The Importance Of Goal Setting

The first step to achieving your goals is to start with setting them. It’s much like driving to a destination. If you don’t determine where you are going, how are you going to get there?

If you aren’t committed to setting goals, then you can wander around aimlessly in your actions, believing that you are getting closer to the goals you want when in reality, you are wasting time and energy that could be better utilized if you set the goal ahead of time.

Setting the goal before attempting to achieve it is important because it gives you a clear idea of what actions and steps you’ll need to take in order to achieve that goal.

Setting a goal can help you to break down the goal into more manageable steps and see what actions you need to take in order to achieve that goal.

Many goals that seem impossible to achieve on the surface are actually quite doable when you actually set the goal and really look at what steps are needed to achieve it.

Short-Term Vs Long-Term Goals

A short-term goal is a step or accomplishment that helps to bring you closer to your long-term goal. It’s important when setting big-hairy long-term goals that you break down the goal into smaller steps or stages that enable you to set short-term goals.

Quick wins – You can attain short-term goals more quickly giving yourself confidence that you can continue on to complete the long-term goal.

Setting short-term goals are important because it helps to give you additional momentum toward achieving your long-term goals.

Effective Goals Are Always Written

When you write down a goal, you are actually committing to it and it’s not as easy to make excuses over why you’re not making as much progress as you expected when you initially wrote it down.

When you write down a goal (whether you have it on a piece of paper or in a text file), it’s always right there to remind you of it and boost your motivation and determination to achieve it.

It is much harder to dismiss a piece of paper or a Notepad file than it is to just move the goal to the far reaches of your mind and not think about it.

Define Your Goals

A goal is a desired result or achievement you want to reach. You need to decide what you want to achieve in your life.

You need to decide what you want to be remembered for and what actions in your life you want to do to reach this goal.

What really matters to you?

Family
Career
Environment
Wealth
Etc…

Once you know what drives you and what matters to you, you’ll have a better idea of what goals you want to achieve in your lifetime.

Prioritize Your Goals

Prioritizing your goals is a must because though it’s hard to believe, you will not live forever…

You need to prioritize your goals because if you get a sudden, incurable illness or condition, you may not be able to pursue your goals after that point.

You need to prioritize your short-term goals first because you will need to reach them first in order to obtain your long-term goals.

We want the long-term goals the most, but they are virtually unattainable if we don’t accomplish the short-term goals first.

Set Specific Goal Deadlines

Writing down goals enables you to break down the goal into more manageable tasks.

Determine how long you want to take to reach your long-term goal.

Then, based on the time period to reach your long-term goal, divide that period up to reach all of the short-term goals you need to reach to attain your long-term goal.

If you want to attain a long-term goal in a specific amount of time, then you know the time period you have to achieve all of the short-term goals needed to be obtained to attain the long-term goal in that time period.

You can break down exactly how long you need to attain each short-term goal in order to obtain the long-term goal in the time period you specify.

Eliminate Distractions And Track Your Progress

Everyone faces distractions in day to day life so the goal here is to reduce said distractions as much as possible.

Distractions can be internal, such as self-doubt or losing focus.

Distractions can be external, such as social media, email, smartphones, unexpected circumstances.

The key to successfully achieving goals consistently is to overcome and eliminate the distractions that stand in your way.

It’s often helpful to map out each day in terms of the tasks you need and want to complete, then sectioning off the amount of time you believe you can get those tasks done in.

Then, at the end of the day, check to see if you accomplished everything you wanted to accomplish.

Reflection

Review how well you did; if you met all of your tasks/goals for the day, reward yourself and attempt to do more tasks/goals the next day.

If you didn’t achieve all of your tasks/goals for the day, review why you didn’t complete everything, then make adjustments based on the circumstances (whether it was the loss of focus, distractions, etc.).

Determining what caused you to take longer on a task will help you to eliminate its influence over you when completing future tasks.

Reviewing where you fell short in completing your tasks is key to knowing how you can improve and complete more of your goals, both short-term and long-term, in the amount of time you expect or even earlier.

Knowing how to improve and complete more of your goals in less time will lead to more fulfillment, a better legacy, and more opportunities for achievement, wealth, and satisfaction.