What Are Your Goals for 2013?

Hi there 🙂 Can I ask you a question? You don’t have to write your answer in the comments, although it would help you. But you should at least answer the question in your mind.

A couple of days ago, I wrote about goal setting and keeping track of your progress. I did it to tell you about a challenge that Debi J came up with: daily journaling. But now I have to ask you:

– Have you set goals for 2013? – What are your goals? – And how are they?

I mean, are they realistic goals? Ambitious goals? Or careful goals?

And why do you need to set goals at all?

Why You Should Set Goals

I’m far from being an expert in this area, but I do goal setting every year. I also do it during the year, where I take a look at what I decided earlier, and maybe switch goals, if the ones I chose aren’t optimal. This helps me a lot.

Why should you set goals?

This is what MindTools  has to say about it:

Goal setting is used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge, and helps you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.

By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you’ll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. You will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you’ve set.

Notice especially that:

Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation.

It is therefore in your best interest to set goals, because you’ll know what to work against, and you’ll be motivated to do so.

Set SMART Goals

Back in 1999, our family went to France, and the children and I fell in love with the country. We wanted to move from Denmark to France, and we talked my husband into it.

It was something out in the future… “Let’s move to France one day.”

My husband is smart. He said: “No! If we decide to move to France, it shouldn’t be ‘one day’. It should be on a precise moment. When?”

We agreed to leave the following Summer, after the school had stopped. And then we laid plans, sold the house, find a temporary place to live, sold and packed our furniture, books, and computers and prepared to leave.

This was an excellent way to set a goal. It was SMART.

According to MindTools, SMART goal setting stands for:

S – Specific (or Significant).
M – Measurable (or Meaningful).
A – Attainable (or Action-Oriented).
R – Relevant (or Rewarding).
T – Time-bound (or Trackable).

If I have had it my way (I didn’t know better), our goal would not have been SMART. It would have been “to move to France one day”.

Since my husband said we should set a date, and we knew what to do (sell our house, pack our things), we made out goal specific. It was also measurable (leaving 10 months later – going to France). It was attainable. We had the possibility to move to France. It was relevant back then. And it was time-bound – June 2000.