Guidelines for Goal Setting

A Goal must be:

1. CONCEIVABLE
You must be able to conceptualize the goal so that it is understandable and then be able to identify clearly what the first step or two would be.

2. BELIEVABLE
In addition to being consistent with your personal value system, you must believe you can reach the goal.  This goes back to the need to have a positive, affirmative feeling about one's self.  Bear in mind that few people can believe a goal that they have never seen achieved by someone else.  This has serious implications for goal-setting in culturally deprived areas.

3. ACHIEVEABLE
The goals you set must be accomplishable with your given strengths and abilities.  For example, if you were a rather obese 45-year-old, it would be foolish for you to set the goal of running the four-minute mile in the nest six months-that simply would not be achievable.

4. CONTROLLABLE
If your goal includes the involvement of anyone else, you should first obtain the permission of the other person of persons to be involve; or the goal may be stated as an invitation.  For example, if your goal were to take your girlfriend to a movie on saturday night, the goal would not be acceptable as stated because it involves the possibility that she might turn you down.  However, if you said your goal was merely to invite your girlfriend to the movie, it would be acceptable.

5. MEASURABLE
Your goal must be stated so that it is measureable in time and quantity.  For example, suppose your goal were to work on your term paper this week.  YOu would specify you goal by saying, "I am going to write twenty pages by 3:00 PM next Monday."  That way, the goal can be measured; and when Monday comes, you know wheter or not you have achieved it.

6. DESIREABLE
Your goal should be something you really want to do.  Whatever your ambition, it should be on that you want to fulfill, rather that something you feel you should do.  We are well aware that there are many thing in life person has todo, but if he is to be highly motivated, he must commit a substantial percentage of his time to ding things he wants to do.  In other words, there should be a balance in life, but the "want" factor is vital to changing style of being and living.

7. STATED WITH NO ALTERNATIVE
You stated set one goal at a time.  Our research has shown that a person who says he wants to do one thing or anothergiving himself an alternative-seldom gets beyond the "or" he does neither.  This does not imply inflexibility.  Flexibility in action implies an ability to be able to make a judgement that some action you are involved in is either inappropriate, unnecessary, or the result of a bad dicision.  Even though you may se out for one goal, that can stop at any time and drop it for a new one.  But when you change, you again state your goal without an alternative.

8. GROWTH-FACILITATIONG
Your goal should never be destructive to yourself, to others, or to society.  A student recently se a goal to break off fourteen car antennas before 9:00 am.  The next day, the goal was certainly believable, achievable, mearsureable, and so forth.  Obviously such a goal cannot be supported.  If a student is seeking potentially destructive goals, an effort to encourage him to consider a different goal should be made.

These guidelines have been adapted for choose success: How to set and achieve all your goals, by Dr. Billy B. Sharp with Claire Cox.