When Do I want My Goal?

Smart Goal Series: part 5 – Time-lineThis series will explore goal setting by breaking down each step of the SMART goal tool. What We’ve Covered So Far

Up to this point we’ve covered a specific approach to achieving your chosen goal. We’ve addressed how to be specific and measurable with our goal setting. Determining what it is we want and how we will know that we’re headed in the direction of achieving our outcome are major keys when setting goals. We’ve covered some checks and balances to make sure that our goal is achievable. In the last article we focused on ensuring that your goal is realistic and provides the right level of challenge to keep you motivated and compelled to continue on.

Our final stop along this SMART goal series is addressing the timeline or time-bound component of your goal. Any goal needs a beginning and an end in order to have a viable chance of accomplishing it. Setting a timeline for your goal is a fine balance between the art of knowing yourself, including your strengths and weaknesses, and the science of setting proper goals. While there is no one-size-fits-all timeline because of the unique context for each goal, the following are three steps to ensuring you’ve dialed in your timeline to get what you want.

When Do You Want to Get What You Want?

As you think about the end result of your goal, whether that be a new level of well-being, paying off debt or finishing a project, how soon do you want it? Rather than focusing on the consequences of not getting what you want, focus on how good you will feel the sooner you achieve your desired outcome. What sets each of us apart is how we spend our daily allotted currency of TIME.

Let’s say you want to lose 50 pounds; do you want to string out the diet and exercise regimen for two years? One year? Or, six months? It can be quite difficult to see yourself following a diet and exercise regimen for two years; six months may seem more doable. And let’s be honest, who wants to wait that long to become 50 pounds lighter when you could have it in six months? The sooner you attain what you want, the sooner you’ll be able to liberate that energy and resource to new, even more compelling goals.

What Time-Frame Creates a Sense of Urgency and Compels You?

Imagine for a moment that your supervisor gave you a project to complete but no deadline. How hard would you work on that project? How compelled would you be to finish it? How important would you feel that project is to deserve your motivated, undivided attention and energy to be completed? Fair and realistic timelines counter procrastination and complacency.

The art of setting a timeline is balancing the right amount of space to complete the goal while at the same time keeping the timeline tight enough that you can almost smell victory. It’s important to be transparent with yourself and the required resources to complete the goal so that you don’t create undue stress or pressure by cramming your goal into an unrealistic time frame.

What Does Your Daily, Weekly and Monthly Schedule Look Like in Order to Get What You Want?

Using the other aspects of your SMART goal should be supportive in creating the daily, weekly and monthly habits and routines to achieve your goal. Even so, with all of the other aspects of the goal defined, setting daily, weekly and monthly timelines will provide further urgency and draw in an additional level of feeling compelled to get what you want. Focus on setting up habits and routines that are time-bound that drive you forward, breaking down the larger goal into bite sized chunks.

One More Thing

Throughout the SMART goal series, we’ve introduced a number of visualization exercises to assist in the goal setting process. There are two specific visualization activities that you can engage in when completing your timeline for your own SMART goal.

• The first is simply to draw a timeline and visualize yourself above it, going from past to future, overcoming obstacles and seeing how they are left behind, giving way to feelings of empowerment and motivation that take you right to the finish line: your ultimate goal.

• The second is to again draw a timeline and visualize yourself disassociating from the negative emotions that tend to crop up, such as feeling overwhelmed. Next, visualize yourself moving away from the timeline so you can see it in its entirety. Your timeline is now separate from you. Now, notice the items there, before your goal. Look at each one. It is just an item. You are not attached to it. Take a moment to think of ways to complete each item, then moving onto the next item.

Throughout this SMART goal blog series, we’ve uncovered some of the best tactics to set and achieve your goals. We’ve covered many caveats including what to do when we come up short with our goals and how to reframe failure simply as feedback and a powerful learning tool that helps us hone in our goal setting and completing skills.

Feel free to print or download the series as a whole so that you have a comprehensive guide to get what you want.

In gratitude,

William Malcolm

IntuitiveWellnessNow