This is why you NEED to set goals.

In our last post I had mentioned how setting goals is extremely important especially when deciding on whether or not it's time to upgrade your routine. If you missed that one, you can check it out here. I had said, half-jokingly, that perhaps the next post I write was going to be about the importance of setting goals.

Honestly, I wasn't going to actually commit an entire post to just that topic because, to me, goal setting is about as common sense as putting gas in the car. However, I experienced something last week at work that reminded me that a lot of people actually struggle with setting goals. Actually, it's more like I experienced something again. 

As I'm sure you know by now, I work as a professional tutor at my school in addition to taking graduate classes. My job as a tutor requires me to work with various different types of students including both native and nonnative speakers of English. Do you want to know what one of their biggest issues is regardless of their language proficiency? You guessed it: goal setting.

It always baffles me when I tell a student we should set goals to ensure they finish their work on time and in response they tell me their goal is to finish their assignment. I mean, yea--that's the ultimate goal just like the ultimate goal when going to college is getting a degree, which in turn leads to a job, or like the ultimate goal when starting a business is to make money. What always surprises students is when I tell them they need to create smaller goals to help track their progress. 

I suppose it isn't an absolute necessity to segment your ultimate goal into smaller, more easily achievable parts, but I can tell you from personal experience, I have never simply set a huge goal and achieved it without managing my process. I would guess that most people break their goals into six or more parts to help keep them moving forward. 

Let me give you an example:

Say your goal is to improve your English vocabulary which is definitely a great goal. But what does that really mean? Do you simply want to learn new words, do you want to learn more academic words, do you want to be able to have a more robust vocabulary in conversation, or do you want to be able to use new words while writing? First off, before you create smaller goals you need to determine what your goal really is. Be as explicit as possible.

A goal I often set for myself is to continue reading a book or essay, but to simply say "to continue reading" could mean different things. It could mean read 100 more pages or it could mean read 5 more. A more explicit goal would be to read 20 more pages because I would know that I didn't complete the goal until I read 20 pages.

Get it?

Alright, after you clearly establish what your goal is you need to begin breaking it into smaller parts. For example, if your goal is to learn new vocabulary words to use in conversation, you might want to establish the following smaller goals: learn and successfully use one new word, learn and successfully learn two new words, learn and successfully learn five new words, learn and successfully learn ten new words, and so on. 

You wouldn't just want to say your goal is to learn new words because that could mean a lot of different things. You want to first, be as clear as possible with your goal, and second, create smaller goals leading up to your ultimate goal.

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No matter what your goal is you always want to make sure you follow the two rules mentioned above; that is, be as explicit as you can with your goal and divide your ultimate goal into smaller parts. Use the following questions to help you divide your goal into smaller, more manageable parts:

1. What is your basic goal? (Simply, what you hope to achieve)
2. What is your ultimate goal? (Not just to learn new vocabulary words. Be as specific as possible)
3. What do you need to do in order to complete your ultimate goal?
4. Are there any parts of your goal that seem like they will require less time to complete? 
5. Which parts seem like they will require the most time to complete?

For example, here are my answers to the above questions:

1. My basic goal is to start a business
2. My ultimate goal is to establish a business helping nonnative speakers of English improve their proficiency, so that I can have complete autonomy over my life.
3. I need to learn about business, learn about marketing/advertising, learn about web design, overall, a lot of learning, establish a brand on social media, create a website (the list goes on...)
4. Learning about web design may take the least amount of time because it is probably not going to be a significant part of completion of my ultimate goal.
5. Learning about business may be take the most time because there's so much to learn.

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So as you can see, goal setting is very important. Not only does it help keep you on track, but it also helps you monitor your progress. I've been setting daily goals for the past several years. I monitor my statues in a notebook, and every time I complete a goal I put a check mark next to it. 

Now, most of this post has been about keeping track of long term goals, but I feel like I should say that short term goals can be just as important. For example, the following were my goals for last weekend:

Weekend to-do list-9/27-9/29
Continue reading Forter (10 page min): F S Su
Begin annotated bib (2 pg min)
Begin reading essay  Continue
Go for walk: F S Su
Continue working on site: F S/Su
Brainstorm blog ideas  Begin writing
Call mom

You can see that some of my goals were quite time consuming such as reading Forter while others where a lot easier like calling my mom. In my opinion, a good list of goals will consist of both difficult and easy goals. The difficult goals are probably the ones you need to complete and the easy ones are to build momentum towards reaching the harder ones. For example, going for a walk everyday is an easy task to complete, but completing it makes me want to continue working on my list. It's all about the feeling I get when checking off a task.

Does that make sense?

As you may have noticed in my goals list, I have started developing a website for Level-Up Proficiency. This site will include several new features including a new logo and slogan. My goal is to have the site up and running by the end of October. If you have any questions or concerns about today's topic or anything else, feel free to email us at levelupproficiency@gmail.com or send us a message on our Facebook page.

We'll provide future updates regarding the status of our website on our Facebook page so stay tuned!

-Ryan M. Shea, English Proficiency Specialist