048: Setting Meaningful Goals

For the month of June, we are focusing on getting back to the basics when it comes to time management. The first week we talked about why it’s important to manage our time well and the second week we began to lay a good foundation for life management by talking about our priorities.

This week we are adding a layer to our foundation as we discuss the importance of setting goals and how to set effective goals that will help you live our your priorities.

Benefits of Setting Goals

• Setting goals helps us to manage our lives well.
• Setting long term goals gives us a greater sense of purpose and vision that helps us stay motivated as we move through life.
• Setting and achieving goals helps build up our confidence.

When we think about setting goals, we need to drill down deep and choose goals that are meaningful. If we choose too many goals we will only become overwhelmed.

4 Tips for Setting Meaningful Goals

1. Start with your priorities

Before you set any goals, make sure you know what your priorities are. If you find there are other goals you’d like to achieve, don’t discount them if they don’t align with your current priorities. You just need to make sure what gets done first is what aligns with your priorities.

2. Think about what you want out of life

Where do you want to be when you’re 80 years old? What needs to happen to make sure you live a life with no regrets?

The reason you need to figure out where you want to be when you’re 80 or even just 5 to 10 years from now is that if you don’t know where you want to be, you won’t know how to get there. If you have no idea what you want from your life, then you’ll just spend your time spinning in circles trying to achieve goals that really don’t matter.

3. Get specific

Once you’ve determined your current priorities and where you want to go in life, then get specific about the goals you want to achieve.

Be specific in your goal setting. Pick goals you can easily track so you’ll be able to keep up with your progress and celebrate small wins along the way.

4. Write them down

One of the best ways I know to achieve your goals is to write them down. I don’t know what it is about writing down your goals that helps you to achieve them. All I know is it works so much better than just saying what goals you want to accomplish.

You don’t even have to do a detailed breakdown of each step related to your goals. Just listing the overall goal is enough to get you going and keep you motivated until it is completed.