How to master the art of goal-setting
As long as you understand what the most important metrics are, and are able to create a goal setting routine that works for you as an individual, then mastering the art of goal-setting is actually much easier than you think!
Take it from a guy that has written more than 15 in-depth articles covering everything from the different types of goals to all the tips and tricks from the best goal-setting techniques around!
We are going to learn how to set time horizons, make your goals realistic, compartmentalize them to make them more attainable, and a whole lot more!
To start, let’s look at:
What are achievable goals?
“Achievable” is defined as something that is able to be brought about or reached successfully.
and
A “goal” is defined as something that one intends to accomplish or attain
An achievable goal can hence be defined as something you want to accomplish that can be completed or reached.
If only it was as simple as reading three sentences, though, for some, it can be. For those of us not that fortunate, however, we will be taking a step-by-step approach to learning everything we need to know to set and achieve realistic and attainable goals, successfully!
By the time you’ve finished this article, you will be able to answer the following:
- What is a goal?
- The difference between attainable and unattainable goals
- What are the different types of goals
- Why are goals important?
- What are the best Goal Setting Techniques?
Once you’re able to answer these, you will have everything you need to master the art of not only goal-setting but goal-achieving!
We start with diving a little bit deeper into what exactly a goal is:
What is a goal?
A goal can be defined as an aim, design, end, intention, intent, objective, object, and purpose.
As we discussed earlier it also means: “what one intends to accomplish or attain”.
There is something that distinguishes the specific word “goal”. It is an implication that suggests it is something only attained by prolonged effort and hardship. What this basically means is that goals require effort and suffering to achieve.
This will be important later on in the article when we look into the different types of goals and how to keep them achievable while creating them.
Difference between attainable and unattainable goals
An attainable goal is something that a person can accomplish with effort and determination.
It’s not always easy to set achievable goals, but it’s important to do so. On the other hand, an unachievable goal is something that is impossible for someone to achieve without some outside help or superhuman powers.
There are certain things in life where we know for sure if we will be able to reach them or not. For example, without surgery, a person can never be taller than their height limit. They could try and try again, but they will never be taller than they are allowed to be by their DNA without external interventions. These interventions also come at a high cost, both monetary but also in terms of pain tolerance and rehabilitation time.
The line gets a little blurry. If you are willing to pay the price, it is sometimes possible to turn even unattainable goals into attainable ones. On the other hand, if you were to set more realistic goals, take something like weight loss. That many people have been able to achieve through hard work and dedication, while there is still suffering and effort involved with every type of goal, the price becomes much more affordable and realistic.
When planning for the future and setting goals, it becomes paramount to take this into account and to keep it as setting achievable goals is critical to a successful life.
If we set unattainable goals, then we are setting ourselves up for failure.
Different types of goals
Goals can be classified into different types and each type of goal has a different time horizon.
So we will start by dividing them into either :
Short-term goals are goals that are achieved in a year or less. They are very specific and they guide you to do the right things in the right order.
Or
Long-term goals are usually more abstract and they don’t have an exact time frame. They usually take more than one year to achieve, and they guide you on how to live your life with a purpose.
There are also many different categories that goals can fall into. I have split them into 13 distinct types of goals:
- Personal goals
- Fitness goals
- Career goals
- Spiritual goals
- Self-Development goals
- Financial goals
- Status goals
- Relationship goals
- Social goals
- Educational goals
- Productivity goals
- Adventure goals
- Life goals
If you would like to learn more about the different types of goals along with some great examples, then check out our article on the 13 different types of goals here.
Why are goals important and why you should review them regularly
Because goals provide purpose, and purpose provides us with a sense of direction, which we use to navigate our lives!
Taking the time to think about what you want, helps to create that sense of purpose. The further you plan ahead the more you are creating structures and plans which also act as solutions to future problems. Taking an example from Russian history that has been famously reimplemented many times over, we can consider long terms strategies like 5-year plans.
Short-term goals help us keep focused, but it is the longer-term ones that allow us to move from just dreaming to actually achieving by helping us see the bigger picture. Having that outline allows us to break large tasks into much smaller and more manageable ones. It’s the personification of the old question “How does one eat an elephant?”
The answer is simply “One bite at a time”. Breaking goals into smaller sections, just like with programming, eating elephants, or any other form of problem-solving makes the tasks easier to achieve and allows you to solve our problems in smaller segments, over which we have more control.
Some goals are rigid and can be measured in either success or failure, but more often than not, our long-term goals tend to be more fluid, changing and evolving with us as our wants and needs mature.
Because of this reviewing them and making sure they still align with what you value, becomes just as important as setting them the right way!
The 4 best Goal Setting Techniques Around
There are four models of goal setting that simply outperform the rest, and understanding these models is the real key to understanding how to set achievable goals.
These models have been tried and tested by millions of people and each has its own strengths and weaknesses, however, there are also many similarities. They are all focused on making the goals we set clearly defined, realistic, measurable, compartmentalizable, and evolvable!
Each of the four has an article covering their history and dedicated to better understanding their specific applications, that we strongly recommend you check out!
The four best goal setting techniques around are:
SMART/R goal model
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. SMART/R adds the extra step of Rewards to the model.
You can learn more about the GROW goals here
GROW goal model
GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Option, Way forward
You can learn more about the GROW goals here.
CLEAR goal model
Our third strategy is called the CLEAR technique which stands for Collaborative, Limited, Emotional, Appreciable, and Refinable.
You can learn more about the GROW goals here.
PACT goal model
Our last system is the most outcome focussed goal-planning strategy, PACT stands for Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, Trackable
You can learn more about the GROW goals here.
Understanding these specific goal setting models will teach you how to make your goals:
- Realistic
- Compartmentalizable
- Evolvable
- Practical
- Measurable
- Clearly defined
- Scalable
And most importantly
Achievable!
How to set goals that turn the invisible, visible.
Just like with any other subject, if you investigate and research it, soon you will have a better understanding of it than most people will ever have!
The act of setting a goal starts with a need, hence all goals are created with a purpose to fill that need, however the moment we create a goal, we also give ourselves purpose. It’s this purpose that drives us to take action to turn thoughts into reality.
In a sense, we are all like little wishing machines, just that our wishes aren’t granted instantaneously.
Instead, we need to learn the language of goal setting and follow the rules set out to be able to steer our actions into turning the invisible, visible!
Keep making good life decisions and eventually, you’ll be achieving everything you set out to do!
Be sure to check out the rest of our series on goal setting:
Personal goals
Goal-setting
Business goals
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