How To Set Achievable Goals

At the end of your career, your success will be summed up by the number of goals you achieved. If you want to be able to look back and be proud of all you accomplished, then you need to tighten the way you structure your goals today! At the start of every year, our team members at Northwestern Marketing Concepts lay out their personal and professional goals. They are realistic with each one, and while they are meant to encourage growth, they’re not so far-fetched that failure is inevitable. If you go too big, you’ll get discouraged and take your foot off the gas. You have to find the sweet spot between too small and too much. The following tips will help you set achievable goals that will allow you to grow your skills at a reasonable pace!

“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” – Lawrence J. Peter

Connect Your Goals To A “Why”

Don’t set a goal just because you think you’re supposed to. Your goals should be connected to a “why.” Do you want to read ten self-development books this year? That’s great, but why do you want to? When writing out each goal, add a reason as to why it’s important to you. For this example, it could be because you want to be a better version of yourself so that you can feel good about who you are and grow your career. If there’s no emotional connection, you are going to lose interest once things get hard. You need a reason to care about succeeding!

Break Your Big Goals Down Into Smaller Ones

Piggybacking off of our previous example, you need to go smaller if you want to read ten self-development books. Figure out how quickly it will take you to read them. That will allow you to make monthly reading goals. It will be challenging to keep track of your progress if you’re thinking of the year as a whole. If you break it down into more manageable goals, you’re more likely to stay motivated and succeed.

Set Deadlines

Okay, by now, you’ll have written out manageable goals that give you purpose. You’ve got a plan for what you need to accomplish. Now, we need to discuss timelines. Breaking your goals down into smaller ones will allow you not to get overwhelmed, but you’re still working on a deadline. Pull out a calendar and map out your mile markers for the year. Can these be adaptable? Yes! Maybe you underestimated how long something will take or ran into an obstacle that couldn’t have been predicted; it’s okay for your schedule to shift. What matters is that you’re staying on top of it and asking for help when needed.

Setting goals is easy; it’s actually succeeding that takes work. Keep these three tips in mind when determining what you want to achieve this year, and then meet with your mentor to go over everything. With their guidance and a strong work ethic, you’re going to have your best year yet! Remember what we do here at Northwestern Marketing Concepts. We set realistic goals that will grow our careers but not set us up for failure.