Goals and why they matter

What are your goals for 2016? Did you write them down? Don’t worry, not going to get to all woo-woo self-helpy on you.

It sounds odd, but I’ve found writing down my goals seems to set some sort of strange magic in motion. I’m much more likely to achieve a goal I’ve written down vs. those nebulous goals which solely exist in the flesh between your skull.

It’s interesting to look at back at goals you’ve set in previous years. Often times I’m surprised to find goals I wrote down a long time ago had been achieved, though not in the year I initially sought out to achieve them.

There are a couple things I’ve found helpful to aid in hitting goals set for the year.

Make a quarterly check in reminder. (You could try monthly, but I think it’s so frequent that you’ll just never do it.)Find out if you’re on track to hit a particular goal and if not ask yourself what you need to do differently to get on the right path.
Rather than setting a new goal and forgetting it, I put conditions in place that start directing me towards success.

For example, I want to stop biting my nails. It’s something I’ve done forever. It makes me self-conscious because my nails look gross because they’re too short and it’s hard to properly clean the grit out of short nails without pain. Then there’s all the hygienic reasons. So, rather than just trying to use sheer willpower to stop, I bought some bitter nail polish (thankfully clear) that tastes horrible to break the pattern. The condition is the nail polish.

I want to have x$ in my bank account, so in order to do that I need to increase my savings by y$. The condition I put in place is that every month z$ will automatically get pulled into my savings account. It might even be a little painful.

For a writing goal this year, I’m trying to hit 1,500 words a day. Not always, but most of the time I won’t go to bed until I hit my word count. This may or may not be a great goal, but so far it’s been pushing me to write more than I typically would in a day.

What are your thoughts on goals and goal setting? What are your 2016 goals? Please let me know in the comments and what you do to help you hit your goals.

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