Question

Goal-setting is an important strategy to manage your time and stay on track with your education. Reflect on the importance of goal-setting, and answer the following questions:

1. Briefly, share a time when you set a goal and did not accomplish it, and then share a time when you set a goal and successfully achieved it. Why weren’t you successful in your first example? Why were you successful in your second example?

2. Why does effective goal-setting help us achieve goals? What are the characteristics of good goals?

3. Based on your answer to questions 1 and 2, set three goals: one short-term, one mid-term, and one long-term.

Be sure to reference your sources.​

Answer 1

1. Goal Setting #1: I had a goal before to travel to at least one place I never been into. In able to achieve this, I saved some of my salary and had to do some couple of works for additional funds. Apparently, I wasn't able to achieve this as I become ill for weeks. My bills shoots up and I have to reorder my priorities.

Goal Setting #2: My second goal was to get an investment for myself. I don't know much about investment so I made a plan and list of possible business ventures I could make. My cousin knows about baking good chocolate chips cookies. I teamed up with her and we entered a little cookie selling business. My aim is to sell 500 cookie jars at first then the numbers will increase in the future. At the end of the year, we sold out 800 cookie jars.

2. Goal setting is important to keep you on track and to remind yourself the very reason and thing that you would want to achieve. Good goals must be realistic and should be planned well. Without proper planning, you cannot perform your steps properly because there might be a chance that you'll forget something along the way.

3. Short-term Goal: For starters, I would revise my plan for my first goal - to travel. I will make a realistic and executable timeline for list of processes until I met my goal. I will also plan my expenses and revenues which I get from my salary and business.

Mid-term Goal: As soon my business and personal plan are in order, I would concentrate more on selling my cookie jars so I could save more. I would also add some more products or variety, but this requires planning and budgetting as well.

Long-term Goal: This is for the retention of customers and making my business bigger.

Answer 2

1) I set a goal to become famous. That's mostly it, as I did not really specify it in detail. Of course, I did not accomplish it. On the other hand, I set a goal to have all A's in the final year of elementary school. As it was something quite attainable, I stayed with good habits and somehow this goal reached fruition. I succeeded at my second goal as it is definitely more attainable and specific.

2) In order to be effective, a goal has to be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based). It is intuitive that we will reach our SMART goals faster than bland, generic goals, as SMART goal-setting holds that goals are always tailor-made.

3) Short-term - I want to bake a 10 inch pizza in two hours time with the resources I currently have in my fridge, since I am hungry.

Mid-term - I want to learn to play the key guitar riffs that are essential for an intermediate guitar playing level. I want to do that in five months time, with constant learning and revision.

Long-term - I want to be a chief marketing officer in a Fortune 500 company in 10 years time. After I get a Marketing degree and follow up with a good internship and 5-6 years of hard work, I think I will be able to achieve my final goal.