Learn How to Set and Achieve Your Goals

Personal Goal Setting

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

One way to break down a lifetime goal is to sketch longer-term milestones, then work backward to yearly, monthly, and daily actions. Choose time horizons that fit the goal instead of treating a 25-year plan as a requirement.

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:

• S
  Specific
• M
  Measurable
• A
  Attainable
• R
  Relevant
• T
  Time-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 review what worked and how it affects your other plans. If a reward is useful to you, choose one that fits the significance of the milestone.

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 this framework suits you, start with one small, specific goal and review it regularly. Keep, change, or replace the technique based on whether it helps you plan.