Learn How to Set and Achieve Your Goals
Find direction. Live your life your way. Master goal-setting techniques used by top achievers.
Download PDF"Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action."
Personal Goal Setting
Goal setting is a powerful process for personal planning. 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 to concentrate your efforts — and you'll quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course.
Properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating. As you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you'll find your self-confidence builds fast.
Achieving More With Focus
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, focus your acquisition of knowledge, and help you organize your time and resources.
By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You'll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind — and raise your self-confidence as you recognize your ability and competence.
Starting to Set Personal 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. Second, you break these down into smaller targets that you must hit to reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working to achieve it.
Your Lifetime Goals
The first step is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime — setting Lifetime Goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other decision making. To give a broad, balanced coverage, try to set goals in some of these categories:
Artistic
Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? If so, what?
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.
Career
What level do you want to reach in your career?
Education
Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need 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?
Financial
How much do you want to earn by what stage?
Physical
Are there any athletic goals 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? 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 time brainstorming, then select one goal in each category that best reflects what you want to do. Trim again so that you have a small number of really significant goals on which you can focus. Make sure the goals you set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve — not ones imposed by others.
Starting to Achieve Your Lifetime Goals
Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a 25-year plan of smaller goals you must complete. Then set a 5-year plan, 1-year plan, 6-month plan, and 1-month plan of progressively smaller goals. Each builds on the previous plan.
Finally, create a daily to-do list of things to do today to work toward your lifetime goals. Early on, these may be to read books and gather information — improving the quality and realism of your goal setting. Review your plans regularly and make sure they fit how you want to live.
Goal Setting Tips
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 a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. You'll know exactly when you have achieved the goal.
Set priorities
When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you avoid feeling overwhelmed and directs attention to the most important ones.
Write goals down
This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
Keep operational goals small
Keep low-level goals small and achievable. If a goal is too large it can seem you're not making progress. Derive today's goals from larger ones.
Set performance goals, not outcome goals
Set goals over which you have as much control as possible. Basing goals on personal performance keeps you in control of achievement.
Set realistic goals
Set goals you can achieve. Avoid letting others (or yourself) set unrealistic targets that ignore your ambitions or the skill required.
SMART Goals
A useful way to make goals more powerful is the SMART mnemonic:
- SSpecific
- MMeasurable
- AAttainable
- RRelevant
- TTime-bound
Put a date on when you expect to reach your goal. Instead of "to sail around the world," say "To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2026."
Achieving Goals
When you achieve a goal, take time to enjoy the satisfaction. Absorb the implications and observe progress toward other goals. If significant, reward yourself appropriately — this helps build self-confidence.
With experience, 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.
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
- 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!
The Most Important Step: Do It NOW!
Most people never achieve their goals because they never set goals in the first place. It's not enough to keep them in your mind — write them down and review them often. Do it now. You owe it to yourself.
"To believe in yourself and to follow your dreams, to have goals in life and a drive to succeed, and to surround yourself with the things and the people that make you happy — this is success!"