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Goal Setting Simplified
Most of us, just keep dreaming about a good
Job, a good home, good bank balance etc, but they just dream and forget
it, because they dream for so many things together, they never even recall
them. More specifically we can say it’s a "fleeting thought". They never
decide what is that they really want, and they never commit heartily to
get it. Goal setting is an essential practice for your personal and
professional growth.
The process of setting goals helps in choosing, where you want yourself to
be in life. By knowing exactly what you want to achieve, where you want to
go, you can better plan and utilize your energy accordingly. More than
this, a properly set goal can be highly motivating, and as you get into
the habit of setting and achieving goals, you will soon experience that
you are more confident individual now.
The great Aristotle told "First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a
goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends;
wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to
that end"
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Step 1: Choose Your Goal and Stay Focused
on it
When it comes to choose a Goal, you might
have so many Goals, but you have to prioritize them. Take a paper and pen
and write down all the Goals you have and see which is the most important
Goal and begin with that. The simple idea is, don’t set a lot of goals at
the same time, because this way your focus won’t be on a particular Goal
and ultimately you won’t achieve any of them completely.
The key to goal setting is staying focused. It is not that easy to focus
at many goals at the same time, as easy you might be assuming it to be.
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Step 2: Produce a Desire to Achieve your
Goal
Desire, is what that
keeps us working all hours. It is desire that keep us thinking,
keep us busy doing things, keeps us working from 8am to 10 Pm every
day. You can think of it as fuels that ignite us to do something.
What ever we do, a design to do it successfully is a must. Take
a minute and think about the goal you've set for yourself and ask
your-self, "how committed you are to achieve this goal"?
Found the answer? Ask next question “will you ever give up during
the process of achieving your goal”?
You are right if you are truly committed and won’t give up. A True desire
is a must to achieve anything you want to achieve.
Step 3: Develop a Self-Believe
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe,
it can achieve”, if you notice this line closely you can easily understand
that, if you conceive and believe, you can achieve. I repeat in bold
letter “conceive and believe”. If there is a fraction of doubt in your
mind that you cannot achieve something, you won't be able to commit
yourself to it. In order to achieve, you must believe it is possible and
that it’s possible for you to achieve.
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Step 4: Set a Deadline to achieve Your
Goal
Having a deadline help you to plan your time,
energy, efforts and concentration in a very systematic way. When you have
a deadline set for yourself to finish a work, you will realize the rate of
completion is very fast an accurate.
Take the following two situations for illustration; Situation 1, you have
been assigned a job/task and you do not have a deadline to complete it.
Situation 2: Same job is assigned to you with a realistic deadline and you
finished it. Now realize which job you managed and finished better, in
which job you enjoyed finishing… no need to say. It’s the second job for
which you had a deadline. It’s a human nature, when you have a sense of
urgency, you won’t dare to waste any resources and put your best with a
systematic planning to complete it on time. Deadline can always move you
to take actions to achieve the task /job assigned.
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Step 5: See your Goal with open eyes
As of now, your goal might be just a thought,
whenever you seat and close your eyes you can see it, you can feel it. But
now, see your goal with your open eyes. Open eyes? Yes open eyes. I want
you to see your goal by open eyes. Write down your goal on paper and read
it, see it, feel it.
Recall your school days, when you learnt your first rhyme in Nursery
class. When you read and re-read a phrase the impression on the mind
becomes deeper and deeper and chances are very less that you will ever
forget those rhymes. So to remember and feel your goal in front of you,
please write it down on a paper and keep it on your table, or somewhere
you can read easily and frequently.
Step 6: Identify the Obstacles
After having a clear picture of the Goal and
the milestones, there is something else that need you attention. Guess!!
You are right, the obstacles. There is nothing that you want to achieve
and it has no obstacle. Obstacles are bounded to be there when it comes to
achieve something. So you have to identify them and write them down on the
paper.
When you have the Obstacles that you think you have in the path of
achieving your Goals, it will help you to make more appropriate
action/task plan to achieve you milestones.
Step 7: Identify the Resources Now when you have identified the obstacles
for your goal, you have to find out the resources you need and the
resources you have. Identification of required resources are equally
important, as because you will need them during the completion of your
milestones and the goal.
Step 8: Define the Milestones Now you will be making milestones to for your
Goal. It’s always a best practice to divide the goal to milestones. Most
of us, do not achieve our goal, just because it appears overwhelming when
we see it. When we divide a big task to small tasks, it becomes easy for
us to finish each task. Milestones are easier to achieve and shows the
progress. When you see progress in task, you find more interest going
ahead, and doing things.
Step 9: Define Task to Achieve Milestones Now we are making the actual action plan to
achieve the ultimate goal we have set for ourselves. To do this first of
all lets again divide the milestones into easy-to-accomplish tasks. Task
is the ultimate action we will be taking to achieve our goal. The idea of
dividing the milestones into different tasks is just for the ease of
action and execution. Make sure to list all the tasks, even those you
think, can be done in minutes, because you have to spare a minute for it.
While working with a systematic plan and for a scheduled task, every
minutes count.
Now when you have enlisted each and every task, you have to perform with
deadline set, as to when the task should be completed, its time to real
action now. Sort the task in order of date of completion, importance and
chances of ease of completion. Once sorted out, start finishing the listed
task and mark the task in the list as completed with date of completion
for your self-analysis.
Once, you finish a task, mark them as completed and don’t forget to put
the date of completion. Make an extra column for time gap, and write the
time gap here. When you was supposed to finish the task and when you
actually finished it. Highlight completed task with different color, so
that initially, you can feel; out of so many tasks only these has been
completed and as you progress, you will see ninety percent of the task has
been achieved and then hundred percent. This task list is going to help
you monitor your progress. It should be easy to read and should give you a
clear picture of tasks already completed and the tasks that is yet to be
completed. When you will have a look on this list, it will keep you
motivated. Every completed task will motivate you to go ahead and complete
the next task. Once you have done it, you achieved your Milestone. Keep on finishing your milestones and finally achieve your ultimate goal.
Article by: Pradeep Chaudhary is the founder
and director of Simplified Success
www.simplifiedsuccess.com a portal that provides systematic tool
for your personal and professional goal setting and achieving, number of
articles and tips to help you achieve your personal and business goals.
They also offer free motivations desktop wallpapers, desktop backgrounds
and motivational theme calendars.
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