Home About Our Blog Creating SMART Goals for 2015

 

Without having goals to work towards, you can float around aimlessly in life, with little direction and achieve little. Who wants to be a tumble weed, just rolling with the punches?  Rather place some obstacles in the way of that tumbleweed, give some direction and a path for the tumbleweed to roll down.

 

Goals can be as small as a ‘To do list’.  I always know that if I am really busy, a list helps me focus and stay on track. It is so easy to be side tracked onto other work items in a busy day.

 

A goal for the week maybe to achieve a certain body of work, or a certain outcome, while a goal for the year may be to achieve a certain level in business, certain qualification, specific  outcome for the business or personal achievement.

 

Making sure that those larger goals are specific, so you can measure them is very important. Your goals should be achievable or able to  be broken down into smaller goals that when achieved will place you one step closer to the main goal. Look at your own or your businesses reality and ensure that you are being realistic with your goal. I may want to personally climb Everest, but do I actually possess the fitness, skill level and expertise to achieve an Everest summit? Timeliness in goal setting is about looking at the time space you have to achieve your goal and deciding if that is practical. Will you actually be able to achieve this goal in the time you have set?

 

So we are well into the New Year now, and have your New Years Resolutions already been broken? Or have you just not acted on them? Do you have a clear plan for this year? It is not too late to create some smart goals for yourself and to move yourself forward in 2015.

 

Once you have used the SMART acronym, then add to it by using the GROW model.

 

While G stands for the creation of the Goal and R for your current Reality and whether or not the goal fits into your current reality,  I am most interested in the O and W. O stands for Options, particularly options that you can use to overcome obstacles. Because what is it that usually prevents us from attaining our goals  - it is an obstacle of some sort.

 

Only by understanding that things will always stand in your way, and thinking about how to manage these obstacles, can you formulate a plan to get around the obstacles. Sometimes the obstacles are the very people  who  love us the most, because they do not want to see us fail, or take a risk or be disappointed. So we need to think of how we will deal with their hindrance to our goal. So look closely at the O in Grow and think about your obstacle and the options you can use to overcome them.

 

What of the final letter – W – stands for Way forward. How are you going to progress? What do you do first? A goal will never eventuate if you do not take that first step. Like the old Nike slogan … Just do it!

 

 

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