Create Goals That You Can Achieve

It's that time of the year again.  Change your life in X hours.  Stop this habit.  Anywhere and everywhere you look, you can tell it's ‘change your life month'.  I've seen it with my newsletter readers.  All of a sudden there's a surge in how many people are doing the ‘Free Goals Report' I offer 12 months out of the year. 

But what surprises me is the ‘wishy-washy'ness of the goals that people set for themselves.

I want to change my job

I want to lose weight

I want to make more money

Now I know I didn't have Goals 101 when I was in school.  But nowadays there are so many resources available on how to create good realistic attainable goals (or as some people would call SMART - specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound - goals), that I find it incredible that what I still most come across are the types of goals above.

The two biggest problems I see with goals that are sent to me are:

• 1) Lack of specificity
• 2) Trying to make goals about something you can't control

Let's start by exploring the issue of lack of specificity.  Lose weight/Make more money.  What does more mean?  How will you know when you've achieved it?  How much do you want to lose?  How much more money do you want to make?  It's good to look at your current reality first - how much do you weigh now?  How much money do you make?  And then look at how you'd like to change the situation.  Say you weigh 150 pounds, and you'd like to weigh 130 pounds.  And you'd like to do so before June.  That's clear - 20 pounds in 5 months, so 4 pounds a month, that's your goal.  Same with cash.  If you make a dollar extra, well technically you've achieved your goal.  But if you actually want 200 dollars extra by the end of January, then you're more focused and it actually becomes a goal that is easier to work towards because you know what you are aiming for, not just 'wishing' for some extra cash.  Does that make sense?

Then the second one - making goals beyond your control.  What's in your control?  Getting a new job, unfortunately, isn't.  Applying for a certain amount of jobs, contacting a certain amount of agencies, are.  So when you are making goals regarding changing your job, make it about something that you can control - by the end of January, how many jobs will you apply for?  How many agencies will you contact?  How many informational interviews will you have?  Those you can measure and then define whether you have achieved them or not, and then create new goals once you've measured the progress of what you've done previously. 

So in this time of goal setting, what are your goals for 2007?