{"id":2680,"date":"2017-12-14T12:07:20","date_gmt":"2017-12-14T17:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/?p=2680"},"modified":"2017-12-14T12:07:20","modified_gmt":"2017-12-14T17:07:20","slug":"setting-smart-goals-for-the-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/?p=2680","title":{"rendered":"Setting SMART Goals for the New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>New Year\u2019s Resolutions for Professional Success<\/h2>\n<p>The new year is almost here! 2017 is coming to an end and 2018 is just around the corner. This is a great time to sit down and think about your goals for the future. Whether you call them New Year\u2019s resolutions or just plans for the next twelve months, there are many good reasons to take a pause and consider what you want to achieve next year and what steps you can take to move you towards your desired future state.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to setting goals, we have all heard of setting SMART goals.\u00a0 While this approach isn\u2019t new, I find it\u2019s good practice to remind ourselves of the process as I tend to skip steps (like being attainable) in an effort to reach my outcome faster.<\/p>\n<h3>Setting SMART Goals<\/h3>\n<p>SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Based.<\/p>\n<p>Setting a SMART goal makes your goal-setting process more effective and efficient. It ensures that you have something to work towards and that you don\u2019t find yourself spinning your wheels or struggling to reach a goal that isn\u2019t realistic or attainable.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Specific\n<ul>\n<li>A specific goal is the difference between saying \u201cI want to get more clients\u201d and \u201cI want to get 10 more regular clients.\u201d Setting specific goals give you a better chance of success since you\u2019ll have a firm outcome to work towards.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Measurable\n<ul>\n<li>How will you determine whether or not you\u2019ve reached your goal? When you\u2019re setting goals, think of how you will measure your success. Sometimes it helps to break down a larger goal into several smaller steps to make it easier to track your success.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Attainable\n<ul>\n<li>You want to set a goal that requires effort, but you also want to make sure your goal is something that is actually possible. Otherwise, you\u2019re just setting yourself up for failure. Far too often we set lofty goals without thinking through the smaller goals \/ outcomes that need to be achieved first to get us there.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Relevant\n<ul>\n<li>Your goals should fit your business strategy, your professional career path or your lifestyle plan. By making your goals relevant to a specific area of your life, you will be most effective and will set yourself up for the greatest chance success. This will increase your motivation to work hard to achieve your goals.<\/li>\n<li>The R in SMART can also stand for Reasonable, which is a similar aspect to Relevant. You\u2019ll want to make sure your goals fit into the overall scheme of things. For example, you might want to have the best year in your company\u2019s history, but if your entire industry is in a downturn, this may not be reasonable.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Time-Based\n<ul>\n<li>Set a timeframe for achieving your goals. This makes it easier to chart your progress and measure your success as well as reward yourself when you reach milestones. For example, if you want to get 10 more regular clients, when do you want to achieve that? There is a big difference between adding 10 new clients by July and reaching the same number of new clients by next December.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Another tip for goal-setting is that it\u2019s a good idea to set goals that you have control over. While there are obviously very few situations where you have complete control over all aspects, it\u2019s still a good idea to focus on your own contributions rather than goals that depend entirely on someone else. For example, deciding to pitch your business to 50 new clients this year may be a better goal than attracting 10 new clients, since pitching to clients depends more on your efforts. You can then set a close rate of 20% which would convert into 10 new clients.\u00a0 This way you can influence the outcome as much as possible.<\/p>\n<p>One approach that I have found very helpful is to share your goals within someone else and ask them to be your accountability partner.\u00a0 This means the other person will check in with you regularly to get a status update on your progress and to help you brainstorm \/ discuss how to overcome obstacles.\u00a0 By publicly stating what you want to achieve, you increase your level of accountability and can increase the amount of support you will receive from others to help you reach your goals.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, don\u2019t be afraid to revise your goals. We all have the tendency to consider it a \u201cfailure\u201d if we don\u2019t achieve our goals on the first attempt. The problem with this mentality is that it sets us up for an \u201call or nothing\u201d outcome. Just because you didn\u2019t reach your initial goal, it doesn\u2019t mean you shouldn\u2019t keep working towards improvement. Instead, review your goals, make changes and keep going.<\/p>\n<p>Wishing you a happy and successful 2018!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Year\u2019s Resolutions for Professional Success The new year is almost here! 2017 is coming to an end and 2018 is just around the corner. This is a great time to sit down and think about your goals for the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/?p=2680\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2682,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[58],"tags":[153,220],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2683,"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2680\/revisions\/2683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}