Goal Setting Strategies

Having a goal is something that can give an individual purpose, and give said individual direction. When you have a goal, you also have something that you hope to, and can achieve through hard work, persistence and effort.

Every single person has set a goal in their lifetime, as people are always looking to accomplish something new. The problem that people normally have is not having the desire to set a goal, the problem is almost always achieving the goal. How many times have you set a goal, maybe a New Year’s resolution, and 6 months later you realize that you have come no where close to accomplishing your goal, or maybe even forgotten about it?

One of the reasons that so many goals are left incomplete is because goals aren’t set effectively. Effective goal setting can very very difficult, which is why we have 7 effective goal setting strategies.


  1. Write your goals down

By writing your goals down you solidify them, and you make them visible in your day to day life. It gives you something visceral that you can reflect on constantly, taking your goal from back of mind to front of mind.


2. Set short term milestones

Your goal is obviously the end objective, but you need to set smaller goals or milestones along the way. This makes your overall goal seem much closer, and much more achievable. When you have a goal that seems out of reach it can be easy to give up, or get sidetracked.


3. Be specific

When setting a goal you need to be very specific about what you want to achieve. Make your goal measurable, and very specific, and you will know exactly what you’re aiming for.


4.  Start with one goal

It is very easy to become distracted when you are working on multiple things at the same time. Think about when you are at work, or at home, and you have multiple tasks or chores that you need to do. It is very easy to neglect one of your tasks when you are working on multiple at the same time. The same idea applies with goal setting, when you are working on one goal, it is VERY easy to get side tracked when you are working on multiple goals.


5. Schedule time for goals

Time is hard to come by, but it is necessary to make time for something that means a lot to you. If you set a goal, it should be something that is significant to you, so you need to make time for it. If you don’t make time for it, you will find yourself not accomplishing your goals.


6. Difficult but realistic goals

Difficult but realistic goals often provide better results. By setting a goal that pushes you, you are more likely to take it seriously. This can be really tough though, because you need to balance the difficulty of the task with how realistic it is. If you set a goal that is too difficult and unrealistic, you will have difficulty pursuing the goal, much less accomplishing it.


7. Goals should not be set in stone

If your goal is set in stone, then you may find that you could come to an impasse. You may find that your goal is no longer achievable to the extent you had originally planned. You need to be flexible, less in what your goal is, but what your expectations are. Sometimes as you get along with a goal, you realize that your initial goal was unrealistic, so you need to be able to change your goal after some serious reflection. For example, your goal may be to lose a certain amount of weight, but as you get going and start to lose weight, you may realize that it may be unhealthy to lose that much weight.

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