anonymous until they choose to share it with you. You do not need to know their contact information to reach them. You can find them through the INC Universe. For all you know the person can be your next door neighbor or someone thousands of miles away on a different continent.
The INC levels the playing field and connects individuals who otherwise may not have been able to connect.
You can only access these individuals if you are willing for others to access you and seek your help to reach their goals. We call such a reciprocity action Social Accountability.
Social Accountability in IamINC simply means you get as good as you give. In other words, if you input actual and accurate information about your goal achievement journey, the system over time will learn about your goals’ achievability and your behavioral patterns, and it will offer you relevant information to help you achieve your future goals better.
If on the other hand you input information that reflects someone else’s abilities, the system will not offer you correct suggestions that pertain to your own abilities.
For example, you set a specific goal that would normally take someone six months to achieve. You input your progress and show that you have achieved it in say six weeks. You repeat this pattern on other goals. The system will learn about your far superior abilities and provide you with suggestions on the future goals that reflect such abilities.
You don’t want the system to compare you with a superstar while trying to help you reach your goals. So, be honest, and let the system see your situation in as realistic a context as possible; then the system will be able to help you more perfectly. Honesty is the key to working in harmony with the system and with your intelligently networked communities!
In IamINC you can create your own INC (see What is INC?) and collaborate with them to develop a new business or work on a new idea or a joint project or anything you want members of the INC to work on with you. We call this Social Collaboration. You define and control the size of your INC and the people you want to collaborate with.
You can create as many social collaborative INCs as you want.
Social Intelligence is the collective intelligence of the knowledge, experience, and wisdom of the INC Universe when used for a particular social condition.
For example, the steps required to obtain a masters degree in say country A are probably different from requirements in country B. Social Intelligence will provide users with the relevant knowledge tailored to the individual to achieve a goal in a particular social setting. Social Intelligence will accommodate your need whether you are an American trying to get a degree in the USA or China, or a German trying to get a degree in the UK or India. Social Intelligence will guide you in every case.
