Welcoming the New Year!!
With 2016 going for a few more days until it is behind us, it’s now time to look forward and plan for 2017. We all have new goals that we want to achieve and we look forward to making the most out of them. So here are a few tips on goal setting for successful outcome.
Make sure to follow the “SMART” acronym when setting up goals.
“S” as in specific, you want to set a clear goal that you can hone into as your target. You don’t want to set confusing or vague goals where you are not sure what it is that you are trying to achieve. For example, instead of saying that you want to be a better runner, you can re-create a more specific goal to say that you want to improve your distance in running by 10km by end of the year.
“M” as in measurable. Setting a goal that is measurable will allow you to keep track of where your progress is and whether or not you have achieved your goal. Back to our example about running, indicating the exact distance of running 10 km gives us a measurable way to keep track of the goal.
“A” as in achievable. Achievable goals are goals that are you can agree with yourself to attain. For example, if we set our goal to be able to run a marathon by the end of the week and meanwhile knowing that you can only tolerate 5km at this point.
“R” as in reasonable. Reasonable goals are realistic goals where you know you can attain within your resource, knowledge and time. Back to our case of running a marathon, if we give that goal a longer time frame and knowing that we will hold regular practice runs meanwhile. This might become more of a reasonable goal.
Lastly, “T” as in time sensitive. We all have to put into a deadline or time frame for our goals to be achieved. Without this, we would be prone to procrastination and never really achieve our goal. Setting the time frame to a month or a year is entirely up to you and how achievable or reasonable it is to the situation.
We are all capable to improve and better ourselves, we just have to be SMART and take action about it!
