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!)
Tip:
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.
Tip:
If you feel that you're not paying enough attention to certain areas of
your life, you'll find our articles on The Wheel of Life and the
Life/Career Rainbow useful.
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
Mind Tools on Goal Setting:
Goal Setting Main Page
Personal Goal Setting
Locke's Goal Setting Theory
Golden Rules of Goal Setting
Backward Goal Setting
Making New Year Resolutions
Using Well-Formed Outcomes in Goal Setting
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:
Our article, Golden Rules of Goal Setting, will show you how to set
yourself up for success when it comes to your goals. If you're still
having trouble, you might also want to try Backward Goal Setting.
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.
Tip:
A good way of getting going with this is to use the Mind Tools Life Plan
Workbook. Supported by worksheets and advice, this guides you through a
simple 5-step process for setting your life goals, and for organizing
yourself for success.
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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