An Introduction to Setting Effective Goals

Whether you're wanting to reach a new personal best, get picked for a team, get a promotion at work, or improve your fitness, chances are if you’re reading this you're feeling motivated to make a change and set some goals. 

While many of us have moments of inspiration and motivation, which drive us to set goals and make change, it turns out we’re not very good at sticking to them, with most of us abandoning our efforts to change a habit before we’ve even reached half-way. 

Although motivation to improve yourself is a good start, the most important step is how we turn these ideas into results: taking action and creating plans can help you make those aspirations a reality.

With the new year rapidly approaching, let’s take a deep dive into goal-setting: types of goals, developing S.M.A.R.T one’s, and how to prioritise your goals!

Types of goals

1. Outcome goals.

“I want to win this match” or “I want to get that promotion!” are great aspirations to have, but they aren’t exactly helpful in getting us to where we want to be. They aren’t very focused or specific.

We call these types of goals ‘outcome goals,’ because they are based on a result. Outcome goals are connected to and depend on the performance and opinion of others, which means you don’t actually have much control over your ability to reach the goal itself. 

So when you just focus on outcome-based goals, you’re putting all of your energy into something you can’t really control. 

Visible progress is one of our greatest sources of motivation. 

When we just focus on outcome-based goals, we are too focused on achieving and not on how to achieve it. Unsurprisingly, this leads to a loss of motiva-tion, feelings of disappointment, and, more often than not, abandonment of the goals altogether.

2. Process goals.

By shifting our focus to a series of process-based goals, we’re much more likely to achieve lasting change and reach our full potential. Process-based goals are the actions that need to happen to make the other goals come to life. They are all about the how, and we have high control over this.

Although we may not be able to control the result, we can control what we do and what we say. We can control where we put our energy, attention, and focus! 

For example, I can’t control who else applies for a job, who my competition in a football game is, and I can’t control who likes me. But I can control how I prepare for an interview, how often I attend Football training, and how I act towards others. It’s these actions that are going to help me reach my outcome goal. 

If we bring more energy to our process goals we can be much more present and focused and NOT so concerned about the outcomes! Therefore, formulating more process-based goals and LESS outcome-based goals will help you stay committed and reach your aspirations.  

When we focus on the process, we let the outcome take care of itself.

How much focus are you going to put on it? Comment your thoughts below!

Setting S.M.A.R.T Goals 

 You may have heard of SMART goals, but it’s worth revisiting because they have some important principles we just can’t miss out on. When setting a goal, it’s important to ensure that it is S.M.A.R.T:

S- pecific (They need to be obvious and focused.)

M -easurable (We need to be able to measure it, so we can know if we have achieved it or not.)

A -ction-based (If it’s not action-based, you’re not bringing your goal to life.)

R -ealistic (If we don’t set realistic goals they will be frustrating, anxiety-provoking and defeating.)

T -Time-based (Setting time-based goals is important because time pressure helps us achieve our goals. For example: If you give someone 3 months to clean their room, they’ll take 3 months, but if you give them 5 minutes, they’ll take 5 minutes! Put a time limit on it!)

Prioritising Your Goals

Whether you’re setting goals for work or sport, it can be difficult to identify which area of your craft you need to develop most. Simply choosing something to work on is a great start, but targeting specific areas that will benefit most from conscious and purposeful training and development will see the biggest change. 

Let’s take a look at how you can target your goals appropriately at work or in sport!

Rate yourself out of 10, and how you're doing in each area. For sport, work, and life you might break it up into areas such as: Mental, Technical, Tactical, and Physical. For example, in sport or work, you might choose to evaluate yourself in domains such as: 

1. Mental - Capacity to let go of mistakes, move on after making an error, ability to take calculated risks, sustain focus, and manage pressure.    

2. Tactical - Ability to work out your opponent/competition, and decipher their strengths and weaknesses, as well as, how you organise yourself and prioritise tasks. 

3. Technical - Skill level. For example, in a sporting context this may be a free throw, or a serve in tennis. At work it may be, report writing, making a sales pitch, speaking publicly, or operating certain software.

4. Physical - Fitness, strength and overall health.

Rate yourself in each domain and then ask your employer, or coach, to rate you as well. This will help you get a full picture of where you are at. For example, if you rate yourself a 7, but they rate you an 8, that’s motivating because they think you're better than you rated yourself. On the flip-side they might rate you lower, but that could also be motivating, because then you have something to work on. It might sting to begin with, or affect your ego, but this is helpful for your development and discovering areas for improvement.

Once you identify the areas you could benefit from targeting, work and collaborate together with your coach or employer on how to do that (e.g., what kind of professional development, or training exercises you can do to improve). Then develop some process-based goals, and commit to them fully!

What goals are you working on in your business, work-place or your sport? How do you keep moving towards your goals when things get hard? What are some tricks you use to help keep yourself on track and moving in the right direction? Leave your comments in the section below!

For personalised support developing goals, book a session with Sabrina today!