Personal Goal Setting
Find Direction. Live Your LIfe Your Way.
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn this vision of the 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 would otherwise lure you from your course.
More than this, properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you'll find that your self-confidence builds fast.
Goal Setting
Goal setting is a very powerful technique that can yield strong returns in all areas of your life.
At its simplest level the process of setting goals and targets allows you to choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know what you have to concentrate on and improve, and what is merely a distraction.
Goal setting gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focusses your acquisition of knowledge and helps you to organise your resources.
By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind.
By setting goals you can:
1. Achieve more
2. Improve performance
3. Increase your motivation to achieve
4. Increase your pride and satisfaction in your achievements
5. Improve your self-confidence
6. Plan to eliminate attitudes that hold you back and cause unhappiness
Research (Damon Burton, 1983) has shown that people who use goal-setting effectively:
1. Suffer less from stress and anxiety
2. Concentrate better
3. Show more self-confidence
4. Perform better
5. Are happier and more satisfied.
Achieving More With Focus
By setting goals, and measuring their achievement, you are able to see what you have done and what you are capable of.
The process of achieving goals and seeing their achievement gives you the confidence and self-belief that you need that you will be able to achieve higher and more difficult goals.
Providing that you have the self-discipline to carry it through, goal setting is also relatively easy.
The following section on goal setting will give you effective guidelines to help you to use this technique effectively.
Goal setting techniques are used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. They give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your acquisition of knowledge and help 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. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.
Starting to Set Personal Goals
Setting Goals Effectively
The way in which you set goal strongly affects their effectiveness.
The following broad guidelines apply to setting effective goals:
Positive Statement: express your goals positively: 'Execute this technique well' is a much better goal than 'don't make this stupid mistake'
Be Precise: if you set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that achievement can be measured, then you know the exact goal to be achieved, and can take complete satisfaction from having completely achieved it.
Set Priorities: where you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
Write goals down to avoid confusion and give them more force.
Keep Operational Goals Small: Keep the goals you are working towards immediately (i.e. in this session) 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. Today's goals should be derived from larger goals.
Goals are set on a number of different levels: First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life, and decide what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working to achieve it.
We start this process with your Lifetime Goals, and work down to the things you can do today to start moving towards them.
SMART Goals:
A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants, SMART usually stands for:
S Specific
M Measurable
A Attainable
R Relevant
T Time-bound
For example, instead of having “to sail around the world” as a goal, it is 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!
Achieving Goals
When you have 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 you have 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 goals harder.
If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals 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.
Failure to meet goals does not matter much, as long as you learn from it. Feed lessons learned back into your goal setting program.
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, then let them go.
Key points:
Goal setting is an important method of:
Deciding what is important for you to achieve in your life;
Separating what is important from what is irrelevant, or a distraction;
Motivating yourself; and
Building your self-confidence, based on successful achievement of goals.
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!
Important Points
You should note a number of general principles about goal setting:
Set Performance, not Outcome Goals
This is very important. You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible - there is nothing as dispiriting as failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control such as bad business environments, poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck.
Goals based on outcomes are extremely vulnerable to failure because of things beyond your control.
If you base your goals on personal performance or skills or knowledge to be acquired, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
For example, you might achieve a personal best time in a race, but still be disqualified as a result of a poor judging decision. If you had set an outcome goal of being in the top three, then this will be a defeat. If you set a performance goal of achieving a particular time, then you will have achieved the goal and can draw satisfaction and self-confidence from its achievement.
Another flaw is where outcome goals are based on the rewards of achieving something, whether these are financial or are based on the recognition of colleagues. In early stages these will be highly motivating factors, however as they are achieved, the benefits of further achievement at the same level reduce. You will become progressively less motivated.
Set Specific Goals
Set specific measurable goals. If you achieve all conditions of a measurable goal, then you can be confident and comfortable in its achievement. If you consistently fail to meet a measurable goal, then you can adjust it or analyse the reason for failure and take appropriate action to improve skills.
Set Realistic Goals
Goals may be set unrealistically high for the following reasons:
Other people: Other people (parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you, based on what they want. Often this will be done in ignorance of your goals, desires and ambitions. Insufficient information: If you do not have a clear, realistic understanding of what you are trying to achieve and of the skills and knowledge to be mastered, it is difficult to set effective and realistic goals.
Always expecting your best performance: Many people base their goals on their best performance, however long ago that was. This ignores the inevitable backsliding that can occur for good reasons, and ignores the factors that led to that best performance. It is better to set goals that raise your average performance and make it more consistent.
Lack of respect for self: If you do not respect your right to rest, relaxation and pleasure in life then you risk burnout.
Setting Goals Too Low
Alternatively goals can be set too low because of:
Fear of failure: If you are frightened of failure you will not take the risks needed for optimum performance. As you apply goal setting and see the achievement of goals, your self- confidence should increase, helping you to take bigger risks. Know that failure is a positive thing: it shows you areas where you can improve your skills and performance.
Taking it too easy: It is easy to take the reasons for not setting goals unrealistically high as an excuse to set them too low. If you're not prepared to stretch yourself and work hard, then you are extremely unlikely to achieve anything of any real worth.
Setting Goals at the Right Level
Setting goals at the correct level is a skill that is acquired by practice.
You should set goals so that they are slightly out of your immediate grasp, but not so far that there is no hope of achieving them: no-one will put serious effort into achieving a goal that they believe is unrealistic. However, remember that the belief that a goal is unrealistic may be incorrect. Such a belief can be changed by effective use of imagery.
Personal factors such as tiredness, other commitments and the need for rest, etc. should be taken into account when goals are set.
Now review the goals you have set, and then measure them against the points above. Adjust them to meet the recommendations and then review them. You should now be able to see the importance of setting goals effectively.
Thinking a goal through
When you are thinking about how to achieve goals, asking the following questions can help you to focus on the sub-goals that lead to their achievement:
1. What skills do I need to achieve this?
2. What information and knowledge do I need?
3. What help, assistance, or collaboration do I need?
4. What resources do I need?
5. What can block progress?
6. Am I making any assumptions?
7. Is there a better way of doing things?
8. Deciding Your Goals
Staying on Course
Once you have decided your first goal plans, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis. Some people recommend doing this as the last thing done the day before, others as the first thing done in the morning - this is up to you. Periodically review your other plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities.