UNDERSTAND HOW GOALS WORK

Goals work in a number of ways

Purpose

Goals provide a sense of direction or purpose in life. Without clear goals you are just drifting around, satisficing and just getting by.

Focus

Having clear goals focuses attention on those activities which lead to the goal, and discourages distracting activities.

Effectiveness

Setting goals can lead to bigger effort. If you have a goal you are more likely to work harder to achieve it than you would if had no goal and no measure to compare yourself to.

Persistence

If you have a clear goal in mind your are more likely to work on despite setbacks or discouragement.

What DETERMINES success?

Commitment

The degree to which you are committed to achieving your goal is critical. A half hearted commitment will probably lead to failure.

Feedback

You need to be able to measure progress towards your goal. You need a way to judge whether to work harder or to change your methods. This is why you need to set deadlines and sub goals.

Ability

You need to be sure that you have the necessary skills to achieve your goal. If necessary getting those skills can become a sub goal.

Congruence

Your goals must not conflict with each other. As you progress with one goal it may influence some other goal, so you need to be prepared to constantly rewrite your goals.

Balance

Your goal must not be something that is ultimately self defeating. Remember the old joke about the man who gets one wish from a genie and asked to become irresistible to women: the genie turned him into a cuddly puppy.

Constancy

Writing down the goal is vital. Otherwise the goal will get relegated when some immediate and urgent activity is encountered.

Reiterated

"What have I done today towards my goal?" Go over your goals in mind at least several times a day.

Necessary

Your goal must be something that is valuable and necessary in your life.

Reviewed

You need to review your goals from time to time. If you haven't done anything about a goal for several weeks or months then it probably is not really important to you and so is not really a goal. Go back to your list and rewrite it.

Steps

Set up checkpoints when you will review your goals.

Celebrate

Measure and record your progress and celebrate when you reach a milestone. Be good to yourself, motivate yourself with little rewards.

Process

Remember that goal setting is an continuing process, not a decision.

Enjoyable

Make sure that you enjoy achieving your goal.

Sustainable

Goals take a long time. You need to be sure that you can put a constant level of effort into achieving them in the future.

 

 

• Topic: Self Programming