Setting Goals
Many people feel as if they're
adrift in the world. They work hard, but they don't seem to get anywhere
worthwhile.
A key reason that they feel this
way is that they haven't spent enough time thinking about what they want from
life, and haven't set themselves formal goals. After all, would you set out on
a major journey with no real idea of your destination? Probably not!
Goal setting is a powerful
process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn your
vision of this future into reality.
The process of setting goals
helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you
want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll
also quickly spot the distractions that can, so easily, lead you astray.
Why Set Goals?
Goal setting is used by
top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields.
Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation . It focuses your
acquisition of knowledge, and helps you to organize your time and your
resources so that you can make the very most of your life.
By setting sharp,
clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of
those goals, and you'll see forward progress in what might previously have
seemed a long pointless grind. You will also raise your self-confidence , as you recognize your
own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you've set.
Starting to Set Personal Goals
You set your goals on a number
of levels:
·
First you create your "big picture" of what you want
to do with your life (or over, say, the next 10 years), and identify the
large-scale goals that you want to achieve.
·
Then, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets
that you must hit to reach your lifetime goals.
·
Finally, once you have your plan, you start working on it to
achieve these goals.
This is why we start the process
of goal setting by looking at your lifetime goals. Then, we work down to the
things that you can do in, say, the next five years, then next year, next
month, next week, and today, to start moving towards them.
Step 1: Setting
Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting
personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or at
least, by a significant and distant age in the future). Setting lifetime goals
gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision
making.
To give a broad, balanced
coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of the
following categories (or in other categories of your own, where these are
important to you):
·
Career – What level do you want to reach in your career, or what
do you want to achieve?
·
Financial – How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this
related to your career goals?
·
Education – Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in
particular? What information and skills will you need to have in order to
achieve other goals?
·
Family – Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to
be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your
extended family?
·
Artistic – Do you want to achieve any artistic goals?
·
Attitude – Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there
any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? (If so, set a goal to
improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.)
·
Physical – Are there any athletic goals that you want to achieve,
or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take
to achieve this?
·
Pleasure – How do you want to enjoy yourself? (You should ensure
that some of your life is for you!)
·
Public Service – Do you want to make the world a better place? If so,
how?
Spend some time brainstorming these things, and
then select one or more goals in each category that best reflect what you want
to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really
significant goals that you can focus on.
As you do this, make sure that
the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not
ones that your parents, family, or employers might want. (If you have a
partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants – however, make
sure that you also remain true to yourself!)
Tips:
You may also want to read our
article on Personal
Mission Statements . Crafting a personal mission statement can help bring
your most important goals into sharp focus.
Step 2: Setting
Smaller Goals
Once you have set your lifetime
goals, set a five-year plan of smaller goals that you need to complete if you
are to reach your lifetime plan.
Then create a one-year plan,
six-month plan, and a one-month plan of progressively smaller goals that you
should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on
the previous plan.
Then create a daily To-Do List of things
that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals.
At an early stage, your smaller
goals might be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your
higher level goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of
your goal setting.
Finally review your plans, and
make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
Tips:
Staying on Course
Once you've decided on your
first set of goals, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your To-Do
List on a daily basis.
Periodically review the longer
term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.
(A good way of doing this is to schedule regular, repeating reviews using a
computer-based diary.)
SMART Goals
A useful way of making goals
more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants
(some of which we've included in parenthesis), SMART usually stands for:
·
S – Specific (or Significant).
·
M – Measurable (or Meaningful).
·
A – Attainable (or Action-Oriented).
·
R – Relevant (or Rewarding).
·
T – Time-bound (or Trackable).
For example, instead of having
"to sail around the world" as a goal, it's more powerful to say
"To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015."
Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been
completed beforehand!
Further Goal Setting Tips
The following broad guidelines
will help you to set effective, achievable goals:
·
State each goal as a positive statement – Express your goals
positively – "Execute this technique well" is a much better goal than
"Don't make this stupid mistake."
·
Be precise: Set precise goals, putting in dates, times and amounts so
that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you'll know exactly when you
have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved
it.
·
Set priorities – When you have several goals,
give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by having too
many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
·
Write goals down – This crystallizes them and gives
them more force.
·
Keep operational goals small – Keep the low-level goals
that you're working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then
it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small
and incremental gives more opportunities for reward.
·
Set performance goals, not outcome goals – You should take
care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. It can be
quite dispiriting to fail to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your
control!
In business, these reasons could
be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In
sport, they could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad
luck.
If you base your goals on
personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your
goals, and draw satisfaction from them.
·
Set realistic goals – It's important to set goals that
you can achieve. All sorts of people (for example, employers, parents, media,
or society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in
ignorance of your own desires and ambitions.
It's also possible to set goals
that are too difficult because you might not appreciate either the obstacles in
the way, or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a
particular level of performance.
Achieving Goals
When you've achieved a goal,
take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the
implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress that you've made
towards other goals.
If the goal was a significant
one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the
self-confidence you deserve.
With the experience of having
achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:
·
If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goal harder.
·
If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make
the next goal a little easier.
·
If you learned something that would lead you to change other
goals, do so.
·
If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the
goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.
Tip 1
Tip
2
It's important to remember that
failing to meet goals does not matter much, just as long as you learn from the
experience
Feed lessons learned back into
your goal setting. Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on.
Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and
if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, consider letting them go.
Goal Setting Example
For her New Year's Resolution,
Susan has decided to think about what she really wants to do with her life.
Her lifetime goals are as
follows:
·
Career – "To be managing editor of the magazine that I work
for."
·
Artistic – "To keep working on my illustration skills.
Ultimately I want to have my own show in our downtown gallery."
·
Physical – "To run a marathon."
Now that Susan has listed her
lifetime goals, she then breaks down each one into smaller, more manageable
goals.
Let's take a closer look at how
she might break down her lifetime career goal – becoming managing editor of her
magazine:
·
Five-year goal: "Become deputy
editor."
·
One-year goal: "Volunteer for projects
that the current Managing Editor is heading up."
·
Six-month goal: "Go back to school
and finish my journalism degree."
·
One-month goal: "Talk to the current
managing editor to determine what skills are needed to do the job."
·
One-week goal: "Book the meeting with the Managing Editor."
As you can see from this
example, breaking big goals down into smaller, more manageable goals makes it
far easier to see how the goal will get accomplished.
Key Points
Goal setting is an important method of:
·
Deciding what you want to achieve in your
life
·
Separating what's important from what's
irrelevant, or a distraction
·
Motivating yourself
·
Building your self-confidence, based on
successful achievement of goals
Set your lifetime goals first. Then, set a five-year plan of
smaller goals that you need to complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan.
Keep the process going by regularly reviewing and updating your goals. And
remember to take time to enjoy the satisfaction of achieving your goals when
you do so
If you don't already set goals, do so, starting now. As you make
this technique part of your life, you'll find your career accelerating, and
you'll wonder how you did without it!
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