The ancient Chinese philosopher Sun-tzu asserted that every battle is won or lost before it is ever fought. This insight is nowhere more true than in the relationship between goal-setting and success. In order to succeed, you must decide what success means to you, and you must define it in specific enough terms to motivate you and to translate objectives into action.
Desire
You should set goals that represent your true desires, according to the University of Kentucky. Many people set goals based on what they think they should do, or what someone else thinks they should do. Such goals are likely to lack the power to motivate you, and cannot serve as a foundation for lasting change. If you know that you should do something, such as quit smoking, but find yourself lacking in desire, set a second goal that you desire for which the first goal is a necessary precondition. You might plan to run a marathon, for example, as a way to motivate yourself to quit smoking.
Priorities
Your must prioritize your goals in order to bring them down to a manageable number, according to the Idaho State University Leadership Program. If you find yourself unable to achieve all of your goals, you will have to abandon or postpone your least-important goals. Decide in advance which goals are most important, and spend the bulk of your energy on them.
Goal Formulation
Your goals must be carefully formulated in to provide you with the necessary motivation. Performance psychologist Jim Taylor counsels setting goals that are difficult enough to challenge you, but easy enough to attain. They should also be stated specifically, using numbers whenever possible along with a specific deadline. "Lose weight" is a vague and ineffective goal formulation, while "lose 17 pounds by July 31" is far more more specific.
Action Plans
General goals need to be broken down into action plans that identify specific actions that need to be taken to achieve them, according to the Idaho State University Leadership Program. Identify any information that you will need to gather, break your goal down into sequential steps, and set deadlines for each step. In order to lose 17 pounds, for example, you might establish an exercise program with numerical benchmarks and identify which foods you will avoid. You could also set deadlines for losing 5, 10 and 15 pounds.
Feedback and Rewards
Write your goals and action plans in a journal so that you can keep track of them. Check off your goals as you achieve them, and find a way to reward yourself each time you complete a goal. Be sure not to reward yourself in a way that undermines your goal--don't reward yourself with a cake, for example, for losing 10 pounds. Readjust your goals upward or downward when you learn from experience that any of your goals is too easy or too ambitious.
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