Posted on June 12, 2015 by Jenny Cromack

Goal Setting Tips:

This article follows on from a series of blogs all looking to help you effectively change behaviour, motivate yourself and understand goal setting. In this post I will offer my own top tips to effective goal setting.

Top Tips:

  1. Plan Ahead

So you understand the principles of goal setting and are ready to go. You have worked to get yourself into the action phase of your behaviour change and are ready to get cracking. Or it may be that you are coming to the end of one phase of training and are moving on to a different phase.

I find that before you even start with a behaviour, or new training phase, it is best to sit down and forecast what it is you want to achieve and in what time frame. This is where you can consider your short term, process, and performance goals. You can also really set out a great time plan for your goals and create a map to your success. By doing this I find less time having to stop and think about what I have to do, or what it is I want out of each session because it is already set out for me.

You can also go into your new behaviour or training program with a great sense of autonomy (control) because you have set all this out and been the “master of your own destiny”. As we know from the motivation blog this autonomy is great for getting us intrinsically motivated.

  1. KISS – Keep It Super Simple

The biggest mistake I find is that people, when goal setting, will set themselves too many outcome goals. They will want to achieve 101 things and this just complicates the whole process and overloads us with things to do. This means that we do not have the ability to put the required effort into each part of our goal. It is much better to set yourself one outcome goal, or two at a push, within in one aspect of your life then focus your short term goals around this so your effort is really targeted on this. This is more likely to be achieved more effectively and then you can move on to the next set of goals you had.

  1. Prioritise Your Goals

This applies hugely to all parts of your life. When you are sitting down to goal set have yourself a balance sheet. Write down your main goals, then have a column for each for Pro’s and Con’s of achieving each specific goal. Then based upon this order your goals in terms of the importance of achieving them to you.

Then you can consider this in your goal setting plan, it may be that within training you want to lose weight, and run a 10K. The weight loss may be most important to you and will offer greatest benefit to your life so your initial outcome goal may be directed at getting your weight down. Then following that, once wieght goal achieved, the goal can be a 10K run with all the process and performance goals set around this accordingly. With working goals it may be that certain projects have deadlines so your goals may be set around these in order to give you enough time to complete them etc.

  1. Discuss Your Goals

Goal setting is quite personal but it is a great idea to discuss what you have planned for yourself and why. If nothing else it helps seek out a fresh and different perspective, and helps us clarify exactly what we want by having to explain it to others. What you have planned may be good, but we can get lost and mislead by our own desires so getting others to offer advice may help ensure our goals are truly realistic. It may also open up doors to others ways of achieving our goals that we didn’t think of.

Be aware, however, that the process is still very personal and just because someone disagrees or says something could be different doesn’t mean it is the right way to do it. Just take on board what anyone says and see how or if it could work to help you adjust your plan.

  1. Track and Document Your Goals

I am a big believer in documenting everything. When you sit down to plan your goals, create a physical document with time frames, each specific short-term goal building up to your long term goal. I find that placing a physical tick box with each goal is more effective than you’d think. When a goal is reached you can tick off the box, this physical ticking of the box makes the achievement very real to you and provides that sense of accomplishment and competence that is great for intrinsic motivation and confidence. Also put in spaces for any physical or performance measures so that you can see exactly how far you have come and how far you have to go. This again adds to that sense of achievement.

These are my top 5 tips for goal setting in no specific order. Good luck with your goal setting, get planning, and get achieving!!