StartSpeedReading.com

Photo by Phillie Casablanca

One thing that distinguishes successful people from unsuccessful ones is that successful people have set goals for them. If you know what are you aiming at then it easier to achieve it. This applies both to the professional career and family life.

If you have chosen to set a goal for yourself for any purpose then it is good if you do it in a proper way. Many people make mistakes in goal-setting and their goals just do not work as their goals can be not sufficiently motivating, impossible to achieve or too easy to achieve.

For avoiding running into that kind of problems you have to know the 5 basic rules for goal setting. Whenever setting goals for yourself you have to check if a goal corresponds to all this 5 criteria, which are as follows:

1. It is your goal. There is no point in setting goals for yourself, which you actually do not desire. Achieving success is not easy and it requires continuous effort over months and years and if the goal is not what you actually want then it does not motivate you. And after all, what is the point of aiming at something we do not like. In fact, to be motivated by the goal, we have to more than “just like” the goal. It has to be something that we want very badly. It does not mean that for achieving that goal we do not have to do some things what we dislike, it is totally natural that for achieving success we have to complete some unpleasant tasks, but the goal itself must be desirable for us. Many people are used to doing things that they do not personally like, but what they think other people are excepting from them. For example, may be one’s parents wanted him to become a teacher and he has chosen that kind of career although he did not want it himself. He might have been employed in that profession for years and decades but there are high chances that he is not fully satisfied with his job. For achieving higher level of job satisfaction he has to think what kind of a job he would actually like to do and make a decision to choose a new profession.
2. Precise and measureable. It is not sufficient if we know what we want to achieve, but we have not defined it precisely. Many people have undetermined objectives. For example if you say that you want to have a better job then it is very unclear. What is a better job? How do you know what is better in that sense? You have to specify what you mean by a better job. For example, you can write out what kind of tasks you have to perform there, how much responsibility you have there, what kind of persons you would be working with, how much money you would earn. The more precise you are with your goals, the better for you. It is easy to check if the goal is precise enough by asking if it is measurable. A goal has to be measureable in the way that it is possible to check later if you have accomplished this goal and the result of this check has to reflect what you have actually meant with your goal. For example, if you set a goal “I will study Spanish in 2009″ and if you learn 10 words in Spanish during that year then you have formally achieved this goal, but it is definitely not what you have meant with it. You should specify what does studying Spanish mean. You could define it by setting a level of command in Spanish you would like to acquire, for example being able to participate in basic communication, read newspapers, make presentations and so on. Alternatively, you could mention participating in a Spanish course, for example that you take 160 hours of training at the basic level and pass an exam for it. It is up to you how would you specify it, but if you do it then ask yourself how would you measure it.
3. Feasible. There is no point in aiming at an impossible goal. The goal has to be something that is beyond your control. In many cases, people make a mistake and set themselves goals, which do not depend only from them themselves if they will achieve them or not. For example, if you choose to marry one girl, then goal is to a great extent uncontrollable by you. Although you can do your best, you still cannot control her feelings and decisions. In that case it is better to limit the goal to your actions that depend on you. You can set a goal that you will take specific actions to make this girl marry you in a way that this goal is under your control. The second problem here is that the goal may be theoretically achievable and under your control, but if it is too difficult for you then it will not work for most people. If you set a goal of becoming a president then it could be possible, but it takes hard work and commitment for decades and even then only the most politically talented of us have a chance of accomplishing it. For most of us it is too tough and even if people start pursuing this goal, they will soon realize that it is impossible to achieve it and they will give up. In this case there was no practical use of setting this goal. If this goal had been easier to achieve then it could have kept them working on it. So it is better to avoid setting the goal to high. It could be said that a goal could be something that you can achieve with your 120% effort, but it is not a good idea to choose something that calls for 1200% effort from you. At the same time the goal should not be too easy to achieve. If it is achievable with little effort then you do not have to work hard on it. It may be possible to achieve it even if you do not take it seriously. That kind of a goal does not motivate you to work hard and you will not be able to utilize your potential. Too easy victories won’t make you happy.
4. Deadlined. Time is not an unlimited resource. Every moment, which has passed is lost for ever. If you let the time pass and you will not act for pursuing your goals then you will never achieve them. In order to schedule time for working on your goals, you have to know when you want to achieve a goal. If there is a precise deadline then it motivates you to use time efficiently and not to delay the start. Many people think that say would learn new languages, travel to foreign countries, write books and so on somewhere in the future. But as far as there is no precise deadline then it seems to be that there is always time to start working on these goals on one day. But the time passes and they do not start with it. So choose exact deadlines such as I will complete my book by Oct 31, 2009 or I will travel to Brazil in 2010. Even if you define it as next month or next year is not a good choice, because the next month is always the next month, if it is not the May then in it is June and then July and so on. So set explicit deadlines for your goals.
5. Written in first-person. You are the one who is going to achieve these goals. It makes a huge psychological effect if you write your goals in first-person and in the way that you tell yourself that you are going to achieve them. Define your goals as “I will have my book “Secrets of Happy Marriage” published by May1, 2010″ or “I will sell insurance contracts for at $500,000 in 2010″. Avoid using terms “I want”, “I wish”. It is not enough if you state it as you want it, you have to phrase it that you will do it.

So whenever you have defined a goal, check if it complies with these 5 rules and if not then make changes to it.

kristjan time management goals, success