The benefits of goal setting in your life are numerous and help you to focus on what exactly you want to achieve in every area of your life.
We all understand the concept of setting goals, but what the heck are the benefits of goal setting?
Setting goals will help you to get clear about what exactly you are looking to achieve in your life. These achievements can be anything from scoring your first soccer goal to attending the college of your dreams to enjoying your career, getting married, having kids, buying a home or car, or traveling to Antarctica- really anything that you desire!
By taking the time to set goals, you are taking the first step in creating a clear path to achieve your goals!
We’re going to highlight the top 6 key benefits of goal setting for you with tips to actually achieve your goals too!
Goal Setting
What is Goal Setting?
Goal setting means that you are deciding to achieve something that you have not achieved yet or would like to achieve again. Think of your goal as a target. You are creating a target to hit which can be a personal goal, family goal, or work-related goal. Once you have your goal in mind, you start to take measurable, actionable steps to lead you to your goal!
Importance of Goal Setting
Is goal setting actually that important? YES!!!!
We set goals to enrich our lives. Goal setting promotes personal development as we look to improve every area of our lives. Goals also help us to focus our efforts while really chasing after our bigger purpose in life. Those who set goals are typically living a more balanced healthy lifestyle as they look at every area in their life.
Chances are if you aren’t setting goals, life might just be happening to you. By taking the time to think about what you actually want in life, you will create goals to lead yourself closer to a life filled with happiness and true fulfillment.
What are SMART Goals?
You may have heard the term SMART goals before and wondered what does that even mean?!
The SMART in SMART Goals stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-Sensitive
To break it down, you want your goals to be as specific as you can make them. This will help you to make a plan for achieving your goals.
Your goals MUST be measurable so you can clearly see whether or not you have made progress.
When you set a goal, it should be achievable. I know this one seems obvious, but you shouldn’t expect to hit a goal of becoming a marine biologist in one year if your background is a college degree in creative writing. Maybe give yourself 4-6 years to make your goal more likely to achieve.
Make your goals relevant to align with what you actually want for your life. I challenge you to sit with a timer on for 5 minutes and write down all that you truly desire in your life. I’m talking about those dream goals that you have for your life. They can be long-term goals or short-term goals. The idea is to start thinking about what you truly desire so that you make short-term goals that align with your long-term hopes and dreams!
Most importantly, your goals need to be time-sensitive. A goal without a timeline is like a project without a deadline. It will likely only be half-accomplished and then forgotten about.
You will find that most of your goals will come with a definite timeline, but some won’t have any endpoint. I recommend setting a timeline of 30, 60, or 90 days so that you can re-evaluate where you are at the end of each benchmark and make a plan with a new goal and proceed from there!
F3 Goal Setting Must-Haves
6 Benefits of Goal Setting (and Helpful Tips to Stick with your Goals!)
1. Get Clear on What You Want
I know this sounds obvious, but sometimes it just isn’t. Setting goals helps you really start to zero in on the bigger picture. For instance, you might want to make enough money in your side hustle to be able to quit your job and be home with your kids during the day while having a passive stream of income. The more concise you are about your goals, the more you’ll find a clear roadmap to each goal!
To help you get clear about what it is you truly want for yourself in life, you should sit down and think about your dream goals in life. Write as many dreams and goals as you have for each category. Set a timer for 5 minutes for each category and write down EVERYTHING that comes to mind – no matter how big or small!
List of Goals to Set for Yourself
- Personal Goals
- Family Goals
- Financial Goals
- Career Goals
After listing out all of your dreams and goals, review your list and think of a short-term goal that you can set for 3-5 of your most desired dreams. These are the goals you are going to want to achieve within the next year!
2. You’re Less Likely to Quit on Yourself
Building off of becoming clear on your goals, is really understanding your WHY for setting each goal. Your WHY is the reason that you’re determined to achieve your goal and as long as you remember your WHY, you won’t give up on yourself before reaching your goals.
For instance, you might be determined to build a passive stream of income so that you can quit your job and be home with your kids. Your WHY might be that it’s important for you to be present in your kid’s lives because your parents weren’t around during your childhood and it negatively impacted your relationship with your parents. When you hold that WHY close, you won’t quit before achieving your goals. You will keep remembering that you need to build that passive stream of income to be home with your kids.
Tip – Think about your WHY for each of the 3-5 goals that you want to achieve this year. Be sure to write out why it’s important for you to achieve these goals!
3. Motivation to Get Moving
Once you have your WHY determined and laid out in front of you, not only are you not going to quit, but you are going to want to start to move FAST! You are going to have the most motivation to achieve them when you first sit down to write your goals. The best thing you can do is to get into action right away!
After you start taking action to achieve the goals that you have set, you will continue to work off the momentum that you are building. Think of yourself as a ball. Once the ball is rolling, it won’t stop unless it loses speed. Your job is to stay in action so that the momentum continues to build. The second you step back, you start to lose momentum and it’s likely that you’ll find yourself starting over again. Thankfully, you will set a clear roadmap with actionable steps that you can always refer to in order to help you get back on track!
Tip – Write out 5 actionable steps for each goal to help you step back from the big picture and think about the smaller actions that need to be taken to help achieve each goal. This way, you know exactly where to start when your motivation is high!
4. Easy to Make Decisions
Remember that clear roadmap we talked about? You will find that other benefits of goal setting help you to make decisions more easily! When you set goals and can break each goal down into actionable steps that will lead you there, the actions become hard to ignore.
For instance, if you know you want to run a half marathon, your first actionable step might be to sign up for the race. Once you’ve paid, you know you are committed, half-marathons aren’t exactly cheap races to skip! Next, you start thinking about all of the action steps that you need to take in order to complete a half marathon. Maybe you need to buy new running shoes. You probably need to create a training plan involving a certain number of miles to hit per run or cross-training with a strength or HIIT class.
Once you have your plan in place, it becomes easier to decide “what to do today” to bring you closer to your goal. This is because it is written out and easy to follow! For the example of the half marathon, you would write out the schedule that you need to use to train from now until the race date in your planner. As you plan out your weeks, you will work around your training schedule to ensure that you stick to your plan to help you achieve your goal!
Pro-Tip – LIVE by your planner! Mine has changed my life over the past few years in the way that I set and achieve goals! You can read more about how this planner can benefit you too!
PS – If you are looking to run a half marathon, check out these tips for running your first half-marathon!
5. Experience Greater Productivity
Another one of the benefits of goal setting is that you can easily break down the components of each goal. This creates a clear roadmap to take you from where you are today to actually achieving your goal.
You benefit because your priorities are laid out for you already and now all that’s left to do is complete each task! Having goals increases your productivity because it takes the thinking and guesswork out of what you need to do next! Now you aren’t wasting your time doing activities that won’t lead you to your goal and you can sit down and start actually tackling the goal!
Having a set list of priorities also means that you can structure them how you like. In the book, The Power of One More by Ed Mylett, he suggests tackling your hardest task first and then move on to the easier ones for greater productivity. Personally, I like to group the easier ones together and do them first to feel a sense of achievement quickly! You’ll find what works best for you!
6. Review, Revise, and Improve
Remember that target we were talking about in the beginning? Think of your goal as the bullseye on the archery board. When striving to hit your goal, you might come close, but miss that bullseye. At the end of your goal timeframe (this is why it’s always important to set a deadline for your goals!), you should sit down and take time to review what worked and what didn’t work when trying to achieve said goal. You might find that checking in each week on your progress helped keep you on track, but saying “yes” to every social invitation took up the time that you had allotted towards taking steps that would help you achieve your goal.
The important thing to remember is that you took actionable steps in the process, bringing you somewhere closer to your goal- even if you missed the mark. Now you can look at what worked and what didn’t work as you revise your roadmap or even your actual goal. The idea is to keep moving forward. While long-term goals are important, we recommend breaking these long-term goals into shorter goals that you can sprint after in a 90-day period. This way, you will continue to DO, REVIEW, and REVISE in shorter segments.
These 6 key benefits of goal setting should be great motivation to start writing out your goals today!
Whether you are thinking about personal goal setting or setting goals for work, you are sure to benefit just from sitting down and setting your goals! Writing down your biggest and smallest hopes and dreams helps bring you one step closer to them! I hope the benefits of goal setting inspire you to create goals for yourself that challenge you to grow and find more joy in your life!
