Setting Goals in the New Year
The new year usually comes with new year's resolutions for most of us. Our lives have been incredibly disrupted with the global pandemic, which means creating effective and achievable goals are even more important now - there is no point making a resolution to go to the gym thrice a week as gyms will open and shut based on COVID-19 restrictions, so you would be better committing to home workouts or things like running.
The two main ideas we will look at briefly in this blog post are SMART targets and goal hierarchies which are some ways of setting good goals and also breaking them down to understand how to achieve it.
SMART Targets
This is essentially a criteria to help you create goals that are specific and with clear parameters to work towards. Here is what it stands for:
Specific - your goal has to be clearly defined so that you know what you are trying to achieve. Define it in the simplest way possible and think about things like: Who is involved? Where will you be accomplishing it? What is it you are trying to achieve and why? What are any requirements you may need to complete the goal?
Measurable - can you track your progress and measure your final outcome? How will you know when your goal is accomplished?
Achievable - is your goal something that is reasonable and realistic that can be done? Of course it should not be easy but it shouldn't be completely out of reach either.
Relevant - is this goal relevant to your long term aim? Does it fit well with other goals you have made?
Time - how long will you give yourself to achieve this goal? This is important because you need to give yourself enough time for it to be achievable but still remain a challenge. Is this goal a priority - does it need to be completed first? Is there a deadline for it that is coming up?
An example of a SMART target is:
“I will be able to run 100m 0.2 seconds faster than I currently can in 1 month.”
S - the goal specifies the exact type of run and time difference this person wants to improve on.
M - both the distance of the run and the time they run it in are being measured, so tracking whether the goal has been achieved or not will be easy.
A - Improving the time by 0.2 seconds is an achievable target if this person does the appropriate training during the month.
R - if this person is an athlete or sprinter, or plays a sport where they need to be fast, this target will be highly relevant to progressing in their sport in the long term.
T - a time limit of 1 month has been set to achieve this goal.
Goal Hierarchy
This is a method to break down complex long-term goals into more tangible, shorter goals. To build a hierarchy, you need to have an overarching long term goal. Now think about two things you need to accomplish in order to achieve your top, long-term goal. For example, if my long-term goal is that I want to run my own business, the two things I need to accomplish in order for that to happen is I would like to have a degree in business and find something I am passionate about that I can create a business around. If I split those into two further sub goals, in order to get a degree in business I need specific grades and some work experience in business. You can continue to break down your overall goals into these further sub goals, until you reach relatively short term goals.
This method is so useful for understanding what exactly you need to do to achieve quite a large goal, and can be applied to any part of life. It is important to remember while doing this that there is no singular path to reaching your goals - people who have degrees in business run just as successful businesses as some people who dropped out of school! This is not to say that you should drop out of school and you will instantly have a career - these people worked extremely hard and applied grit, but simply took a different route.
I hope this has made you think about the effectiveness of your goals. Having a clear destination in your head is so important in making sure you stay focussed on whatever you want to achieve in life, professionally or personally. Everyone will have bad days and face failures, but the beauty of living in a world with so many opportunities is that there is no singular route to reach where you want to go, so don't stop persevering!