My Goals for 2009

Welcome back for Part 2 of the series “My Goals for 2009.” In case you’re just joining us, you can check out part 1 on the importance of setting goals.

Most of us realize that setting goals is important, but we have no clue where to begin in the process. How do you set a goal? How do you balance making a realistic goal but not have it be too simple that it won’t challenge you? How do you track progress? Hopefully today, we’ll answer some of those questions…

Before you can do anything, you have to determine what is most important to you. Once you have clarity on what your priorities are, then you can establish how that affects your time, your money, and everything else around you.

Once you have established what your priorities are, then it’s time to begin actually organizing your schedule and your life around these things. Begin to create a list of goals that are based around your priorities. Here’s what I mean: If your family is your top priority, then what goals do you need to establish in order to reflect that? If school is your top priority, what goals do you need that will help you to reflect that? As you begin to create goals based on your priorities, here is an acronym for criteria your goals should meet – S.M.A.R.T. Goals:

SPECIFIC – What is the exact result you want to achieve? Be as specific as possible. Goals like “I want to make more money” sound
nice but are really vague. By answering specifically how much money you want to make, you can be more detailed when setting your goal. For example, you could say, “I want to make $10,000 in the next 6 months.” That is a very specific, detailed goal.

MEASURABLE – What is a successful result? How will you know that you’ve reached your goal? For example, if I said “I want to have a closer relationship with my Mom,” that’s good, but how do you measure that? How do you know if you’re accomplishing it? Try to make it measurable. So instead you could say this, “I want to spend two hours hanging out with my Mom one night each week.” Now you can measure that. You can track how you’re doing. You’re working to accomplish the same thing as your original goal of “I want to have a closer relationship with my Mom,” but now you can measure it.

ATTAINABLE – I’m all for dreaming big, but you have to ask yourself if your goal is realistic. “I want to be the first Junior High student to play in the NBA” – sounds good; it’s even measurable and specific, but I don’t know how attainable it is. You need to balance between pushing yourself to accomplish a challenging goal but also making it realistic.

RELEVANT – How does achieving this goal align with your priorities? If you say, “I want to be a millionaire by the time I’m 25,” that’s great, but how does that goal tie back into any of your priorities? If none of your priorities have anything to do with money or financial independence, then the goal is not relevant. Your goals must be relevant to your priorities.

TIME – What is your cut-off date for achieving this goal? There must be a set finish line, so you are pushing yourself to achieve that goal. Without a timeline for when you are going to accomplish the goal, it is very easy to get off track, and you just get to it when you get to it. A goal without a deadline is just a wish.

Finally, your goals must be written down. When you write down your goal, what you want to accomplish not only becomes clearer, it becomes a visual reminder of what you’re trying to do. When you write it down, now you are making a commitment with yourself. It’s more than a mental goal that can change based on circumstances.

Once you’ve got some goals written down, it’s time to make them happen. Figure out what tasks are associated with accomplishing those goals and begin putting those items into your schedule. When you create a schedule and a plan, you are taking time to commit to the process.

Tomorrow, I’ll share some specific goals I’ve set for my business for 2009.

(NOTE: Much of this post comes from chapter 47 of my book, Reality Check. If you don’t already own it, you really should.)