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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.
I think I see me having problems in all those areas!! LOL It's great though, when I focus and get in the zone...I think this has to do with a belief that I CAN do. I notice that when I am unsure IF I can do something, I rarely will stay focused and accomplish.
Goal setting is so critical - thanks for an informative article. I'm in a phase of working tiny goals, myself. As in gaining the habits on a day to day basis that I need. Overall also big ones but more in a heading in the direction of since I have so far to go:-) But working on the tiny habits create the groundwork. In work and all phases of life...
Thanks Shawn (sorry for the late reply). It's a fine balance isn't it between setting the bar where you push yourself and setting it at the point where you're setting yourself up for failure. The biggest challenge is understanding just how much we're capabale of.
Obviously, setting goals is like have a roadmap to get to where you want to go, but if it stays in the glove compartment, you'll always be as lost as last years Easter Egg. As far as the size of your goals and not being too small, what do think about breaking your goals into smaller chunks if you start feeling you're not progressing as well as you had hoped? Thanks for the share, coach.
Thanks for taking the time to comment Johnney. I like the idea of it being lost in the glove compartment. I think its great to break goals into smaller chunks and do it all the time. However, the point I was trying to make (probably not very well) is that if we constantly set small goals that one can easily achieve we may actually be avoiding doing things that should have higher priority and are of more importance.
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