Setting Goals: A Simple Checklist

Your goals can be your roadmap.

We set goals to help channel our energy and filter out the less relevant demands on our time and attention.  Goals should reflect what is important to you now and be sticky enough help keep you on track when things get tough. However, context and circumstances do change, and when they do, goals can change.  For example, one of my neighbors had set a goal of canoeing in the Canadian wilderness in all four seasons in 2015. The goal had to be replaced when his wife was diagnosed with cancer. He replaced the original goal with a new more pertinent goal. Given the importance of goals to direct our behavior, allocate our effort and to defend our attention, a simple checklist might be useful when creating resolutions or setting annual goals.

 

Frameworks for Setting Goals

You have to plan where you’re going so you end up in the right seat.

“The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.” – Melody Beattie 

Setting goals is an important ritual that marks the end of one year and the beginning of the next. It is an avenue for introspection, a filter to sort out the irrelevant, and to influence behavior. A goal is a statement of a person’s, team’s or organization’s ambition.  A goal can be strategic or tactical depending on how a goal is stated.  You can use a framework to consistently develop goals. A consistent framework can help you not to forget some key considerations that are useful for translating an idea into action. Such as ensuring goals are tangible enough to be measured. There are a huge number of frameworks, including SMART, PASTIE, and BHAG to name a few.