We've all been told about the importance of setting goals but how effective is goal setting? Harvard did a survey about goal setting with 100 of their alumni with very interesting results. It turned out that only 3 out of the 100 made a lifelong habit of goal setting. What were the results?

The 3 out of 100 who set goals had a higher net-worth than the other 97 combined! If that doesn't convince you of the effectiveness of setting goals, I can't imagine what would.

Most of us spend more time planning our vacations than we do planning our futures. Why is that? Setting a goal isn't any harder than planning a vacation or a wedding or any other event. Think about the last time you planned something months in advance. Chances are you had some bumps in the road along the way but somehow you pulled it off. Why are we so willing to plan an everyday event, but not something that will positively impact our lives long term?

I think it comes down to believability. You have no doubt that you can successfully plan a vacation because people do it everyday. If you have never planned to achieve anything extraordinary before, you may be inclined to believe it's out of your reach and not worth thinking about or even trying for. I want to challenge your beliefs and show you why it IS possible and worth your time.

Long term goals are best achieved when broken down into stages in this order:

• 2-5 Year Goals
• 90 Day Goals
• Weekly goals

2-5 Year Goals: The time frame you choose between 2 and 5 years depends on how big you are willing to dream and how hard you are willing to work. Let's say you had a goal of earning $10,000 per month and you want to achieve that in 5 years. Think about what you have to do or what you have to set up to have that kind of money coming in. Once your have a good idea of what needs to be done, you can break this up into smaller time frames.

90 Day Goals: This gives you 4 blocks of time to work with per year. If you have a 5 year goal, that gives you 20 blocks to work with! You may be surprised at how much you can get done in only 90 days when you have a plan to work with.

Weekly Goals:Your weekly goals are where you will set up small tasks that you can realistically get done in 5-7 days. The idea is that you will spend a minimum of 5 days per week doing something to move you toward your 90 day goal. They do not need to be monumental tasks. Even if it's something that only takes 20 minutes to do, at least you are doing something almost every day.

I recently did a little experiment with goal setting to see what would happen. One Sunday afternoon, I gave myself 7 tasks to complete over the coming week. I easily completed them in 5 days which showed me that I was capable of getting more done than I thought.

The next week I set no goal. I didn't even get half as much done! When you take the "we'll see what happens" approach to working, you will work way below your potential. Needless to say, setting weekly goals will definitely be part of my routine from now on.