IT PAYS TO SET SMART GOALS.

Have you ever thought of setting goals for yourself in various aspects of your life and found it extremely difficult to do so. Perhaps you didn’t find it that difficult to do so but following it to the letter was your headache? Setting goals is a good thing, it helps you know when, how, why and so on,  to do what, keeps you on your toes and also serves as a guide to you in your life and especially financially in this respect.

But everything should be done right, or don’t you think so? Being SMART about your goals is the way to go.

FIVE WAYS TO SET SMART GOALS

Set an attainable goal- Your goal should be an attainable one in the sense that, it should be a goal that should not be too easy to give up on or abandon. For example, if you say “learn hard”. This goal is way too broad and has the potential of being abandoned too easily. One way of making such a goal more attainable is to say “by the end of this week, I should have finished studying this particular course” With this you know when to start, when you should finish and what you should achieve at the end of the week.

Your goal should be realistic- If you set a goal like “ I should have saved about 5000 Ghana cedis by the end of five months” when you earn about 100 Ghana cedis a month is not realistic. This is because even if you set aside the whole of your salary every month, you would never save up to that amount, and you definitely cannot save all your salary.

Be specific- In setting your goals, try and be as specific as possible, as in,  don’t make them too clumsy for yourself. It should be exact and precise as possible. For example if you set a goal like”saving more” you would find it difficult as to when to start, and when to end and even how much to save depending on how much you earn, but all these should be considered in setting a smart goal. If you are specific in your goal you also make it attainable.

Set  a timely goal- when you set your goal, you should have a sense of when you want it completed, anything that is not timed might as well wait till tomorrow. This could keep on till you finally forget you ever set a goal.

There is always a smart way of doing things and when it comes to goal setting you can stick to these five ways to help you keep smart goals all the time.