11 Goal Setting

Goal Setting and S.M.A.R.T Goals

There is no doubt that doing well in college is a sizable challenge. Every semester you have to adjust to new class schedules, instructors, and classmates as well as learning objectives and requirements for each course. Along with that, you may be juggling school with work, family responsibilities, and social events. Do you feel confident that you can attend to all of them in a balanced, committed way? What will be your secret of success?

Choosing a meaningful purpose gives your life direction and creates inner motivation. Many students have not defined a personally meaningful purpose for being in college. If you remain unfocused, you are more likely to drive from rather than to academic success. By taking advantage of the opportunity to look closely at what you want and by having the opportunity to choose personally meaningful outcomes you would like to achieve in college or your personal/professional life. You foster this discovery and creation of internal motivation for yourself that can positively impact your persistence in the face of life’s inevitable challenges.

Goal Setting

A goal is a desired result that you envision and then plan and commit to achieving. Goals can relate to family, education, career, wellness, spirituality, and many other areas of your life. Generally, goals are associated with finite time expectations, even deadlines. A well-written goal can help be a “map” so you know what you need to do and by what time it needs to be completed.

As a college student, many of your goals are defined for you. For example, you must take certain courses, you must comply with certain terms and schedules, and you must turn in assignments at specified times. These goals are mostly set for you by someone else.

But there are plenty of goals for you to define yourself. For example, you decide what you would like to major in. You decide how long you are going to be in college or what terms you want to enroll in. You largely plan how you would like your studies to relate to employment and your career.

Below is a set of questions we can ask ourselves at any turn to help focus on personal goals:

1. What are my top-priority goals?
2. Which of my skills and interests make my goals realistic for me?
3. What makes my goals believable and possible?
4. Are my goals measurable? How long will it take me to reach them? How will I know if I have achieved them?
5. Are my goals flexible? What will I do if I experience a setback?
6. Are my goals controllable? Can I achieve them on my own?
7. Are my goals in sync with my values?

As you move through your college career, make a point to ask these questions regularly.

One of the goals of this course was to introduce you to the idea that planning is a life-long activity. Chance will always play a part in what happens to you in life, but you can increase the likelihood that you are in control of your destiny and have the capabilities to achieve your goals. Planning what you want to accomplish in life and determining your objectives and goals gives you many advantages.

Goal setting is an important aspect of preparing to succeed academically and professionally. College students may use goals to help meet deadlines. In the workplace, you will often be asked to set formal goals as part of your performance review. Goal setting is extremely important in deciding how you plan to pursue your education and future career choice. It is the broad statement of purpose we make about what we would like to accomplish. Objectives, then, are the specific steps used to accomplish goals.

As you start to set your own goals, it’s important to note that there are long-term, short-term, and mini/micro goals.

• Long-term goals usually take 3-5 years to achieve.
• Short-term goals take 1-2 years to complete.
• Goals can also be written as “mini” and “micro.” “Mini” goals are written for 2 – 3 months. Daily goals are called “micro”.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals

Goals should also be SMART. In this case, the word smart is not only a clever description of the type of goal, but it is also an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound. These are all desirable traits for your goals because they not only help you plan how to meet the goal, but these traits can also contribute to your decision-making processes during the planning stage.

• Specific: Adding specificity to your goal makes it easier to achieve. Detail what you want to accomplish, when you would like to accomplish it, and what actions you will need to take to meet the goal. The goal of “get a good job when I graduate” is too general. It doesn’t define what a good job is. It doesn’t even necessarily include a job in your chosen profession. A more specific goal would be to “be hired as a nurse in a place of employment where it is enjoyable to work and that has room for promotion.”
• Measurable: Your goal should be something that can be tracked. If your goal is too vague, it can be difficult to assess how close you are to achieving it. For example, setting a goal of “I will do well in school” is a bit undefined, but making a goal of graduating on time with a GPA above 3.0 is measurable and specific. In this example, if your goal is measurable you can track how many points you will have to earn on a specific assignment to stay in that range or how many points you will need to make up in the next assignment if you do not do as well as you planned.
• Attainable: Attainable or achievable goals are reasonable and within your ability to accomplish. College students have a lot on their plate. Make sure your goal is something you can realistically accomplish within the given time frame. While a goal of “make an extra one million dollars by the end of the week” would be nice to achieve, the odds that you could make that happen in a single week are not very realistic.
• Relevant: For goal setting, relevant means it applies to the situation. SMART goals for students should relate back to academic or professional growth. The goal of getting a horse to ride is not very relevant, but getting dependable transportation would contribute to your success in school.
• Time-bound: Time-bound means you set a specific time frame to achieve the goal. It’s easier to stick with a goal when it has a specific deadline. Determine when you would like to meet your goal and consider setting target dates for each step involved in meeting the goal. “I will get my paper written by Wednesday” is time-bound. You know when you have to meet the goal. “I will get my paper written sometime soon” does not help you plan how and when you will accomplish the goal.

In the following table, review the examples of goals that do and do not follow the SMART system. As you read each one, think about what elements make them SMART or how you might change those that are not.

Watch the following overview of Smart Goals.