Let’s talk a little bit about goal setting this week. Everyone needs to have goals, for one reason or another. Setting and meeting goals is one of the main ways to keep interested in an activity and to challenge yourself in general. Everyone needs to be challenged, right? So let’s break down a little bit how we can best approach this task. First, we need to identify a goal, then define it. After that, break it down into manageable, actionable steps. Then, work towards completing those steps. Finally, we need to re-evaluate our progress, and determine our progress towards the finish line. This, you may notice, is nearly the same series of steps I suggest when confronted with some issue you want to fix. Fixing an issue is, really, just a different type of goal, after all.
Define a Goal
This step can seem like it’s the most difficult, but really it should be the simplest. What is it you want to do? For me, the easiest way to define a goal is usually to sit down with some friends who share the activity in question (obviously I mean judging here, though this whole topic can apply to any activity you like), and simply have a friendly chat about things. Usually, for me at least, the topic will turn towards how we can improve some aspect of something. Use that conversation to identify some areas that need work, then set your aim at defining a specific goal to achieve that change.
Defining the goal can also be challenging. “I want to get better,” or “I want to see the community grow” are both great goals, but they are nebulous, and nebulous goals can lead you to not follow-through if the overall challenge is too much or too undefined. That leads me to the next step.
Break it Down into Steps
When you identify your goal, it may very well be a large, daunting thing. Being able to critically evaluate what actionable steps you can take to achieve your goal is crucial. “I want to get to Level 2” for instance, is a fine goal, but quite an intimidating collection of objectives to some. Luckily, this particular one has a checklist associated with it, and you could simply use that as actionable steps to begin with. Other goals you may set could quite easily not be as structured, and setting structure to your objectives allows you to do a few things. It first allows you to get a strong grasp on the individual actions you’ll need to take to achieve your goal. It also provides you with a progress bar of sorts, in that you’ll be more empowered knowing how far towards your end point you are at any time, since you can easily see what steps remain. Since this step focuses on organization and keeping things manageable, make sure the steps you set are actionable. If you simply take a large goal that’s hard to wrap your head around, and break it into steps you can’t easily evaluate if you’ve done, then you haven’t actually given yourself a tool to use, and you may simply end up more frustrated.
WORK
This is actually the easy part, generally. Now you know what you need to do, and the road to doing it, so, get to work! Take it step by step, and keep at it, until you’ve reached the goal. Don’t forget that those steps should be actionable, so just evaluate them one by one, and take those actions.
Re-Evaluate
Once you’ve done all of these steps, you either have reached your goal (Congratulations!!!) or you haven’t for one reason or another. At this point you’ll need to look back and identify what failed for you. Maybe you didn’t study as hard as you needed to, or you didn’t make as marked improvement as you had thought. That’s ok, because 99% of the time, you will still have measurable improvement from going through the process. If you didn’t meet your goal, go back to step 1 and re-evaluate the goal itself. Maybe it’s simply unattainable at the moment. Maybe you need to set a closer goal first. Maybe the goal was fine but the steps you broke it into were too general, and you can now see with better clarity how to proceed. The important part to realize here is that you’ve MADE PROGRESS. Don’t let that progress backslide by getting discouraged and giving up.
Conclusions
Anything worth doing is worth working hard to do well. Goal-setting is a valuable behavior to use in self-development. By using the process outlined here, you should be able to establish a path towards where you want to be. During the process, especially at the point of reflection and evaluation, don’t get discouraged. The goal is the end, but we learn and gain the most during the voyage.
The Elvish Farmer 