How To Make Your Goals for 2011 Smarter
Published: Sun, 12/12/10
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How To Make Your Goals for 2011 Smarter By Paul Serwin As we end another year and enter in 2011, we are at the time of year where we reflect upon what was in the past year and look forward to where we are trying to go. Every December, I set a few days aside for myself to look at how I can integrate the knowledge that I gained into further success for the upcoming year. During this time I evaluate where I am, how I got there, and set my goals for the new year. Goals are very important because they allow us to take a look at the big picture of where we want to go. Goals are a preview of future events and experiences in your life. They allow us to manage our time better because we will be setting time aside towards achieving our goals. By having goals and setting out to accomplish them, we no longer have to just hope that our future will be brighter than our past was. Goals motivate us to be more determined and focused on growing our businesses, by giving us the direction we need. The greatest benefit of setting goals comes from the achievement of them. Whenever you can cross a goal off your list, you will instantly boost your self-confidence. I've never met anybody that wasn't short of euphoric after accomplishing one of their goals, no matter how small or big the feat was. A few years ago, one of my mentors in sales showed me the most surefire way to achieving your goals, which is the SMART model. The acronym SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely. Integrating this model into your goal-setting will give you a way to evaluate your goals in a way that will help set you up for success. Make your goals SMART: Specific Make sure you go into detail about your goals. This is where you will answer the following questions. *What are you going to do to reach your goal? What are you trying to accomplish? *Why is this goal important to you? *How are you going to accomplish this goal? Make your goal and the steps to reach it as specific as possible. If you know where you're going, and you know how you'll get there, what will stop you from achieving your goals? Measurable If you can't measure your goal, you won't be able to measure your success. Make sure you set up your goals in a way that you can track and see your progress as you get closer to achievement. Tracking your progress helps motivate to keep you on pace. The only way to finish your goal is by staying on track. Attainable When you set goals that you know that you can easily accomplish, you are going to be focused on finishing them as soon as possible. These goals are a priority to you because of the lack of effort needed to achieve them. When you set a goal that is probably far out of your reach, you probably won't commit as much effort to them as a goal that would be easier to achieve. You don't always want to set easy goals for yourself. The goals that are most satisfying to achieve are the ones that will stretch your abilities. These are the goals that require a stronger level of commitment from you. Realistic When you set goals, you don't want to stretch yourself too thin. You have to make sure that you have the resources and tools available to you to achieve your dreams. If you're trying to boost your profits from $100,000 to a million dollars in a year, you have to make sure that you are capable of growing your business that exponentially as well as the capacity to handle that many additional orders. It's very easy to shoot for the moon, but if your goals are depending on luck, you need to lower the bar for yourself. If your goals are too difficult you are setting yourself up for failure. Timely Every goal you set yourself should have a timeframe attached with it. "In 6 months, I want to lose 20 pounds." Putting an endpoint on it helps with your tracking and gives you a clear finish line to run towards. Not setting yourself with a deadline will not give you the urgency to start taking action now. I always present my greatest work when I'm under the pressure of a deadline to beat. When I have a project that doesn't have a concrete endpoint, I usually tend to put it off for as long as possible. As you can see, the SMART model will not only allow you clearly define everything you achieve, but it also sets you up with a very nice outline of all the tactics that you will need to accomplish what you set. This weekend (and I urge you to do the same too), I'll be setting my goals for the upcoming year. I always start with the big picture first, and write out the goals I have for the whole year. From there, I can whittle them down and set 6-month as well as monthly goals that I will need to accomplish to get to my yearly goal. Every day I go through this list and keep myself focused towards making sure that I do at least something every single day towards reaching my goal. Using the SMART model helps me to make my dreams a reality. What was the most satisfying goal you set out and accomplished this year? What are you aspiring to do next year? ~ ~ ~
The Fun and Easy Way to Set Your SMART Goals Writing down your goals on a piece of paper to only throw it away a few days later isn't fun, nor does it help you in anyway. Instead, try our goal setting software, GoalsOnTrack, it'll be fun and easy to setup all your goals in a SMART way, and reach them! Check out the demo tour video and see how this can really help you achieve your goals. ~ ~ ~
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it to a friend or colleague. ....................... Copyright 2010 by GoalsOnTrack.com This e-newsletter is published once a week by GoalsOnTrack, a web-based goal setting and tasks management software program that helps you get things done and achieve life goals. Harry Che Founder & CEO at GoalsOnTrack.com Voice: 778-668-0386 Email: harry.che@goalsontrack.com Web: www.goalsontrack.com |