14 Principles to be more Effective in Reaching Personal Goals

Deming’s Way — 14 points edited and rephrased for achieving personal goals

A System for Self-Improvement and Accomplishing Complex Tasks

1. Create an intention to improve— Keep your goal in mind
2. Stay Motivated — Drive yourself to act on your intention
3. Build Trust in Your Own Competency — Learn to not second-guess yourself
4. Fastest does not mean Best — Put the time in to make it right
5. Continuously Improve — Stay dedicated to self-improvement
6. Training — Study hard and practice, practice, practice
7. Be Accountable — Reward successes but don’t ignore failures
8. Don’t Use Fear as a Motivator — It may seem effective, but it’s poison
9. Get Help and Feedback from Others — Connect with others who can help
10. Set Achievable Goals Only — Anticipate unknown future obstacles
11. Don’t Do Work that’s Not Worthwhile — Do work you can be proud of
12. Don’t Expect Perfection —Remember hindsight has perfect vision
13. Never Stop Learning
14. Be Invested in the Outcome — You should want this

Seven Hindrances to Achieving Goals

1. Forgetting the “Why” — Constantly revisit your motivations
2. Short-term Thinking — Face it, you don’t have anything better to do
3. Setting Unreasonable Goals — Give yourself lots of chances to succeed
4. Day Dreaming— Don’t let visions of the future distract you from the now
5. Valuing Efficacy over Meaning — Life is not a series of cost-benefit analyses
6. Complacency — Don’t settle for being satisfied with how things are
7. Over-Caution — Don’t be afraid to take risks

Eight Lesser Hindrances

1. Neglecting long-term planning
2. Relying on technology to solve problems
3. Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions
4. Excuses
5. Thinking contemplation and study can compensate for a lack of practice
6. Externalizing responsibility
7. Blame-placing
8. Expecting external feedback to compensate for not working on analysis

History

In my research of the Lean method of Toyota and Taiichi Ohno, I’ve discovered that they were influenced by the working of William Deming. William Deming himself has a fantastic life story. An American engineer, he worked with the Japanese government and the Japanese business and manufacturing sectors to help develop the strategies that lead to record economic growth in the post-WWII period.

Willing Deming — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:W._Edwards_Deming.jpg

Deming’s methods, especially what we now call the PDCA Cycle, are based themselves on the scientific method. Deming’s work was based on that of a statistician named Shewhart whose work focused on optimal manufacturing practices.

In reading about Deming, I came across a numbered list he made of principles to follow to be more effective. Apparently he was ahead of his time in more ways than one, if he knew the importance of presenting ideas in numbered lists. The original list fits the context of encouraging better and more efficient business and manufacturing practices.

As I was reading Deming’s 14 principles, I couldn’t help but notice how they could be generalized to personal self-improvement. I used his list to generate a general list of principles for more efficient personal goal setting and productivity. I hope you enjoyed it and got something out of it.

Deming's 14 Points: Total Quality Management Principles | ASQ