4.1: Setting Goals

Understanding Goals and Objectives

Goals give your motivation a clear purpose and help you turn your dreams into achievable outcomes. When you set goals, you create a roadmap that guides your actions and keeps your effort focused in the right direction. Objectives break those bigger goals down into smaller, specific steps, making them easier to tackle. By learning how to set effective goals, and the right objectives to support them, you can stay motivated, track your progress, and keep moving forward, one step at a time.

A goal is “the end toward which effort is directed” or an “aim.” When you are working toward a goal, you are moving in a clear direction and aiming for a desired result. That end result is a dream or vision you have for yourself, and the goal is the description of that dream or vision. Goals translate your dreams into tangible targets that help focus your motivation and energy. Without motivation, even the clearest goals may not be reached, and without goals, motivation has no clear path to follow. The two work together: your motivation fuels the effort you put in, while your goals give that effort direction and purpose.

Sometimes goals are associated with the word “objective,” and these words are often confused or used interchangeably. An objective is “something toward which effort is directed: an aim, goal, or end of action,” which sounds very similar and even includes the word goal. When goals and objectives appear together in the same plan, a goal usually describes the bigger dream or outcome, while an objective outlines the specific steps you will take to reach it. For example, a goal might be to “increase sales by 30%,” while a related objective could be “by hiring two more salespeople.” We will discuss how to write clear goal statements later in this chapter.

Goals can be short-term or long-term. A short-term goal can usually be achieved within minutes, hours, days, or months up to one year, while a long-term goal often takes more than a year to accomplish. Having a timeframe is an important part of an effective goal because it helps sustain your motivation by giving you milestones to work toward. Often, long-term goals are broken down into a series of short-term goals that serve as stepping stones along the way, helping you stay focused and motivated throughout your journey.

If you do an internet search for “goal-setting models,” you will find hundreds of thousands of results. Most models use acronyms or short, catchy phrases as titles. The model we’ll use in this textbook is “SMART.” If you were do an internet search for “SMART” goal-setting, you will see several interpretations of what each letter in the acronym stands for, but we’ll be using the following definitions in this text:

SMART Goal-setting

S = Specific

M = Measurable

A = Achievable

R = Relevant

T = Timely

A powerful goal needs to contain all of the above criteria. Your goal can be written in one, perhaps long, statement, and when your statement is read, the reader can see all of the SMART criteria in your statement.

Let’s examine each element of the acronym.

Specific means you have a detailed description of what you want to achieve. You’ve used specific and descriptive nouns, not general adjectives, in your goal statement.

Measurable means you should be able to see a difference between before achieving a goal and after. Using numbers in your goal statement ensures your goal is measurable. Those numbers might be numerals, percentages or even words like “all” or “half.”

Achievable means you believe you have the skills or abilities (or you will have them) to be able to complete the tasks necessary for the goal. Goals should be challenging so that you maintain interest but also realistic in terms of the skills and abilities you already have or plan to learn.

Relevant means the goal has meaning in your life and relates to your life roles. Someone else cannot write a powerful goal for you; only you can believe that a dream or vision works in your life.

Timely means your goal has a deadline or date by which you want to achieve the goal. If you don’t have a deadline, you may be tempted to procrastinate or put off the work needed to move toward your goal.

“A goal properly set is halfway reached.” --- Zig Ziglar

If your goal statement contains all of the SMART criteria, your goal will be motivating, and you are more likely to move forward. Plus, as you move toward achieving your goal, you will be able to see where you stand. As you make progress, you will build upon a sense of accomplishment that will strengthen you and reinforce your efforts.

If you realize you are not making progress, you will be able to analyze the reasons if you’ve included all of the SMART criteria. Perhaps you were not as specific as you could have been, or you didn’t include any measurable numbers so you cannot see any progress. Perhaps you were too ambitious and planned a goal using skills and abilities you don’t have, or perhaps you created a goal that no longer fits with your life. Maybe you didn’t give yourself enough time to achieve the goal using your current skills and abilities.

Decision-making as Part of Goal-setting

You may not be aware of the fact that we make hundreds of decisions every day as we pursue our goals. Some decisions like what to eat for dinner and what to wear to a party are minor and usually do not have major implications for our lives. Other decisions such as where to attend college or what career to pursue greatly impact our lives and are the material we use to create and pursue life goals.

Making smart decisions is an important skill that involves thinking deeply about a current problem or issue and focusing on how we would like that situation to be. How we'd like that situation to be is the picture we keep in mind when planning goals. Smart decision-making involves brainstorming choices and options and picking the most sound choice that will lead us on the best path possible towards accomplishing our goals.

Much like SMART goals, making smart decisions involves a systematic process that will help you to think through each problem or issue that you have in order to make the best decision possible. Smart decision-making helps you to focus on improving your situation and finding solutions. To make smart decisions in a systematic way, we need to start by identifying the problem or issue we're facing. What is the current situation, problem or issue? Clearly define what is going on. If we do not understand what is going on, fixing the problem or addressing the challenge will be difficult. When we're brainstorming potential options, we need to create a list of as many options as possible. We are not selecting an option in this step but rather listing all available options. After creating that list of options, we need to assess and reflect upon those options. Looking at the list of possible options or actions, ask the question of what likely will happen with each option. After reflecting upon our assessments of each option, we need to take action & evaluate. Once we have reflected on which measure/action is best, we need to implement an action plan. After having the appropriate time to implement an action plan (timing will be different for each of our goals since goals can be short or long-term), evaluate if the desired outcomes and goals are being reached. As stated above, if you realize you're not making progress, you can look back at your brainstormed list of options to see if there are other options to pursue now that you hadn't acted upon before.