"If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else."- Yogi Berra
What is the purpose of a goal? So many successful people talk about goals and how we should all set them. Few of these people, however, give us any details about how we should go about setting these goals. A year ago, I emailed a few respected 'life coaches' across the country--I asked how one should go about setting goals. Most of them told me that an answer to my question would come at a price--specifically, 3 easy payments of $29.99; those that did supply an actual answer were not particularly helpful either: they more or less told me that just setting goals is all I should be worried about--they continued to say that, because of my youth, I'm already ahead of the game. And to me that is complete B.S. Because you know what: one day you and I are not going to be so young and the lessons we learn now and the habits that we develop now are going to be what we fall back on. So, please, do not think that the act of setting goals is going to help you become a happy and successful individual. And don't think that it will all figure itself out in the end--because it won't. Don't misconstrue this as me telling you not to set goals. Goal-setting is essential, but it's what the goal represents and how you go about selecting a goal that is actually important.
Back to the original question: What is the purpose of a goal? In my opinion a goal serves two important purposes:
- Effective Goals give you direction--something meaningful to aim for and something meaningful to achieve--the accomplishment of effective goals brings you closer to happiness and or success
- Effective Goals keep you accountable--they are an objective means to measuring one's progress.
S.pecific-- The key to setting an effective goal is specificity. Whenever I ask a runner what goals they have they usually say something along the lines of, "I want to improve my times," or better yet, "I want to run a faster mile time." Ok, so obviously the second example is more specific because it is identifying the mile as what he/she wants to improve. However, it's not specific enough--my follow-up question would be how much faster do you want to run? Suppose the runner, who we will randomly call Anjan(is that even the name of anyone?), responds with, "I want to run a mile 20 seconds faster than my previous best"-- I would say great let's move on to the next step in the goal setting process.
M.easurable(prounounced Mayysurable--ok not really-- there's an inside joke there) My next question would be: Anjan what is your fastest current mile time? "Well I ran a 5:30 mile last year," says Anjan. We would then make Anjan's goal measurable by determining that he would have to run a 5:10(minus 20 seconds off of his PB) mile around Cary Academy's track. On to the next step in the goal-setting process! That was easy!
A.ttainable--So Anjan, I would ask, are you willing and able to achieve this 5:10 mile? "Well golly gee, John what does willing and able mean?" It means are you willing to put in the effort to accomplish this and are you able to sacrifice some sleep in the morning and those parties on the weekends so that you can get some extra training sessions in. Essentially, the attainable part of the process asks each of us how bad do you really want it? A hypothetical Anjan responds with, "Well John, I really want this--I'll do whatever it takes--I'll take no days off!" Great Anjan, let's move on to the next step!
T.imely--The final step in the process is putting a time period for you goal to be accomplished. While this time can change, you should have a general idea of when you want to accomplish your goal. Remember the importance of being specific. For our hypothetical Anjan, he will run his PR mile in a track meet during June at Cary Academy. The goal-setting process for this one goal is now complete.
As you can see, a little thought can go a long way. We went from a sub-optimal goal "I want to run faster" to an effective goal: "I will run a 5:10 mile in a June track meet at Cary Academy." This shows us how creating effective goals is the key to remaining accountable: if June passes and the 5:10 mile never happens--then we know something went wrong. And because we know that something went wrong we can fix it for the next time. Essentially, an effective goal-setting process allows us to accurately judge our successes and failures--which in turn allows us to progress as individuals. So remember the S.M.A.T. system the next time you think about your individual goals: it may be the difference between greatness and mediocrity.
Thanks for reading. JG
