Setting SMART Personal Goals

A goal is an objective that you set yourself to achieve. Setting goals is important because it gives us a sense of direction. Essentially, they are like a road map that guide us to our destination and enable us to track our journey.

For goal setting to be effective, goals should be clearly defined. In other words, they should be specific, measurable and have a timeline attached to it. This helps keep track of our progress and ultimately celebrate the successes as a reward for accomplishment.

This web page is dedicated to helping people who wish to set and achieve goals whether they are personal, career-related, professional, performance-related, or any other ones. We will discuss the importance and benefits of setting goals, how to set SMART goals, goal setting tips, how to keep track of the ones achieved, encouraging quotes, how to stay motivated and more.

After having discussed all the above, I will list down some of my goals that I had set in 2014 along with the status of each goal.

Why Should I Set Goals?

One of the biggest benefits of setting goals is that they allow you to make your dreams a reality. As Diana Scharf Hunt put it "Goals are dreams with deadlines." By setting them and having a plan to achieve them, you bring them into fruition.

Setting goals helps people bring clarity and focus to what they are doing. As Earl Nightingale once said, "People with goals succeed because they know where they are going. It's as simple as that.". Basically, they become your road map to your destination.

By achieving your goals, you bring about more confidence in yourself and are not only able to help yourself succeed, but thereby help and influence others succeed.

Anyone can set goals, but for them (i.e. dreams) to become a reality, we must learn how to set effective ones. One of the ways to go about setting effective ones is using SMART goals. To learn more, continue reading the next section.

How to Set Effective Goals?

There doesn't seem to be compelling evidence as to who was the originator of SMART goals. Some say that Paul Meyer was the first to use it in 1965, others claim its first known use was in 1981 by George Doran. Irrespective, who was the originator, SMART goals have been effectively used to set and achieve them.

SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant & Time-bound.

• Specific: by making your goals specific, you bring clarity and focus;
• Measurable: helps you keep track of your progress;
• Attainable: keeps your goals realistic and you motivated;
• Relevant: keeps the focus on something you truly want to accomplish;
• Time-Bound: helps you set targets with deadlines.

For example, let's say my goal is to lose weight, now it definitely sounds like a one, but it's not a SMART one because it's not Specific, may be you can measure it, but it's not time-bound.

So a SMART goal would be "I want to lose 20 pounds over the next 12 months". Now this goal is Specific in terms of how much weight you want to lose, it's Measurable, it's Attainable if you put a plan in place, it's Relevant to you and it's Time-bound because you've attached a timeframe to it.

As mentioned earlier, for goals to be effective set them using the SMART criteria. In order to stay focused on achieving them, use the following tips:

• Write down your goals with specifics;
• Break them down into smaller tasks;
• Make sure that they don't conflict with each other;
• Surround yourself with positive, like-minded people;
• Be flexible and ready to tweak your goals;
• Reward yourself after achieving specific milestones.

You may want to watch this short YouTube video on some more tips and examples.

Goals Focused on Online Work in 2014

Ok, now that we've discussed some important aspects of setting effective goals and achieving them, I'm listing below, some of the goals I set for myself in 2014. The ones that I've listed below are focused on my online work which is to do with blogging/writing, cleaning up my Squidoo lenses transferred to HubPages, and YouTube videos. Each of them have actionable steps to help track and achieve them by the respective deadline dates. I kept track of these goals during 2014 on a monthly basis, to check my progress. So here are my 3 goals for 2014:

Create and Update 12 New Squidoo Lenses by December 2014

Actionable Steps:

• Review ALL Squidoo lenses (webpages) transferred to HubPages;

• Complete editing of all lenses transferred to HubPages.

Status: Given that Squidoo has been acquired by HubPages, this goal is focused on reviewing and cleaning up lenses that have been transferred to HP. I decided to move only 32 of my Squidoo lenses to HubPages. Depending on my experience, I will decide to create more hubs.

I will also be publishing more Wizzley pages and blogs, but this will depend on the transfer of my Squidoo lenses to HubPages. I managed to update all 32 lenses that transferred to HubPages before the deadline date.

Write 24 blog posts on current blogs by December 31, 2014

Actionable Steps:

• Research topics to write each month;

• Write 2 blog posts per month on current blogs.

Status: As mentioned above, given the acquisition of Squidoo by HubPages, in August 2014, I have decided to move some of my content to my blogs. My goal, by end of December 2014 is to complete 100% of my project in transferring this Squidoo content to my blogs. I have managed to exceed this goal by publishing a total of 52 blog posts on my blogs.

Produce 12 YouTube Videos by December 31, 2014

Actionable Steps:

• Research topic for video each month;

• Create one YouTube video a month;

• Upload videos to YouTube.

Status: created and uploaded 46 videos from January to December 2014 on my YouTube Channel. I decided to create more YT videos instead of creating more Squidoo lenses (webpages) and blogging more due to the changes with Squidoo. I exceeded this goal and this specific goal helped me increase my AdSense earnings as well, through my monetized YouTube videos.