Achieving Success Through Effective Goal Setting

It is important to have goals because they are good for your physical and mental health. You can have goals for all areas of your life. Here are a few ideas: career, Learning, Clubs, Money,Community, politics, Contribution, Professional, Emotional, Reading, Family, relationships, health, Service, Home, SpiritualInterests, Travel.

What Makes an Effective goal?

Not all goals are motivating. If a goal is too vague, hard to measure, or impossible to achieve, it will lack effectiveness and ultimately be a wasted exercise. goal statements should be:

? Stated with action verbs

? Specific

? Measurable

? Challenging

? Written down, with completion dates

Effective goals have all five ingredients.

The 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 Rule (also known as Pareto's Principle) says that 20% of what we do produces 80% of the results.

Here are a few examples:

? 20% of the area in your house requires 80% of the cleaning.

? 20% of the stocks in an investor's portfolio produce 80% of the results.

? 20% of the kids in a class cause 80% of the problems.

? 20% of the books in a bookstore account for 80% of the sales.

It's important to remind yourself not to get bogged down on low-value activities, but to stay focused on the high-value 20%.

High-Payoff Planning

High-payoff (HIPO) time is the 20% that produces the desired results. Low-payoff (LOPO) time is the 80% that produces only 20% of the results. The challenge is to find the HIPO tasks and work on those first.

The HIPO strategies:

? Setting a deadline increases the chances that you will accomplish a task.

? Setting a specific time to do something increases the chances that you will accomplish it.

? Divide and conquer: Break a task into smaller pieces and it becomes easier to complete.

? Motivate yourself by listing the benefits of completing a task.

? Motivate yourself in another way by rewarding yourself for completing a task.The LOPO strategies:

? Don't do it at all.

? Do it later.

? Do it with minimum time investment or at a lower standard.

Think of your own life. Can you identify five high-payoff and five low-payoff targets and the activities that contribute directly to each?

Identifying and writing down these items increases the chances that they will be accomplished.

Force Field Analysis

For every goal that you set, there are conditions (forces) that encourage its completion. There are also conditions that discourage its completion.

The Force Field Analysis process helps you identify two kinds of forces: (1) the forces that are pushing with you as you work toward your goal (encouraging forces), and (2) the forces that are pushing against you (discouraging forces).

The process of force field analysis (developed by scientist Kurt Lewin) is based on a law of physics that says that when two equal but opposite forces push against one another, there is no movement.

Why is this important to a person working toward a goal? Because a similar dynamic can prevent you from achieving your goal.

The idea here is to avoid paralysis and encourage momentum by increasing positive (encou