Monday, October 18, 2010
Goal Setting
It is almost half way through the semester and its about time for evaluations at the office. One of the biggest topics of discussion seems to be goal setting. I started thinking about this last week. I am not sure what my true thoughts are about goals and how useful they are. I pose this question to everyone: is it OK to go through life with no long term goals? Is it frowned upon in the business world not to have long term goals? A few of my friends have made comments. They said that vague long term goals are good to keep you on track. The best piece of advice I got was to keep a few short term goals. This way they are able to be accomplished and with less time means less chance of unpredictable twists and turns. The best long term goals are goals that you are truly passionate about. This is why I started this entry. I am not sure what I am truly passionate about. My interests seem to change to often. Basically I guess I don't know how to go into an evaluation if I don't have long term goals. Is it OK to say that I don't want to have long term goals and that I would rather just take life as it comes? I found this link about goal setting and found it to be pretty interesting. I'm not sure how I will go into this evaluation but I'm thinking that this will be a good topic of conversation with my supervisors.
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I feel as though there are definitely 2 different types of goals in the world... personal and professional (aside from long-term and short-term).
ReplyDeleteAnd personal goals are just that... your personal goal for yourself. Whether it be learning something new every day, which doesn't get more short-term than that, or training to run a marathon. I definitely think it is healthy to have personal goals for yourself.. but I don't think they are more or less important of they are short or long-term.
Professional goals are a different bear altogether. I agree with the article.. that they must be practiced the right way or else they are helping no one. And I feel that every job is a little different with what would constitute poor goal setting and what wouldn't. A sales job will have much different goals than a customer service job.. but in either case they can't be so outlandish (like the $3.5mil quota) that it is not attainable... it all goes back to that acronym - SMART goals.
Justin,
ReplyDeleteWhen I was twenty-some, I used to have very high long term goals. I used to dream and hope about good things from life but they were not substantiated by my short term goals and reality used to hit hard on me and my family as time went by.
Now in my fifties, I have switch then arround and my short term goals are very demanding and focused. The truth is I have to make up for lost time but in reality, I think that should have been the way all along! I hope this serve you well because I can see how good its been for my children too.
I think everybody should have a long term goal so the life would be meaningful for him once he achieve that. But I think we can break that long term goal into several short term goals and in this way it would be easier for us to achieve step by step. Because the long term goal usually means you have to achieve it through a long time period, and that usually makes people feel frustrated. But if you divide it into several short term goals, it is easier to accompanish and people will gain more confidence to finish the next step.
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