‘What’s your goal for the year?’
Bring in the crippling anxiety featuring sweaty palms and short breaths. Goals scare us; the fear of your goal being too big, or not big enough or of not achieving them keeps us from taking action on them.
Goals are desired results of consistent efforts that an individual or a group of people set to achieve. Goals can range from finding a cure for cancer to completing one book monthly. No goal is too big or too small.
This article will provide actionable tips on setting goals and working on them to get your desired results.
What are Goals, and Why Do They Matter?
Merriam Webster defines goals as the end toward which effort is directed.
Everybody needs goals. Whether you are an entrepreneur or career girl, a student or professional, as an individual or a team. Goals provide long-term vision and short-term motivation. They take away that feeling of wandering in life, helping you focus your efforts and stay motivated.
Goals fall under several categories; financial goals, career goals, business goals, health goals, physical goals, relationship goals, lifestyle goals and so on. Depending on your priorities, you can have several goals in different aspects of your life. Remember, you determine what is important to you.
Tips on Setting Effective Goals.
1. What is the Big picture?
The first thing you need to do is to ask yourself, what matters to me? What is my best version of what matters? It could be your mental and physical health or your family. It could be financial stability or career and business success. It depends on your priorities. What you want.
2. Write everything down
Getting a journal where you can write down every step of this process is advised. Writing the process down helps bring it from the subconscious to the physical and makes it tangible. Write your goal into a statement. We recommend placing the written statement in a place you can easily see and read it aloud to yourself every day.
3. Utilize the S.M.A.R.T framework.
The Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely goal framework is a proven method that allows you to take responsibility for your set goals. It is a method that will enable you to finetune your big picture to something that works. For example, your big picture might be to ‘get rich’. This goal is vague as it provides no timeline or way to track your efforts. A better goal would be to have made $5,000 by the end of the year. This provides a specific figure that you could measure to see how well you are doing in achieving them. It also provides an essential timeframe
4. Create an action plan and timeline
An action plan is a written document of broken down tasks to achieve your goal. Adding a timeline to your action plan helps you streamline your efforts so you’re not doing things that might not be relevant to your purpose. Using our earlier example of getting rich, your action plan can include you learning a new skill/getting a side hustle, creating a budget, and automating your savings and investment. Using your allocated timeframe, you could create a timeline that would keep you on track.
5. Take action
The most important part about setting goals is acting on them else, they remain wishes. Follow the steps on your action plan and continue one task with another. You are already halfway to the finish line!
6. Track progress
Set up weekly assessments to see how you’re doing. This would help you stay motivated. If this is a personal goal, you could get a trusted accountability partneyou’rensure you are not deviating from your road map. Make adjustments if needed and continue putting in the work.
Goals that work!
Goals are great! And the feeling you get when you achieve your goals is incomparable to nothing else.
We hope you understand that setting goals should not just be a statement of what you want to achieve or where you want to be; it should be a well-mapped out plan of all the actionable steps you will take to complete it.
Start setting future goals effectively. You don’t have to rush through it. Take your time and get it, sis!
If your goal is to get to the top at work Check out our article on must-have workplace skills and start that climb now.
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