Set Goals for Life: Part II
Posted: Friday, April 29, 2011
by Sulagna Dasgupta
Love in India
Hi there! One more week has passed and we’re back here again with part II of our discussion of setting goals. In the last installment we talked about some basic principles of goal-setting: Choosing just one goal which has a personal meaning to you. Now that you’ve got the basic elements of your goal ready, let’s put some flesh on your goals in today’s installment!
- Write it down: Well you’re probably aware of this one but let’s just mention it anyway, just in case! You need to make your goal as concrete as possible, because of the simple well-known fact that what we can’t measure we can’t achieve. Writing down your goal is the first step towards it. Use the first page of a new diary to do it. You can also stick post-its around your office/kitchen/bedroom with your goal firmly written on them, to keep you in “goal-mode” all the time.
- Details: Have you ever heard of the famous example of adding details to goals? If not, here it goes: Don’t just write “I want to buy a home”, write “I want to buy a 3 bedroom home with 2 floors on the beach in such-and-such place.” Whenever I read this example (yes I’ve read it many times because you’ll find this example cited in 99% of all goal-setting literature) I find myself asking, “So? What do I have to do?” The rule of making your goal as detailed as possible is there to help you visualize in the clearest way what you have to do, not to help you have a beautiful dream and feel happy about it. So, if your goal is to buy this home, you can’t stop at getting down to the details at the home. After this step you need to project the price of that home, say 5 years later (or whenever is it that you want to buy it), project how your income needs to grow over these 5 years to be able to afford it then, and then take these figures as your yearly goals. Goals need to be as detailed as possible, but these details can only describe the task that you have to accomplish. Otherwise it defeats the whole purpose of goal-detailing.
- Should you shoot for the moon? Picture this: You set yourself a goal. Failed to achieve it. Set another goal. Failed to achieve that too. What exactly will that do to your confidence? And what will it do to your third goal? Not too difficult to guess, huh? That’s what happens when you take the “Shoot for the moon and land among the stars” approach. The first important attribute of a practical goal is achievability. The more you achieve your goals the more confident you feel and the more prepared you are to accomplish you next goal. Besides, the whole point of setting goals is concretizing your dreams, so that they become objective tasks, to be completed one by one. If you set an unachievable goal it’s as good as not setting any goal, because while the moon is a specific point, you don’t know where exactly you’ll land, when you land among the stars. If you set an unachievable goal, you’ve failed to take the very first step in goal-setting: identifying the specific point you want to reach. If your goal is too ambitious, to the point to being impossible to achieve, you’ve not identified any specific point, because you know you’re not going to reach your goal. Hence it’s imperative to take special care to make sure your goals are achievable, not impossible.
- Clear deadlines:A goal without a deadline is not a goal. If you’re setting up a new website it’s pointless to say, “I want to achieve a traffic of 1000 unique visitors per day.” Driving that traffic by tomorrow, and by the end of this decade, will have entirely different implications. A firm timeline is thus an essential ingredient of an excellent goal. This goal statement could be modified as, “I want to achieve a traffic of 1000 unique visitors per day by the end of this year.” Now that’s something practical. And as you’ve probably guessed, adding a timeline to your goal gives you a huge advantage-that of breaking down your goals into smaller and more proximate goals. Starting from this goal you can now work backwards:
You see, the last sentence brings your one-year-away goal directly to your immediate future and thus puts you in an action-oriented mode!
So now you have a firm, achievable, written, time-bound goal. What next? Wait till the next week to find out how to effectively use “milestones”, how to tickle your pleasure-nerves properly to goad yourself on, and much more… All the best with setting and achieving your goals, and bye bye till next time!
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Top-level comments on this article: (5 total)A very informative article...thanks for the practical advice.Thanks for commenting Amanda.
-Sulagna
Excellent advice, Sulagna. I started this year saying that I needed to lose some weight but instead of dieting like I've tried so many times I decided that I would just commit to recording everything I ate each day. Within 2 weeks I just naturally started eating less and eating food that is healthier.Hi Bruce! Thank you for commenting.
Your story is unique and inspiring. :) Thanks for sharing. :)
I don't agree with you on the point regarding shooting for the moon, I have benefited personally from using that approach.
Overall a useful article. Thank you.Hi Dave,
Thanks a lot for commenting.
Certainly there are people who CAN benefit from using that approach. But I myself have always found that approach disappointing, and for the reasons that I have mentioned. I think the Average Joe has the maximum chances of success if they serially set and achieve attainable goals. That was the significance of that point.
Thank you for brining this up.
maybe one aspect of goal-setting is also to break down bigger goals into smaller ones. i remember having learnt this from my super-duper-efficient manager while working at adobe...breaking down all "major" bugs into smaller parts in his mind & then figuring out these sub-parts en route to solving the bigger problem.
even though one needs some maturity/experience (/whatever-u-may-call-it) not to trivialize the whole problem by breaking it down infinitely, but i guess if you're a novice faced with a certain kind of problem/goal, breaking down stuff into smaller parts always helps. & as u become accustomed to a particular domain or set of problems, it's easier to set much bigger goals for oneself, i.e. to shoot for the moon :)!oops....i guess my comment has already been addressed in part-1 of the article under "phasing your goals." insufficient due diligence on my part :).:P
Yaar! I am so poor in setting my goals...especially "writing it down." I would have achieved more if I would have followed the steps...
Sulagna! Great article and Congrats again for "Jean's PICK"...she never choses me for that column...ha ha ha...
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