If you’ve ever made goals in the past and you haven’t achieved them, have you thought about what went wrong or have you decided that goal setting just doesn’t work? Lots of people blame the principles of goal setting rather than considering what they could do to improve their goal setting techniques to ensure their success. Setting goals you won’t achieve is clearly pointless but worse it is stressful and dispiriting.

Now I know the majority of people wouldn’t deliberately set goals they wouldn’t achieve so why does it happen? Laziness, lack of motivation, lack of knowledge... It could be any of these things, or something entirely different. Whatever the problems you might have had with goal setting in the past, leave it in the past. Now is the time to reassess your goal setting techniques and make sure that you plan goals, that will lead you to take action and ultimately achieve the success that you deserve.

Set goals that are goals not wishes

One of the key reasons that people don’t achieve goals is because they set ‘goals’ that really aren’t goals at all. They are no more than wishes. “I want to get fitter” is a common example. Well that won’t cut it. What does ‘get fitter’ mean? Without having any detail of what that means and what you will do to try and achieve it, it won’t happen.

Set goals you believe in

You may be thinking that you would always set goals that you believe in but one of the criticisms of goal setting in the workplace is that employees often have goals imposed on them that they don’t believe in or they’re not committed to so they fail to achieve them. So don’t set yourself up for failure. If you’re setting a goal, ensure that it’s something you really want and are committed to achieving.

Understand the benefits of the goals you set

When you’re thinking about goal setting it's important that you think through the benefits of achieving specific goals. This will not only help to bring clarity to what you want to achieve, but it will also help you to stay motivated when you’re completing tasks towards your goal. You will have a constant reminder of the choices you've made and why you're doing what you're doing, which will help keep you going when things go wrong or you experience dips in motivation.

Avoid being over ambitious

There is absolutely nothing wrong in being ambitious. There’s nothing wrong in setting goals where you will have to stretch yourself, work outside your comfort zone and or learn new skills in order to achieve them. However, it’s important that you understand your ‘baseline’ ie your starting point and set challenging but realistic timeframes.

Avoid setting goals that are too small

Now of course the size of the goal is entirely subjective, but this is only meant as a warning. Setting tiny goals that you can easily achieve can be counterproductive and can act as a delaying tactic to setting the goals that are really important. In the long term it can also hit your motivation as you realise you’re not really making progress in the areas of your life that you wanted.

Summary

Some of the examples above may resonate with you or you may have further examples of your own. Setting goals you won’t achieve is something you clearly want to avoid. Goal setting does work, but if you’ve found it’s something that you’ve struggled with in the past – examine the techniques you’ve been using and give it another go. Successful goal setting is the first stage in starting to transform your life.