Six rules that will help set achievable goals

Do you think we often achieve our own goals - on average? Statistics will not please you.

Only eight percent of people achieve their goals.
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Perhaps the reason is that many of us do not set effective, realistic goals. Instead of carefully thinking about what needs to be achieved, we focus on how to achieve this.

As soon as you manage to develop the habit of setting meaningful, achievable goals , it becomes much easier to work with them.

In this article I will talk about six approaches that help me set goals for myself and achieve them.

Transferred to Alconost

Understand why specific goals are important to you

Speaking about goals, you need to understand that intrinsic motivation is very important here - it will force you to overcome difficulties and rise after failures.

It is tempting to set goals based on external motivators such as money, prestige, or fame.

For example, imagine that you want to get a master's or doctoral degree. At first, this may come to mind: "I want to achieve this goal in order to increase the potential earnings." Money is a classic outward motivator.

However, in order to make it easier for you to achieve this goal , you need to dig a little deeper and find out why this goal is important for you on a personal level: for example, it can be an interesting intellectual task or its achievement will help to better support your family.

Break long-term goals into smaller ones - weekly.

If you keep in mind the long-term goals , this, of course, will help to create tasks for the week. However, it is useful to break long-term goals into more convenient points.

A good solution would be to start with goals for the year. Choosing one of them, break it down into smaller ones - for each month and each week.

Let's say you want to write a book this year - a great long-term goal. If we assume that there are 52 weeks in a year, and about 75,000 words in an average book, then a good task for a week will be to write 1,450 words - this is much more convenient in practice.

Goals for the week define on Monday

From the first school days, we are accustomed to the fact that Monday is a new beginning, which means an ideal day for setting goals : it is on this day that we have the most optimism and a clear understanding of what we need.

Do not forget to write down goals - this will increase the likelihood that you will be engaged in them and reach them.

Goals must be measurable

We constantly hear that goals must be measurable, but we do not always imagine what this means. If a goal seems vague or ambitious, this is a bad sign.

For example, at first glance it may seem that “constantly working on a blog” is a good goal. But if you think about it, it will become clear that the expression “to work constantly” can mean the most different things. If you worked on a blog every day for five minutes, but did not finish a single publication, would this mean that you achieved what you wanted?

It is better to set a goal like this: “Write two high-quality blog posts with 1500 words each.”

Plan work on goals using time blocks.

The essence of the time block method is the assignment of tasks of certain types at certain intervals of the day. If you plan the day in this way, you are more likely to reach your goals, as time will be available for them.

Before you start breaking days into time blocks, you should think about your own biological clock - to take into account periods of greatest productivity.

Start by asking yourself:

• Am I an owl or a lark?
  
• What time do I have the most attention?
  
• What time do I have maximum creative abilities?
  

It is best to fill the days with one- and two-hour sections of continuous work, however, the principles of time blocks can also be used during breaks .

Think about your goals at the end of each week.

A great way to increase attention to your goals is to think about them every week. In addition, this way you can notice important behaviors in yourself, and this will help you better think up goals for the next week.

A key part of this reflection can be a discussion with friends or family. However, talking about your own goals should be after their achievement - not before. When we share our successes, our mood improves, which motivates us to new challenges. But if you talk in advance about what you want to achieve, it can give a premature feeling of satisfaction and reduce motivation.

It is also important at the end of the week to ask yourself questions that will help assess the success:

• Did you achieve a specific goal?
  
• If it was possible, what was done that turned out to be the most useful?
  
• If it failed, what was the most difficult thing?
  

Many clever people believe that the most important thing in the end is hard work to achieve goals . But if you are constantly busy, it may seem that the time spent on not going towards goals was wasted.

However, if you slow down and re-evaluate your goals, it can be a great help in achieving them later.

As Arianna Huffington wrote , “we mistakenly believe that success is the result of the amount of time invested in the work, although its“ quality ”is more important.”

And the correct formulation of goals, without a doubt, is a rational waste of time.

About the translator

The article is translated in Alconost.

Alconost is engaged in the localization of games , applications and websites in 70 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any string resource formats.

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