Have you ever set a goal and achieved it? How did you feel? Good right? There is a sense of fulfillment and joy that comes with seeing your goal achieved. Have you also set a goal, but you never took any action to see it through much less achieve? We are humans operating in uncontrollable circumstances, so it happens to most of us.
We are in the early part of the year, and I believe it is such a good time to refresh about our goals before we get immersed in the hustling and bustling of our ever-busy world. As I write, the first month of the new year has just rolled by. If you are like me, you wondered that 31 days have already passed.
In this post, I will discuss the simple ways to set and track goals, make little successes that can lead to the achievement of a goal and the fulfillment that comes with it.
A goal is not about the big things only – like setting up a billion-dollar company; but involves the simple things we desire for business, career, or family success. An example, a goal to engage with five customers every week, be in touch with a spouse living in another country more frequently, study trends in the tech space, acquire soft or technical skills to improve job search success. Such are credible goals.
Why We Sometimes Fail to Achieve Our Goals:
However, as credible and genuine as the goals we set for ourselves can be, a lot of people do not always achieve certain goals, big or small; while some are gurus at achieving whatever they set to do. Roadblocks to goal achievement can be internal or external environmental factors: But let’s look at some internal factors below:
- Sometimes, the goal gets stacked in the person’s brain, notebook or communication devices.
Several years ago, when I moved house, I stumbled on some big goals I set years earlier. Note my word – stumbled. Yes, because, I had neatly typed them in a plain sheet and carefully kept it in a file folder among a pile of files.
The sad thing was that I never achieved any of those things. Can you imagine how I felt? It did not feel good. Years later, as I began to initiate and deliver on projects for my business and clients, I found the value of not just setting a goal but also tracking my goal.
- Another reason is that people at times focus on the end result. This can be overwhelming when the time, money, or resources to achieve an objective is considered. The trick is to focus on the little day-to-day actions that can eventually lead to achieving the goal in mind. For someone who wants to follow trends in tech, for instance, it could be that he/she needs to spend 15 minutes a day for the next six months reading and researching, rather than wait for a time to commit five hours on a weekend.
- Next, is that people fail to track their efforts. In such a case, what they have achieved and planned next line of actions can get lost in the ocean of activities begging attention.
Like in medicine, when a medical doctor examines a patient and administers medication, the patient is expected to take the medications and after some days revisit the doctor for a check-up to find out if the patient’s health has improved; goal setting requires goal tracking to evaluate the results made so far, determine next steps needed for continued success and to stay focused on the goal.
Therefore, if you want to improve your chances to achieve results, move beyond goal setting, and focus on the process – the small steps that will lead to success; next is revisiting your goal constantly, as a regular reminder of your aim. And with time, the objective gets embedded in your subconscious mind and becomes difficult to forget or put away.
In my next post, I will be sharing on how to use Goal Tracking to become more productive and have better chances at achieving your goal. So stay tuned.
Would you like to share your experience with setting goals and your success rate at achieving them? I will be delighted to read from you in the comment section below.
I hope this has been helpful. If you like what you have read, do visit the Resources–Careers section of this website http://www.careersandpeople.com for more job search and career guides. Remember to click the share button to share this with your network, like, comment, or ask questions below. I will be glad to interact with you.
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