Today is July 1. The first half of 2008 is behind us and the second half just begun. It’s a great opportunity to review your goals for 2008 and see how you’re doing. Are you making good progress or have your goals been long ago discarded and forgotten like so many New Year Resolutions?
I’m going through this process myself. So far in 2008, I’ve done reasonably well on reaching some of the professional goals I’ve set, but not too well on the personal ones. One of the pieces I struggle with is that goal setting does not come naturally to me. I typically default to setting goals that are too vague or too ambitious, and ultimately doomed to failure from the start. Some people (and many lawyers) are natural born goal setters and achievers, but I really have to work at it.
Some time ago, I came across this mnemonic device for remembering how to set an effective goal, maybe you have heard it or something like it: SMART goals.
S: specific (did you set out exactly what you want to achieve?)
M: measurable (how will you know when it is accomplished?)
A: achievable (is it overly ambitious?)
R: relevant (is the goal relevant to something you really want?)
T: timed (is there is a deadline for achieving the goal?)
SMART goals work equally well for personal and professional goals. Take some time today and look out over the next six months and commit to some goals. They don’t have to be huge or life-changing, just enough so that on New Year’s Day 2009 you can look back and know that whatever else happened in 2008, at least you accomplished some things you set out to do.
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