How to Set Goals

You know you need to set goals for you to achieve your dreams but you don’t know where to start! Do you ever look at your goals and go, “I am way in over my head here, I can’t achieve this goal no matter how hard I work or how hard I try?” Do you have goals like becoming the president of the United States of America when you aren’t even a US citizen or similar goals that are impossible to achieve?

If you answered yes to any of the questions, then it is important to learn how to set goals; not just any goals but goals that you will achieve.

It is true we can achieve anything we set our mind to but sometimes setting unrealistic goals or goals you know perfectly well are way out of your reach is one demotivating factor in goal setting. Imagine wanting to be president of the United States when you aren’t even a citizen of that country! It is important to note that you aren’t setting goals just for the fun of it or because everyone is doing it; it is a process that you need to do properly.

Setting Goals and Achieving Them

Goals are sort of a compass leading you and guiding you towards a specified destination, the achieved goal of course. Therefore, this process is rigorous and requires clear thinking and meticulous planning. Often times I visit my goals and rearrange things, delete others, and add new ones to ensure that I achieve what I need. But the question still remains, how do you properly set achievable goals?

Set Long-term and Short-term Goals

In one of his many motivational videos, Gary Vee states that a lot of people are so focused on what is happening right in front of them, what they will eat in the afternoon or tomorrow morning. He continued by saying we should be future-oriented; think 5 years from today or 10 years, 20 years, etc.

Short-term goals can be achieved in 1–3 months while long-term goals take about 3–5 years to achieve or even longer. If like me goal setting is a new process altogether, you have to admit how hard it is to set long-term goals.

I used what I learned from short-term goals to set long-term goals. Here is how I did it. If I can achieve a goal in less time than I had anticipated, then it means I can achieve all my goals on my goal lists. It is as simple as that. If I was able to get two jobs in less than a month, it means one day I will drive a Mercedes Benz G wagon.

Short-term goals provided irrefutable proof that I can achieve anything on my goal list, so I use the same strategy when it comes to long-term goal setting.

Set SMART Goals.

Smart goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. I have an article dedicated to this topic, but in short, if you want to achieve your dreams, you need to set SMART goals. To set smart goals, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

What is the goal and what exactly do you need to do to achieve it?

When should this goal be achieved?

Who is the person responsible for ensuring the achievement of this goal?

Why: Why do you need to achieve this goal?

During your goal-setting process, it is important to answer these questions to have clearly defined goals. You might even find some goals to be meaningless and a total waste of your time. Therefore, sit down properly and scrutinize every goal that you might have.

Be Future-oriented

I struggle a lot with planning for the future and while it is not an excuse, one of the contributing factors is that growing up I was suicidal and with each passing year I thought I wouldn’t live to see the following one. This alone cut my vision to see myself as an older person in her 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, or 50’s.

Since I was living like I was going to die the next day, I lived carelessly and dangerously; I neither saved nor planned for the future until I was in my late 30s. Pretty much time wasted don’t you think? I was only living for today literally.

However, since I am learning how to set goals, I realized how important it is to plan for the future because firstly I don’t know when I am going to die and secondly I cannot simply achieve everything that I want by tomorrow. It is not easy to set long-term goals but this is where patience comes in. Be patient enough to know that at the right time, you will eventually get everything that you want.

Break Your Goals into Tasks

Breaking your goals into a series of small actionable tasks helps you to manage them whether big or small without being overwhelmed. I would give up after writing my goals because I was overwhelmed and didn’t exactly know where to start, however, small tasks gave me a clear direction and calmed my nerves and anxiety down.

Say for instance you want to read 5 books in 10 months. To break this goal into small tasks I would say let’s assume the maximum number of pages for each book is 300. This means you will need to read 1500 pages of text. Assuming there are 30 days in a month, on the 10th month we will be on day 300. It, therefore, means for you to achieve your goal, you have to read at least 50 pages every day. This is not as overwhelming as reading 5 books in 10 months.

Learning how to set goals is an important trait or skill that will in a long run bear fruitful results. You want to set goals that are clear, meaningful, and achievable but most importantly, you want to set goals that will help you reach your target and achieve your dreams.