GOAL SETTING: 3 Ways to Make Goals Work

You’ve most likely set goals for yourself or your team for 2009. Are you on target to reach them? How do you know? I think the story about a social worker who comes across a drifter on the street one day makes the best point about goal-setting and planning. The exchange goes like this:

Social Worker: Where do you live?
Drifter: Here and there.

Social Worker: What do you eat?
Drifter: This and that.

Social Worker: What do you do for a living?
Drifter: Anything and everything.

Social Worker: When do you bathe?
Drifter: Now and then.

Social Worker: You should sign up for government assistance.
Drifter: When would I get it?

Social Worker: Sooner or later.

Oftentimes we drift through life with no specific path in mind about how we are going to reach our destination. We imagine ourselves in a particular place, and we feel momentary excitement about how things could be. We are hopeful that one day we’ll reach that place and find the satisfaction and happiness we are sure it will bring. It’s a dream. We’re all encouraged to have them. Yet a goal without a plan will not become much more than a dream—a dream deferred or a dream dissolved, but one that has less of a chance of becoming reality? Why?

If you were a parent of a 13-year-old who has just decided she wants to become a medical doctor when she grows up, how would you coach her to reach that goal? Would you say, “Hey, good luck with that” or “I’m sure you’ll make a fine doctor one day”? Or would you help her establish a plan? What type of education will she need? What college or university should she attend? What medical school should she consider? What specific area of medicine will she want to study? How will she afford this extensive education with today’s skyrocketing fees?

Without these specific considerations, she will most likely not become a doctor or she’ll waste a lot of time and money taking a circuitous route there. Thus my first point:

1) Create a specific, written action plan to accomplish any goal.
Put it on paper to make it real in your mind. You should be able to reference it over and over again, and update and modify it as the need arises. There should be timelines and deadlines and associated costs in the plan. There should be people to contact and questions to ask and actions to take in order to make this plan move. Your plan should keep you actively involved in bringing it to fruition.

2) Work the plan.
Everyday if not every other day should require some activity you will be taking toward achieving the goal. Keep the plan with you or at least the next step in the plan so you can read it. I usually write an affirmation or some statement of encouragement next to the step. As I read what I must do, I also read the quote that says I can do it. If you read it enough times, you eventually believe that you can. And oftentimes, if it becomes a part of your belief, you will work harder to make it happen.

3) Work beyond the goal.
Once a goal is hit, the next question becomes “Now what?” Usually the planning stops there. That’s actually when even greater work begins. Getting there is only half the battle. Staying there is quite another. In our example to help our child become a medical doctor, then what happens when we get her there? Does she branch off into a specific area of medicine? Where will she do her residency? Once she’s through residency, will she open her own practice or will she join a group?

There are times in life when we should coast after we’ve met a particular goal. We should stay there and enjoy the journey. But if we’re not careful, we will become stagnant, and the rest of the world and other opportunities will pass us by. However, if coasting is a part of the plan, then we will know exactly when to turn off the auto-pilot and head for the next destination. As life coach and real estate mogul Peter Daniels put it: “Goal setting is a logical fulfilling approach to dynamic living.”