Seven tips for effective goal setting
Don’t use busyness as an excuse not to take time out to reflect on what’s been, what could be, and what you want your legacy to be, Matthews Steer’s General Manager Catherine Duncan told attendees at our Women in Business breakfast at the start of June.
“Life’s short, what do you want to achieve while you’re here and how can you get the most out of your time on earth,” asked Catherine. “You only get one crack at life. If you can’t make the time for reflection and goal setting you’re not giving yourself the opportunity to live your best life.”
Catherine’s goal-setting tips
- Set incremental goals: 12 months, three years, five-years or whatever timeframe works for you.
- Physically write your goals down – that way they infiltrate your subconscious.
- Provide a foundation for your goal-setting by reflecting on:
- your achievements of the last 12 months
- your learnings (the nuggets of gold, the failures and surprises, and the ways you coped with them)
- your intentions moving forward.
- Complete a ‘wheel of life’ a personal and visual scorecard that identifies what is important to you, and how you are performing in every facet of your life from finances all the way through to your personal relationships. This will help you identify what’s impacting your life, your non-negotiables, what you are going to find challenging to change and gives you a starting point for setting goals and implementing changes where they are of value to you.
- Pick maximum of three key areas to work on from your wheel of life and decide on what you are going to stop doing, start doing, change or continue. This helps you set your boundaries, including what you will not do and what you will not compromise. Remember we teach people how to treat us.
- Review your goals occasionally. The clearer and more transparent they are, the less you will probably need to review them as they will be embedded more easily in your subconscious.
- Verbalise your goals to someone else. It helps to keep you accountable and can also be a source of support, particularly where you share goals.
“Your goals need to align with how you want to feel every day and what you want to experience in life, otherwise it’s meaningless,” says Catherine. “Goal setting should be fun, should identify where you want to be in 12 months time, three years time, five years time and beyond, and should provide you with keys to focus on to achieve your goals.”
The breakfast was attended by 21 businesswomen from industries as diverse as lighting design, transport, wellness, graphic design, hospitality, accommodation and the legal and accounting professions, many of whom also shared their personal tips for goal setting.
To express your interest in attending future Matthews Steer Women in Business breakfasts please email info@matsteer.com.au