How to Set and Achieve a Goal

Goals help you clarify and chart our what you want from work and life. Setting goals helps you identify what you want, while setting objectives helps you map out a path to get there. A goal is the overall target. Objectives are the steps along the way. Strategies are the approaches you use to reach your objectives, including what you will do and what you won’t. Tactics are what you actually do reach your objectives. Your strategies guide your tactics.

Measures are what you use as your unit of measurement. For example, if you’re losing weight, you would use pounds. Metrics would be the target. For example, in the example of losing weight, you might say lose 10 pounds, where pounds are the measure, but 10 pounds is the metric. You can set measures and metrics for your goals and for your objectives. This helps you identify what good success looks like as well as know when you’ve achieved your goal or objective.

Here are some reasons for setting your goals:

• Goals provide a target. Writing goals down helps improve your clarity. When you know what you want, you become more resourceful and alert to things in your life that can help you reach your goals. You also become more aware of things that take you off your path.

• Goals provide a roadmap. Goals can help you turn a dream into a path. It’s been said that goals are dreams with deadlines.

• Goals help you focus your time and effort. Having goals with deadlines helps you identify the work that needs to be done to get there. This helps you better allocate your time and energy towards what you want to accomplish.

• Goals help you prioritize. There are always trade-offs in life. Having goals helps you optimize your life towards what you want to accomplish. Goals help you prioritize your time and energy. For example, if you are training for a marathon, you might prioritize your workout and routines over other activities so that you can succeed.

• Goals help you with motivation. Having something to hope to hope for and work towards can provide inspiration. Whenever you feel off track, you can remind yourself of your goal and what you want to accomplish.

In other words, if you don’t have goals with timeframes, then you don’t have a way to prioritize your time and energy, since you don’t have clarity on what or when you need to accomplish something.
Check out the 2012 Edition of this book.