GOAL SETTING

             GOAL SETTING
Planning to Live Your Life Your Way
Learn how to set effective
personal 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?
Top-level athletes, successful business-people
and achievers in all fields all set goals. 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 setting goals
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!)
      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.
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.
     Further Tips for Setting Your Goals
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.