Nanaimo, BC
If you've been through my list of goal-setting excercises, you should have a pretty long list of goals. Some of them might be very lofty and fanciful, and others might be very simple and immediate.
Go through your list of goals and ask yourself for each one: what will I need to accomplish BEFORE I can tackle that goal?
Ottawa, Ontario
You've taken a lot of time to generate goals, boiling long term goals into shorter term subgoals, and have picked a list of a few things you want to focus on first. Now you want to make sure your goals actually turn into REALITIES.
And you accomplish that by making sure your goals are SMART.
What is a SMART goal? It is a goal that is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. A SMART goal focuses on HOW you are going to get there, rather than just your destination.
As an example, let's take the goal of "Become a better writer".
WHY GOALS?
Jasper, BC
Goals are in your mind, bothering you, whether you are aware of them or not. You worry, you stress out, you are unhappy or depressed. You complain a lot. Your mind is telling you: "There is something that needs fixing."
Once your goals are out of your head and clearly before you, on paper, your mind will stop bothering you and will start WORKING for you.
The ultimate goal, for all of us, is happiness: to live your life to the fullest without regret, so you can look back upon it and say "I did well here." But what is happiness for you? What will make you happy in the short term and in the long term? And how on earth will you get there?
Goals are the stepping stones between your current state and your ideal situation. If there is a problem, the goal is having that problem SOLVED. It might seem easy to write a bunch of goals, but it takes practice and some strategy to write goals that actually will WORK for you.
HOW do I go about setting goals?
There are lots of ways to brainstorm goals, and lots of different types of goals. These are some excercises you can go through periodically to flush them out your mind's hiding places.
- The Bucket List
- Your Ideal Work Day
- The Plane Crash
- The Lottery
- The RANT