Setting goals is one thing that sets us apart from our animal cousins. We can plan for the future, they can’t. And, achieving our goals is one thing that separates the successful from the rest. Here we look at the role of goals in life and how good you are at fulfilling them.

It’s been taken from our Book Rapper issue: Victory. This was was derived from Heidi Grant Halvorson’s brilliant book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals.

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Three Things…

Here are three crucial things you need to know about designing your goals…

1 Know Where

The whole point of setting goals is to provide direction and a benchmark for decision making. Not choosing makes life more difficult.

• At holiday time, if we just jumped in our car and started driving in any direction this would make it difficult to decide what to pack.

2 Be specific

The more specific we are about what we want to achieve the better.

• ‘Earning $100,000’ is better than ‘getting rich’.
• Running 5K in under 30 minutes is better than ‘getting fit’.
• Spending 3 weeks in Italy is better than ‘travelling more’.

3 Set the bar high

Goals are meant to be a stretch. Difficult goals inspire greater effort, force us to strategize how to achieve them and provide greater satisfaction when we’ve fulfilled them.

QUESTION: How good are you at achieving your goals? Do you aim high enough?