There are various factors to take into account when you are in process of your own personal goal setting sesssion. This article will highlight some of the factors that you should be considering when you are going through the process.
The first factor is to choose the correct goal to work on. Most people that I’ve talked to over the years usually have more then one goal which they want to achieve at any one time. Although it is possible to work on more then one goal at a time, our brains function more efficient if it is focused on doing only one thing at a time. When you multi-task, or in other words, trying to juggle more then one task at a time, most of the time you will tend to do badly in both. Have you tried to compose a document while trying to talk to someone on the phone. Did you find it extremely difficult to concentrate on the conversation and also to finish creating your document?
Similarly, to achieve an optimal level of efficiency, we should only work on one goal at a time. However, this choice has caused many headaches among individuals because they have no idea which one they really want to do first. At this stage, I get the individuals to list down each of their goals and have them score their goals across a number of criterion that are personally important to the individual. They could be comparing their goals against factors like financial benefit, boost to self esteem to name a few. The goal that scores the highest means that is the goal that they should be going after at that particular point in time. One of the common factors that I always tell individuals to include is the desire to have that particular goal. How badly they want to achieve a certain goal carries a lot of weight in the judging criterion because the amount of desire they have for a certain goal is proportional to the amount of motivation they will possess when they are working at that particular goal.
Second factor to consider is the formulation a proper goal statement. Most people who have thought they have set goals in the past but fail to achieve them usually have goals like “I want to get richer” or “I want to be fitter”. Goals that have no time frame, no emotions and no action words attached to it will not come true. Compare the latter statement with this one, “I will triumphantly lose 2 inches off my waist in 6 months time by going to the gym after work everyday”. Notice how powerful the second statement is ? There is a measuable factor of inches to lose from the waist. There is also a time frame attached to it so it immediately gives our minds something to focus on. There is also an action attached to the desire which is going to the gym everyday after work. Finally, there is emotions and feelings attached to the statement so we can activate our inner motivator, which resides in our subconscious mind to help us achieve our goals.