The importance of goal setting

Everyone of us has dreams and for his personal and professional life. While most people like to talk about their dreams, only a few actually do something to realize their dreams. The challenge is that dreams are very often only known in a vague form without clear goals. And without goals it is impossible to direct any energy to create the necessary change that will help you reach your goals and achieve the dreams of your life.

I strongly believe that the reason why most people never realize their dreams is that they are not setting any goals. They just life day by day doing things that seem right in the moment and some day wake up and realize that they have wasted a lot of time.

Of course asking yourself the question what your dreams are and defining goals could be quite uncomfortable as well. It might wake you up from a year-long sleep where you have been merely existing and not living to your full potential. And if you define goals it creates a degree of pressure that you need to act upon them and can not spend your time sitting in front of the TV. Nevertheless if you are true to yourself you don’t have to be afraid to wake up and see a manifestation of your dreams into concrete goals – you should rather be satisfied that you have taken the step into the right direction to make your dreams come true.

A 4-step approach to setting goals

I have defined goals for myself – personal and professional – and I am using the following 4-step approach.

1. Envision your Future

If you don’t have a clear dream of you what want to achieve in your life you should start imagining what you want your future life – personal and professional – to be. It is important that you imagine your future as an idealized life where you envision what you really want your future to be. Of course you should think big in this process, but you should also stay realistic.

Dreaming of becoming like Paris Hilton or Brad Pitt, flying around the world in your private jet and drinking champagne in the presidential suite of the most exclusive hotels is something everyone would want to do.

But the question is: Is this really what you want to get out of your life? From your current position in life what are realistic goals that you could achieve in the next one, three and five years? How do you envision your life in one, three and five years from now? These are the questions that I ask myself in my own goal setting approach.

2. Define Goals

Based on the idealized future scenario of your life or on the vision of your life in 1, 3 and 5 five years you should define goals that would describe this vision. Trying to deduce concrete goals from an abstract vision is one of the most important steps because these goals will be the drivers of change and the pillars of your changed life. I have defined four goals that act as the pillars of my professional career. Whenever I ask myself why I am doing all this I look at the goals that I have defined with myself and remind myself that I made a conscious decision to pursue these goals because the are the cornerstones of my future life.

3. Environmental Requirements

In order to achieve your previously defined goals, certain environmental requirements are necessary that help you achieve your goals more easily. Certain actions lead you to achieve your goals and in order to be able to perform these actions these requirements need to be fulfilled so that you can work efficiently towards your goals. I have defined requirements that create an environment that provides maximum support to get into action to achieve my goals. In my case these requirements are mostly concerned with building contacts to other people where – through cooperation – we can help each other achieve our goals faster.

4. Risk Factors

In every endeavor different risk are involved that might stop you from achieving your goals. Identifying these risks in advance is essential in order to recognize them when they are present and to manage them accordingly. These risks could be everything from excessive workload in other jobs, distractions as well as your own personality as a limiting factor to achieve the change. Thinking about these risks in advance has helped me significantly understand the drivers that negatively impact the probability that I will achieve my goals.

The role of your BlackBerry (or any other smartphone)

Even though thinking about your dreams and defining goals does not require any electronic tools there is one area where your BlackBerry can be very helpful. It is important that you write down your goals somewhere where you are able to review them regularly.

Since mobile phones have become the most intimate gadget that we carry with us anytime and anywhere you should write down your goals, environmental requirements and risk factors into the text editor of your BlackBerry or any other mobile you have. I have written down my goals in my BlackBerry and whenever I have a few minutes I can easily review my goals and my approach because it’s all written down in MemoPad.

You might think that this just happens occasionally but there are actually many, many occasions when I review my goals, mostly when I am doing a longer journey or waiting for a meeting and all my emails have been done.