Are you stressed out by setting goals? Are you ashamed to express your goals because you don’t want anyone to know you failed? Do goals depress you because you lack the strategy to actually achieve the goal? Are goals just a dream that you talk about?
I love goal setting!
I use goal setting worksheets to plan out weeks, months, and quarters. I usually achieve my goals. But, I’ve learned to set my goals higher…almost unattainable, so that my actual performance is still above average. “If you shoot for the moon, you will land upon the stars.”
Goal setting is much like Backwards Design Lesson Planning. It works for planning out a school year…it also works in planning out your work performance!
Here is how:
- Decide what the (learning/performance) outcome needs to be and the due date. For example: Create a blog with 10 entries by December, Write the first 180 pages of a book by December, Create the first 3 online modules for a new online course by December. Make the goal SMART. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time Sensitive.
- Identify the 3 skills or habits you need to use to achieve that goal. Think in terms of the actual actions that will cause the goal to happen…. Using the example of writing 180 pages in 3 months, the 3 habits might look like: wake up at 5AM every morning, write 5 pages before 8AM, and edit 10 pages each week for cohesiveness. This design process helps you discover who you need to become in order to achieve your biggest goals. Much like lesson planning, you must ask yourself “What skills do the students need to master in order to show proficiency in the outcome.” Become the goal!
- Now, the real planning! Break those 3 skills into benchmarks. Each habit should have a goal for each month that progressively takes you to the end outcome. For example, let’s break down the “wake up at 5AM” habit. By the end of month one, your benchmark goal would be to wake up 30 minutes earlier than normal everyday. Month two’s benchmark is waking up on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 5AM. Month three’s benchmark continues and now you wake up Monday-Friday at 5AM. By the end of three months, you are now successfully waking up, starting your morning routines before anyone in your house, and no longer using “time” as an excuse to why you can not get your pages written. You have hit your goal!
Simple? Yes. But you actually have to sit down and identify the goal, the habits to achieve the goal, and then break those habits into benchmarks. Goal Setting 101! Leave me a comment below if you found “value” in a simple training like this. Share this post with someone else who would benefit from this outline.
