COLLEGE COUNSELLOR 

Goal Setting

If you want to achieve your goals, they need to be goals that you really care about. When formulating goals, you must genuinely desire to get to the goal that you create or you will find it hard to put in the effort needed to reach it.

Write it Down

Just the act of writing your goals helps focus your mind and your efforts and is an essential starting point in goal setting. Having read my previous articles on goals (Attribution Theory, Establishing a Pattern For Your Life, and Why Set Goals?) you will be well placed to begin creating meaningful goals. 

Make a list of 10 goals you want to accomplish within the next 12 months. Look at the list and ask yourself: “If I could wave a magic wand and could have one of these completed in the next 24 hours which one would have the most positive impact on my life?” When you look at your list of 10 the answer will jump out at you. That goal becomes your main objective. 

Focus

Having one focus is essential. Research continues to show that multitasking reduces productivity. Our brains are not capable of effectively doing more than one task at a time. What is really happening when we think we’re multitasking is that our attention is switching between tasks rapidly rather than actually doing two things at once. Switching between tasks is a useful skill in and of itself and people can improve their ability to switch quickly and efficiently but it is still much less effective or productive than focussing on one task and doing it well. 

Think of your mind like a laser burning its way through tasks. When you are multitasking you have to switch between two targets and each time you switch you need to locate, refocus and aim at the new task before you can be effective. The more you switch the more time is lost in the process.

The goal you have chosen needs to be the focus of your efforts, your major purpose, your major goal. Transfer this goal to a new piece of paper and write a deadline, when you want to achieve this goal. Make a list of everything you can think of that you can do to achieve this goal. You then organise this list like a checklist. What do you need to do first, what is second, what is third? 

Take Action

Hesitation is the biggest enemy of achieving goals. There is always a next week or a tomorrow when you could begin but as we all know tomorrow never comes. Do not hesitate! There is no time like the present.

Take action immediately. Do something about your goal every day, 7 days a week. Make it a priority. Keep it in your mind. Keep the checklist current and tick of tasks as you go. Set times and dates you will have things achieved and figure out what you need to do to get there. As you start to make progress toward this goal, all your other goals will start to move forward as well.

In the next article we will continue to look at achieving goals and how to keep going when the going is tough.

Michael Lance | College Counsellor