Truth in Goal Setting

Remember how I told everyone that I recently started working and before that, I had little responsibility demanding my time?

Well, with my new found responsibilities, I'm on a craze to increase my productivity. I like this feeling of having things to do, and I want to maximize it.

So today, I want to talk about goal setting. I know it helps me to set goals. I can compare weeks when I haven't set goals to weeks when I have and the difference is obvious and huge! Goals really help me focus on what is most important and they help me remember what I want to accomplish. I know this works because I can't be productive without goals.

I think the first step to setting goals is being realistic. For example, it isn't realistic for me to set the goal of running a marathon tomorrow. It's a goal of mine to run a marathon, but I could only run a mile this morning. I'm not realistically ready for a marathon. You can't expect yourself to reach perfection and hit your highest goals immediately. Be reasonable with yourself and decide what you can realistically accomplish. Start small and remember that you can always raise the bar later.

The second step is to set goals that are reachable. I once had the goal to be so fluent in Spanish that I would dream in it! Great goal right? NO! I have no control over my dreams. I hear some people can choose the content of their dreams by thinking about something before they want to fall asleep, but alas, I am not that person. I can't choose the content of my dream let alone the language that it is in. I became fluent in Spanish years before I had a dream in the beautiful language. A reachable goal is something that you can measure. Something like, I want to run 3 times this week. Or I want to run 30 miles this week.

The last step to setting a good goal is making a plan. A goal is really hard to achieve if you don't know how you are going to achieve it. What needs to happen for your goal to be achieved? How long does it realistically take? What are you going to do each day or month to achieve that goal. For example, if I want to run 3 times a week I would plan for that goal by deciding which days I want to run and where I want to run. Planning it all out helps me stay motivated. If I don't plan which days I will run, then every morning I'll tell myself I'll run tomorrow until there aren't three days left in the week. But if I know what days I am running, then when that day comes the decision is already made and it can be so much easier to accomplish my goal.

What helps you to accomplish your goals?