Goal Setting, Is Useless If You Don’t Do This
By: Andrew Shih
Tags: Habits, Goals, Habit Building, Goal Setting

With the beginning of a new year, there is often the beginning of many failed goals and New Year’s Resolutions, but that doesn’t have to be the case.

The key to success doesn’t need to be an iron will either. All that is necessary to accomplish your goals is a little bit of structure, planning, and the willingness to form a habit. If you find yourself setting the same goal year after year, it might be time to adopt a different approach for achieving it.

How to Set SMART Goals

A goal without a plan is really just a wish or hope, and often the likelihood of you succeeding in that goal is about the same as the odds of wishes that come true from blowing out birthday cake candles. Before you start the plan for achieving your goal, make sure that the goal itself is optimized to succeed!

SMART goals are goals that are:

· Specific

· Measurable

· Actionable

· Realistic

· Time-Based

Creating goals that follow this format gives you the highest chance of success and succeeding at one smaller goal also motivates you to achieve even bigger ones.

So, let’s say that I have a goal to be healthier in 2021. If I proceed from there, 2022 will likely roll around, and I will have the same goal and have made no meaningful changes or progress in my life toward that goal. It’s too abstract, there is no way for me to measure if I’ve achieved it, it’s not actionable, and it’s not time-based, which makes it unrealistic.

If I wanted to set a smart goal, my goal would be to work out for 90 minutes twice a week for at least six months in 2021.

It follows the plan’s theme above, but it’s a much more realistic goal to try and achieve. It’s specific. I can measure if I’m on track each week. I have a particular action that I need to take. I’ve made it realistic to my schedule, and I have a period in which I need to accomplish it.

Additionally, I’ve left myself a grace period in which to form that habit. Even if the first month I only work out 30 minutes twice a week, I haven’t failed my goal and won’t get discouraged while I’m building toward it.

Following the SMART formula will turn your goal into a plan. To reach a goal, you must take action consistently, which a plan allows you to do.

How to Create a Good Habit

The other thing that SMART goals allow us to do is to begin creating a habit. Once something is a habit, it becomes a lot easier for us actually to do it.

How long does it take to form a habit?

Habits are formed by doing something consistently, and studies have shown that it takes between three weeks to nine months to form a habit, with the average being around two months.

Start small

Because the time it takes to form a habit can be lengthy, it might be a struggle for a couple of months, but if you start small and take action, you’re working toward creating that habit mentality even if you invest as little as 15 minutes a day toward your goal.

Be realistic with yourself

Again, this is why setting realistic goals are so important. It is much more useful to make small adjustments to your lifestyle over an extended time than making considerable changes in a short amount of time.

Have consistent small wins

There is some psychology behind this as well. You’ll be much more determined to continue working toward your goals if you can experience frequent small victories rather than large disappointments.

Keep it going

Sure, somedays you might feel like you’re on top of the world and that you can push for that full hour or clean that whole room or whatever the goal is, but on the days where the motivation isn’t there, instead of doing nothing and then beating yourself up about it, just do one thing.

Everything might feel overwhelming. Even just that one thing might feel overwhelming, but the one thing, or the small thing, the 15 minutes, is manageable, and you will feel a lot better if you can do it.

Analyzing Your Situation — Triggers and Obstacles

Take time to review and check the progress

Deciding to work toward a goal or form a good habit is a great start, but merely making the decision doesn’t mean the process will be easy. Taking the time to analyze your situation, lifestyle, and self will give you a considerable advantage in excelling at your goals.

Be honest with yourself

Being honest with yourself about your plan’s aspects that will be hard for you and preparing yourself to manage those obstacles will be a lifesaver on the first hard day in your journey. It could be the difference between overcoming a hurdle or giving up entirely. Even after that first day, having awareness about your triggers and potential threats to your goal prepares you for conquering them.

Don’t focus entirely on your potential obstacles, though. Take the time to think about your strengths and celebrate small victories.

Stay positive

Having a positive mindset is as important as any other part of SMART goal setting. Knowing the strengths, you possess, and the opportunities you can create for yourself will help you feel motivated even on the bad days.

Be flexible and make the adjustment

For example, if I know that I have a strength in waking up early but that it’s a hurdle for me to find energy after work at night, I can set myself up for success by doing my workout earlier in the day.

However, realistically there will be a day where I wake up, and I don’t feel like working out first thing in the morning. Knowing my energy will be a hurdle after work on that day, I can prepare for that.

I could spend some time saving a few links to YouTube yoga videos for when I miss my morning workout and need something relaxing and low impact after work that day. In this way, I have identified a threat to my goal and created an opportunity to overcome it should there be a disruption to the day.

5 Powerful Quotes about Habit

Goals are powerful motivators but they can also make you miserable. World-class daily habits are what you need. — Maxime Lagacé Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going. — Jim Ryun Motivation may be what starts you off, but it’s habit that keeps you going back for more. — Miya Yamanouchi The habit of persistence is the habit of victory. — Herbert Kaufman We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. — Aristotle

Take The First Step To Reach Your Goal

Goal setting is useless unless you make sure your goals are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-based. It’s much better to start small and commit even as little as 15 minutes per day toward your goal than trying to make a significant lifestyle change all at once.

If you want to reach your goal, you will need to take each and every small step consistently. It is perfectly fine to make small steps smaller to achieve small wins and make it a habit. Once you form a habit that works toward your goal, you will reach the goal.