Evalutating your Goal Setting

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How are you doing with setting goals?

Hopefully by now you have started writing your goals on a regular basis. At first your excited to do it but it is also hard to get in the habit of doing them on a daily basis until you get in a rhythm and start seeing some success with them.

After you have been setting goals on a regular basis for a couple of weeks, it is time to review your progress. See how many goals you are setting on a daily basis and evaluate how well you are performing.

If you find that you are accomplishing all your goals in a couple of hours and it feels like no effort at all, then you are not setting goals that are tough enough. After a short period of time you will have no sense of accomplishment because your goals are not set high enough to give you that “I did it” feeling.

On the other hand, if you reach the end of the day and most of your goals have not been checked off, then you may be setting your goals too high or trying to accomplish too much in a period of time.

While you want to set high goals, you also much remember that your goals need to be realistic. Your goals need to be reasonable or else frustration will set in and you will quickly abandon the goal setting process.

What it comes down to is that not only will you have to set your goals and write them down on a daily basis, but you must also evaluate your performance and make changes in order to perfect your system and get the most out of your goal setting.

Yes, goal setting does take effort but over time that effort will pay off.

More on goal setting...

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Last week I discussed the importance of having goals. Today I will go over the different ranges of goals and how they interrelate to each other.

First you have your long range goals. These are goals that are more than five years away. While it seems like a long time, your other goals are ones that build up to these goals. For example you can have a goal that in ten years you want to be able to sell your business and retire. Another long range goal could be to have a certain amount of money in the bank for your retirement.

On the personal side you could set a goal to have your child’s college education funded by a certain time. Another example would be that you plan to have your dream home in 7 years.

You need to take the time to deice where you want to be in 5, 10, 20 years and so on and what it is going to take to get you there.

Next down the list is your short range goals. These are goals that you want to achieve in 5 years but will not be accomplished in the next year. They are goals that are stepping stones to reaching your long range goals.

For example, if you set a goal to have enough money in the bank to retire in 20 years, in 5 years you need to have a certain amount of money in the bank. Or you can set a goal to be debt free in the next 2 years that will set you on course to hit your big goal of retiring without having to worry about Social Insecurity.

You could set a business goal that in five years you want your business to be making 2 million dollars or you want to move into a new building in 3 years.

Finally you have your short range goals. If the medium range goals build you toward your long range goals then you probably can figure out that short range goals build you toward your medium range goals. These are goals that you plan to accomplish in the next year.

Short range goals are broken down even further to year goals, monthly goals, weekly goals, and daily goals. Once again you look at where you want to be in the next year and plan your goals accordingly.

What do you have to do this month in order to reach your one year goal? Once you know what you have to do this month, you want to break it down and figure out what you will have to do this week.

Of course you know what is coming next, once you figure on what you need to accomplish this week then you want to break it down and figure out what you have to do today to reach that goal this week and so on.

At this point you probably feel overwhelmed. It will take too much time to set all these goals, and you don’t have the time.

You will be amazed what you can accomplish when you are actually setting goals for yourself on a daily basis. You begin to realize what is important and what you just do not need to do.

Other great thing about short range goals is that they get you excited. When you hit that short range goal it energizes you and the next thing you know you are busting out the next you and the one beyond that.

Now there will be days that you are just hit with multiple road blocks and it seems that nothing will go right. You have your goals but you just cannot hit any of them that day. That is when you need to take a look at your long range goals to get some motivation. Also take a look at what goals you have accomplished to see how far you have come.

A goal, not a resolution

Image by lululemon athletica via Flickr

To be successful you must have goals. In your business you need to have a business plan which will set out the goals for your business and the numbers behind them. You also need goals in your personal life which will set you apart from most of the population.

When most people think of goals they think of New Years resolutions that they usually break in the first week. But a goal is more; it requires more of you so that you can get more out of it.

Here is the heart of a goal so that you can start putting some together.

First of all a goal must be written down. By writing the goal down you are making a commitment to accomplish it.

Second a goal must have a time period. Someday just does not work when setting a goal. If you want to loose 20 pounds then you must set a realistic timeline to accomplish it. If you want to do it in one week you are not being realistic. If you set a timeline of one year, you are not taking the goal seriously.

Third a goal must be specific. You must have a specific target to hit. If you want to loose 20 pounds you cannot set a goal that says that you would like to loose some weight. Saying that you would like to pay off some debt is not a specific goal, but saying you would like to be debt free in 24 months is a specific goal.

A goal must also be realistic. If I set a goal to be a player in the NBA by next year, the goal will not be realistic. First of all I have only played basketball a few times in my life. Second I am older than players coming into the NBA and third my height would be an issue.

So you have the basics of what needs to make up a goal. Now get some goals written down.

For more on setting goals head over to the expert goal setter himself Zig Ziglar for more ideas.