He who doesn’t set his own goals, will give his life to working towards the goals of others
Goals are the means by which you can supercharge your dreams
A dream with a belief in that dream will move you forward
Setting and achieving goals allows you to reach your dreams before you get too old!!
How many?
Depending on the nature of the goals and how you define them, determines how many you should set
As long as you have one serious goal, you are likely to achieve a lot more than if you had none
Personally I like to set between 1 and 5 goals, in all parts of my life at any one time
A friend of mine has set 26! One for every letter of the alphabet. Relatively smaller goals, but she aims to achieve them all in the next year
Why?
‘Why’ do you want to achieve a particular goal? Arguably more important than ‘what’ is the goal?
The ‘why’ helps provide motivation if the going gets tough
If you are not 100% sure of the ‘why’, go back to the section on your future and workout if the goal is really for you, or whether it is someone else’s goal. Who is the Captain of your Ship?
Be SMART!
If you want to create change in your life, or achieve a specific out come, you need to be SMART!
As an employee I had heard the acronym SMART many times over the years, but like any typical work environment, they pushed so many acronyms at me that I just ignored it
The company I worked for had no clear direction anyway, so anything they said was clearly a load of rubbish!
If you haven’t heard of SMART, it stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound. It makes a very good way to define a goal
Timescales
Further to the SMART principles, it is worth setting a set of time targets. What do you intend to achieve in 3 months? What do you intend to achieve in the next week? What do you intend achieving today (or tomorrow)
At the end of these periods, review your progress, and modify the goals as necessary
The timescales versus the goal itself must be enough to motivate you, but not too much
to demoralise or stress you unnecessarily
Then just take one step at a time!!
| The goal should identify a specific action or event that will take place. Answers the question:Who and What? | |||||||||||
| M = Measurable | |||||||||||
| Include in the specific goal statement the measurements to be used to determine that the results or outcomes expected have been achieved. It answers the question: How? | |||||||||||
| A = Attainable | |||||||||||
| Goals should challenge people to do their best, but they need also be achievable | |||||||||||
| R = Relevant /Rigorous | Realistic | ||||||||||
| Goals need to pertain directly to the performance challenge being managed. | |||||||||||
| T = Time Bound | |||||||||||
| Enough time to achieve the goal And Not too much time, which can affect project performance. It answers the question: When? | |||||||||||