Do you know where you want to be in ten years? Are you on track to accomplish what you want to in life? If you can’t answer those types of questions, it’s time to start setting strong goals and work on achieving them. Goals help give you focus and can guide you to your destination. Knowing how to set a good goal can make achieving it much easier. Of course, in order to reach your goals you still need to put in the effort and stay consistent. Fortunately, this article is here to help you set and achieve goals.
What Is Your Purpose? What Final Result Do You Want To See?
So, the first thing you need to do is figure out what exactly you want to achieve in the end. It’s good for goals to be specific, but to start off it’s okay to just have an overarching idea of what you want. Do you have some personal or financial achievement in mind? Do you want to start a successful side hustle? Would you prefer it if you were able able to work less and spend more time with family? Do you want to contribute to society in some specific way (perhaps in a way that’s related to your profession)? Whatever it is that you want, it’s important to figure it out at the outset of goal setting. If you don’t know what you truly want, you’re going to have a hard time setting concrete goals that are applicable to you and actually following through on them.
In short, figure out what you genuinely want, iron it out, and proceed with all of your goal setting with your main purpose and end result in mind. For more help with financial goals specifically, I’ve got you covered there too.
Find Someone To Keep You Accountable
Having a solid, concrete plan is important. What’s even more important, in my opinion, is to have at least one confidant who can keep you accountable. Who it is doesn’t matter much. It could be a friend, a spouse, or a family member. The important part is that they need to be someone who will be completely honest with you and hold you accountable. On top of that, they also need to be someone who you talk to regularly enough that they can actually help you stay on track. There is no point in finding someone to help you stay accountable if you only ever speak to each other once every few weeks! Often, just knowing that there is at least one person supporting you in whatever your goals are is enough to help you push through the hard times.
Now, Set And Achieve Goals – The SMART Way
I’m sure you’ve probably heard of SMART goals before. After all, it is a system that has been proven to work well. For those of you who don’t know, SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. So, you should already know your main overarching goal. That’s good! However, now it’s time to set serious short-term goals that will help you reach whatever end result it is that you’re looking for.
Specific Goals
You want to be as specific and concrete with your goals as possible. It should be very easy to tell when you have achieved the goal and it should be fairly easy to know how to start working towards your goal. For example, let’s say your overarching goal is to make enough money through writing to make a living. Well, maybe you decide the best way to go about that is to start a blog. One of your initial goals may be to publish one complete article per week for a year, or to get 250 unique visits a day by the end of your first year. Notice how I was specific? Those goals are a lot better than something as vague “write for the blog consistently” or “get a lot of traffic in my first year.”
Measurable Goals
This, at least partially, goes with setting specific goals. If you set a specific goal, then it should be fairly easy to see how you’re progressing towards it. Making sure your goal is specific and measurable will help you stay on track and know when you need to do something to get back on the right track – if you’ve hit some roadblocks.
For example, let’s say you wanted to get your associate’s degree in exactly two years. Well, after the first year it turns out you failed a couple crucial courses. Because your goal was specific and measurable, you know you’ll need to do something to reach it in time. In order to fix it, you will likely decide to do one of two things. You can either increase the number of classes you take per semester (which may not be a good idea if you’re already failing them), or you can take classes during the summer.
Attainable Goals
I think this is the easiest part of the SMART goal setting system to understand, but a harder one to actually do. Clearly, it’s important for any goal you set to be realistic and something you can actually hope to achieve, at least in the time you’ve given yourself to do it. In other words, try to set your goals high so that you have something to work hard towards, but don’t set them so high that you have no hope of getting there. If you do that, you’ll likely become discouraged because you are either constantly failing your goals or just not seeing the progress you want to see. For example, if you made $10 per hour, and only worked part-time, but you set a goal of saving and investing $10,000 each month, there would be no point in even taking it seriously since it is so unrealistic.
Relevant Goals
Whatever your overarching goal is, the SMART goals you set should be relevant to helping you get there. If you don’t keep them relevant, you’ll end up meandering throughout life with a lack of direction. Remember, focus on what matters to you. If you set a new goal and realize it isn’t relevant to the current route you want to take in life, it may be a goal worth dropping. That being said, life isn’t so black and white or static. If you set a goal, realize it isn’t relevant to your past goals, but it’s relevant to your current desires that is more than fine! Everyone grows and adapts throughout life, the purpose of setting relevant goals isn’t to limit you, but it’s to help you make sure you don’t take unnecessary projects on.
Time-Bound Goals
Basically, create some sort of deadline for your goals. This makes sure you don’t procrastinate or run in place and accidentally fall into a pattern of stagnation. It’s important to be continuously working towards the end goal of where you want to be. Of course, as we mentioned earlier, make it an attainable timeline.
Conclusion
Whatever your goals are, it’s important to be prepared and disciplined. No matter what obstacles you encounter, you shouldn’t lose sight of your priorities. Really, you just need to keep persevering no matter what. I hope this helped you learn how to set some strong goals and gave you an idea of how to start reaching them. The SMART system is incredibly useful – it can help you stay on track – but it’s ultimately up to you to have the discipline to follow through.
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