How to set good goals.
In this article I want to show you the five properties that make a good goal. If you’re like me, and you want to constantly challenge yourself and improve. You need to learn how to set good goals, and goals that you can actually achieve.
Setting good goals isn’t rocket science, but there is a little bit of science to it. The way you frame your goal from the begging can set you up to failure or success. Let me be your guardian angle and show you to the door of success.
When goal setting, it is always important for your goal to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely (SMART).
Specific
Making your goals specific will help you to understand what you need to reach your goals. For example, if your goals was to “Learn to play the piano” you will have trouble know when you have achieved your goal. Learning to play the piano ranges from being about the play a few notes, all the way to a Beethoven symphony. You must be more specific, e.g. “Learn to play Twinkle Twinkle little star on Piano”. In this case you have a better idea on when you will accomplish your goal. Always be specific.
Measurable
Make your goals measurable. Being able to measure your achievements will help to you know whether you are progressing. Knowing whether you are making progress is key. You need to know if you are moving closer to your goal or further way, this will help you determine whether your method of practice is effective. E.g. if your goal is to “become good at pull-ups”, you might have some trouble deciding whether you have achieved your goal. Sometimes your don’t need to measure your achievement in order to know that you are getting better at it, but it will always good to know so that you can try different techniques to accomplish your goal, and see which one works the best.
Attainable
Always make you goals attainable. A lot of the time, attainability goes hand in hand with timeliness. You need to ensure that your goal is physically possible to achieve taking into consideration of all constraints that you have. e.g. time, money, space, man power, current level of knowledge etc to name a few. If you decide that your goal is to learn to swim, but you don’t have access to a pool, you will find it very difficult to make any progress. Similarly if your goal is to learn to drive a car, but your don’t have to funds for a driving instructor or a car, you might end up having some issues reaching your goal.
Realistic
Make your goals realistic. When setting a new goal, especially with something very new to you. Do some research and make sure that your goal is realistic. For example, if your goal is to be able to hold your breath for 4 mins by next Tuesday, and your current max breath hold time if 1 min, you may have some difficulty achieving this since it normally takes weeks to accomplish something like this. So make sure to so you due diligence and ensure that your goal is physically possible to achieve within the time constraints that you have set.
Timely
Make sure that the goal is achievable in the time constraints that you’ve set around the goal. Try and stick to a schedule that will allow you to complete your goal in the time that you’ve set.
Last tip
Always, and I really do mean always. Complete you set goal!
Do not get into the habit of being ok with having unfinished goals. This is a common habit to failure.
If you think that a specific goal is too hard for you, break it down into more achievable pieces. For example, if your goal is to write an app, but you don’t have time to sit down and write the whole app. Just break down the app into smaller chunks, perhaps by the different functionalities you have, or the different pages within the app. You should be able to do this with nearly everything.
