For one to truly achieve meaning and purpose in life, setting goals is the foundation of all success in an area. Be it health, sports, school, finances or personal development. To date, many of us still make mistakes when setting goals, which either leads to abandonment or neglect on the first hurdle.
Table Of Content
In this article, I am going to discuss the 4 most common mistakes People make when setting goals and also how we can fix them with live, workable examples. Stay tuned.
1. Unclear Goals
Consider an individual who says, “I want to be rich” or “I want to participate in athletics.” The breadth and unspecificity in these goals make them unclear. The brain cannot focus on specific tasks since the goal is too wide. This makes it easy to walk away from if the motivation runs out.
Fix
Instead of Unclear and unspecific goals, you should set more specific goals. For example, instead of “I want to be rich”, you can say, “I want to start a business that generates x amount of revenue per year.” This is a more specific goal, hence clearer and the brain easily focuses on it because the milestones are clearly defined.
Instead of “I want to participate in Athletics,” you can say “I want to join the Kabaka’s Run for next year.” This triggers the brain to focus on the event ahead. Also, you can utilize SMART goal-setting strategies to your advantage.
2. Failure to Write Goals Down
The other mistake many of us make is keeping our goals in our heads. This hinders clarity as a study at Harvard University confirms that out of a random sample space, 3 percent of the Graduates who make an effort to write their goals down are able to achieve their goals 10 times more than the others. The mind in a nutshell is a very busy place handling all our tasks, hence the unclarity.
Fix
When we write our goals down, we are able to break them down into actionable steps as we deeply reflect on each milestone. We are also able to create a workable action plan to follow up when things don’t go as planned. It also gives us the ability to review daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly. Henc,e more clarity as we pursue our goals.
To write our goals down, we can utilize journaling, apps or vision boards. This removes the goal from being a thought in our mind to something we can now work towards.
3. Having Multiple Goals at once
Have you heard the saying ”Chase two birds and catch none?” The same applies to goals. When we set too many goals at once, we tend to overexpose focus, hence very thin focus towards the goals, which can leading to overwhelm and burnout. For example, you want to run a successful 9-5, run your business, drive Uber, and then take care of your Poultry Farm. These many goals tend to exhaust you, causing either a burnout or even giving up on all of them.
Fix
The best way to go about multiple goals is to utilize different techniques; like Goal Stacking. Here you can work on similar goals together. For example, you can run a poultry farm alongside an egg-shop depot. This is much easier than running businesses or goals that have nothing in common.
You also have to let yourself grow slowly into the goal development and execution by applying key lessons from the Goldilocks Rule which narrates that for humans to work on their goals, they should be in a state of optimum difficulty. Not too difficult to overwhelm and too easy to get bored.
4. Ignoring Potential of Setbacks
Many of us when setting or working towards our goals tend to focus on only the good things that can come out of them. (End Result Syndrome). According to Murphy’s Law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. In our context here, this rule shows the bitter face of reality. No progress happens on a straight path. It has highs and lows.
For example, let’s say your goal is to lose 30 pounds of weight by the end of the year. Then one day as you are heading to the gym, you find it locked. This is a setback, though not major. The other scenario is failure to prepare for the examination because the power is off.
Fix
When setting goals, you always have to leave margin of error. “What-if” it doesn’t go as planned? What-if I find the gym locked? “Then I will do a simple home-workout for 30 minutes”. What-if power goes off at night? “Then I have to charge my phone to read for the exam.” This simple mindset shift saves you from being hit hard by setbacks, hence helping you move more steadily towards your goals.
Conclusion
In this article, we have explored the Top 4 mistakes we make when setting goals. Sometimes, our goals are unclear, sometimes our goals lack clarity, sometimes we set multiple goals at once, and also ignore potential setbacks that may show up on the journey. Other reasons are not reviewing our goals and comparing ourselves to others when setting goals. Which of these mistakes has shown up in your life? Share you rreply in the comment section below.
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