framed typography from inspireuart on etsy

So…January is long gone.  I didn’t run, I didn’t write 50 thank you notes, and I didn’t order those new business cards that I’ve been designing for three months. The excitement a brand new year dissipated along with my commitment to my fabulous New Year’s resolutions.Uggg. How about you?

But….March brings us the first signs of spring and a chance to embrace a new beginning. In creating treatment plans for the young ladies and men I meet with each week, I have learned four easy and effective ways to help them set and achieve their goals.  Let’s follow these four steps – write it, see it, measure it,  and time it-  and believe the best is yet to come!

1. Write it.

Write down your list of goals and review them often. Written goals become more real and more likely to be acted on. Move your goals beyond a mental conception by writing them down. Writing down your goals helps you develop clarity about what you want to achieve.

2. See it.

You must be able to” see” your goal.  Good goals are concrete and observable. For example, your goal should be “I will run” instead of “I will be healthy”. Deciding to be healthy is a worthy goal but it is subjective and unmeasurable. If a healthy lifestyle is your overarching goal, break it down into smaller, observable components. What would a healthy lifestyle look like to you?  Will you eat healthy meals? Sleep at least 8 hours each night? A commitment to run is part of a healthy  lifestyle that you can easily and measure. Either you ran, or you didn’t.

3. Measure it.

How do you know if you’ve achieved your goal if you can’t measure it? Many people judge their goal attainment on feelings or perceptions. This is also why we feel bad and let down when we don’t achieve some amorphous goal we didn’t write down or make concrete. Because we couldn’t see it or measure it, the goal was really just a wish. Achieving your goals should go past your wishes and feelings. Emotions are fleeting and can be deceptive. Set small, achievable goals that you can easily track. In the above example you may decide as part of your new healthy lifestyle plan, you will run 3 days a week for 20 minutes. When your goals are measurable, you can easily track your progress.

4. Time it.

Set an end date for achieving your goals. Open-time goals function more as ideals or personal value statements. Perpetual goals have a way of staying out of reach and causing frustration. Time-specific goals are vehicles of change and growth. Having time-limited goals helps procrastinators like me get moving.  They can’t be “put off until tomorrow” because there is a due date. . Time limiting your goals also helps you to set reasonable, reachable milestones. For example, if your vision is to have a healthy lifestyle, you may set a goal to run 3 days a week for 20 minutes for the next 30 days. At the end of the 30 days, you evaluate your goal. If you’ve reached the goal, great! Set a new one and keep moving. If you missed your goal, that’s great, too. Now is the time to make adjustments. You can just reset the goal, refine it, or do something else. Remember, goals are about progress not critical self-judgement.

I’d love to hear from you about how you set, measure, and time your goals. What works best for you?