Here are ten tips for effective goal setting.

1. Success motivates, failure demotivates.

Start yourself off with some goals with a high probability for success. A lot of people set themselves up for failure by starting off too big. The small wins will motivate you for the bigger.

2. Goal setting without faith is goal setting without heart.

Your heart wasn’t meant to live for the possible. Do it a favor and give it something to shoot for that’s impossible without God. That will keep your heart in it.

3. Set faith goals, not foolish goals.

There’s a difference between faith and foolishness. Set goals proportionate to the measure of faith you’ve been given. (Rom 12:3)

4. Do a few things and a few things well. 

One thing I’ve noticed is that every year my list of goals gets shorter. Year by year I’m learning how to set goals proportionate to my faith reality.

5. Don’t be afraid to let your goal setting go into January.

I know conventional wisdom says to start the year off running on January 1st with your New Year’s resolutions, but the hustle and bustle of the holidays, and the unreality of time off and partying, don’t always lend themselves to effective goal setting. Don’t be afraid to let the cold of January and the reality of returning to your job, smack you in the face with a little goal-setting sobriety.

6. “A goal without a plan is a wish.”  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Setting goals is step one.  A plan is step two.

7. You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Take some time each year to evaluate how you did, so you can tweak things accordingly. I like to evaluate every quarter.

8. If you notice that the same goal is not being met year after year…

You should probably change the goal, the plan, or the amount of goals.

9. Focus on what you got done, not on what you did not.

It’s not necessarily about the percentage of goals you meet. It’s more about what you got done by actually having goals, which you wouldn’t have gotten done had you not set goals. If you only meet 25% of your goals, that’s still 25% more that you got done than if you had not set any goals at all.

10. Set goals every year.

I set goals every year. For whatever reason, I never got around to setting goals back in 2012, and I definitely noticed a difference.  Keep at it!

Bonus

Set goals in each of the individual “gardens” of your life: spirit, personal, study, singlehood/marriage, children, family, church, creativity, business/job, financial, possessions, fitness, and health.

(Image Credit: National Archive)