Goal setting is used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge, and helps you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.
By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you’ll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. You will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you’ve set.
Pick up a pen and a piece of paper and jot down the goals you want to reach. Look at each goal and evaluate it. Make any changes necessary to ensure it meets the criteria for a SMART goals:
S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Attainable
R = Realistic
T = Timely
Specific
Goals should be straightforward and emphasize what you want to happen. Specifics help us to focus our efforts and clearly define what we are going to do.
Measurable
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. In the broadest sense, the whole goal statement is a measure for the project; if the goal is accomplished, the is a success. However, there are usually several short-term or small measurements that can be built into the goal.
Attainable
When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop that attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. Your begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals.
Time
Set a timeframe for the goal: for next week, in three months, by fifth grade. Putting an end point on your goal gives you a clear target to work towards.
If you don’t set a time, the commitment is too vague. It tends not to happen because you feel you can start at any time. Without a time limit, there’s no urgency to start taking action now.
Realistic
For instance, it may be more realistic to set a goal of eating a piece of fruit each day instead of one sweet item. You can then choose to work towards reducing the amount of sweet products gradually as and when this feels realistic for you.
Be sure to set goals that you can attain with some effort! Too difficult and you set the stage for failure, but too low sends the message that you aren’t very capable. Set the bar high enough for a satisfying achievement!
One goal at a time
Often the problem is that we try to take on too many goals at once. We have a list of things we want to accomplish, spanning the spectrum from gardening to learning Italian to getting in shape. It can be overwhelming, and because of that we never start.
Make sure you really want it, We all have multiple things to focus on in our lives, from school or work to family to errands to various goals and commitments and hobbies and civic activities. If we put all these focuses before our One Goal, we won’t ever find the time for our goal. There’s only so much time in the day.
Reduce your commitments
Everything else is non-essential. Once you’ve made your short list, you should reduce some of the non-essential commitments.
Keep it simple
It’s important not to make your personal goal too complicated. You don’t want to have a huge list of things to do in order to accomplish your goal. Instead, focus on a smaller sub-goal that will lead you to your bigger goal.
Stay focused
One of the most difficult things when it comes to achieving goals is maintaining your focus on that goal. It’s easy to become obsessed with something else, and when we lose focus, we suddenly stop making time for the goal. Instead, find ways to maintain that focus.
Block off time
You absolutely must block off time to work on your goal. Whatever time works for you — first thing in the morning, lunchtime, mid-afternoon, right after work, late at night. Try to schedule a time when you won’t be interrupted by other “urgent” requests (meetings, calls, kids, etc.) and when you have good energy.
Show that you’re serious
Be fully committed. Tell as many people as possible about your goal, and the scheduled block of time that is sacrosanct. Write down your goal, and be specific. If you can’t even write it down, you’re not serious.
Find your time wasters
Things such as TV, video games, fun stuff online, going to bars, etc. If you can identify those time wasters, you can free up time for working on your goals.
Make it a part of your daily or weekly routine.
This is important to keep the goal going for a long period of time. If it’s a goal you can complete in a week, you don’t need to do this step. But the most worthwhile goals are ones that take time to accomplish, and for those, you’ll need to make it part of your routine.
Setting Lifetime Goals
Career – What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you want to achieve?
Financial – How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this related to your career goals?
Education – Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to have in order to achieve other goals?
Physical – Are there any athletic goals that you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
Pleasure – How do you want to enjoy yourself? (You should ensure that some of your life is for you!)
Public Service – Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
Setting Smaller Goals
Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a five-year plan of smaller goals that you need to complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan.
Then create a one-year plan, six-month plan, and a one- month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.
Then create a daily To-Do List of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals.
At an early stage, your smaller goals might be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your higher level goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.
Goals are key to success
Winners never do different things …They do Things differently.
Article by Mr. Fiaz Ahamed,Operations Executive
Babylon medical services llC.