Setting Goals And Targets - Make Your Time Count

By Author: Richard van Beek
Total Articles: 26
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If you hope to live a life that is purposeful and fulfilling, drifting along, procrastinating, or getting swept up in busyness without clear priorities will get you nowhere. Once you determine your priorities, begin setting goals and targets--these will lead you to accomplish the things you have always wanted to do.

Goals, be they broad or more specific, help us to be purposeful. A goal helps us focus our attention and set our priorities. But a goal may take a long time to reach, so we need to set targets to help us take action and move closer to our goal. For example, if your goal was to become better at introducing yourself to new people, you might set a target of how many new people you will try to meet each weekend for a month.

A target is measurable, specific, and has a time frame or deadline to meet. Targets enable us to become more productive with our time, as we stay on task until we finish a task. Setting a target date helps prevent us from putting things off. Targets are concrete. They hold us accountable to achieve certain results. We can see immediately whether we have met a target or not. ...
... If we haven't we can try harder until we do. Once we meet a target, we can celebrate our success and move forward with greater confidence toward our bigger goal.

Put these concepts into action by writing down several of your personal and professional goals. Then for each goal, begin to come up with a set of targets that will help you approach your goal. Put a target date next to each target. What tasks will you need to accomplish by the end of this week and this month? Some people prefer to keep their goals on their computer in electronic format. If you are prone to procrastinate, print out a copy of your goals and targets or write them on a piece of paper to serve as a physical reminder of what you have decided to do. Keep you list of goals and targets accessible as you plan your schedule for each day.

Becoming a more proactive person can be done by simply thinking about your goals, and then breaking them down into smaller, more manageable targets. Start working to complete a task right away and you will be encouraged as you meet one target and move on to the next.