Posted by admin | Posted in Goal Setting | Posted on 05-01-2010-05-2008
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Education and the skills that derive from it represent a serious concern for parents with school going children: will they speak and write correctly? Will they make it to college? To give just an example of the necessity for writing goals, it suffices to say that the writing and reading activities are initiated and developed at school and at home through homework and assignments. But unfortunately, the writing goals that need to be achieved in order for them to be fully functional in this society are not exactly met as they should be.
One reason for this is that the writing goals may not be very well defined in terms of curricula. There should be made a clear cut distinction between practical writing that we may come across on a daily basis and creative writing that some teachers seem to focus on in some schools. Creative writing goals fire imagination and allow pupils to accept and defeat challenges, but let us not forget that writing was initially invented to serve very pragmatic purposes the communication of ideas and information.
Writing a CV or a cover letter are two examples of practical forms of writing that many members of our society seem to have difficulty in, and I wonder why… So then, how could one expect a person to be able to create an artistically descriptive paragraph when the most basic things about him or her cannot be rendered on a piece of paper in a coherent, reader-friendly manner?
Another reason why writing goals are not met is the lack of practice with writing to meet the fundamental demands of our society. Home assignments are designed and given so that they are not very difficult or challenging for the child. Moreover, lots of children focus on the encoded shortened language they use in chatting on the Internet. With a decreasing shift on writing compositions in class and at home and more and more informal, out-of-the-institution stress on brevity, simplicity and fun in writing, our kids are losing even those skills they may have rather passively acquired in class and at home.
Moreover, writing assignments seems to depend on information that is copy-pasted from sources that do not involve personal creativity. As a result, writing goals ought to be more present in the teachers’ lesson planning; they have to make sure that the principles related to writing throughout life for social and practical purposes are also applied and required at the schooling level.
All in all, we should become aware that a correct guiding of an individuals first steps in his/her writing experience, a motivating description and explanation of the necessity of this skill throughout their life may make students more oriented towards achieving practical writing goals. In addition, successful writing goals will prevent further disappointment and lack of self-confidence in the building of the career.
Posted by admin | Posted in Goal Setting | Posted on 04-01-2010-05-2008
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Sometimes, people get overwhelmed by the tasks they have to cope with at home or at work. It seems a very radical situation out of which no escape can be foreseen especially when these people are demoralized because of their more or less declared workload. Yet overworking is not always an issue. The only trouble could be poor time management, which can be fixed with a little care and some smart tricks.
If we are to refer to expert concepts, then, by time management we understand a list of skills, methods and tools meant to correspond to some pre-determined tasks and goals. The idea in itself is anything but simple and includes numerous activities like planning, deciding on goals, analyzing the time invested in carrying out a task, organizing steps or stages of ones activity, monitoring and constantly scheduling work based on pointing out priorities.
In the United States there is one very popular saying that has encompassed the globe and has been met on the lips of many other nations lately: time is money. This has become one of the most important principles of successful business companies and individuals and has led to creating training on the concept of time management. Why has it become so important? you may ask yourself. Well, one reason is that money that is lost can be obtained back by the investor after redressing and correcting the scheme she/he has relied on until then. One unsuccessful business scheme especially if associated with faulty time management can cost a lot and can turn one into a pretty desperate person.
Lack of knowledge concerning time management ranges therefore as a main cause of personal or professional failure. If your reaction is one that may be described by panic, the first thing you need to do is to calm down and assess the situation. Be as truthful as possible and based on your findings, draw another plan that is meant to get you out of the problem you find yourself in at the moment. Defeat acceptance is the other sane and safe attitude if nothing can be undone or fixed.
However, don’t feel sorry for yourself for too long and take action by reviewing and correcting the situation making use of the tools of planning, scheduling and prioritizing. And this time, try to focus a bit more on time management.
Posted by admin | Posted in Goal Setting | Posted on 03-01-2010-05-2008
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Most people are willing to start a new business project to gain more money or to start things over and independently if possible. But setting the project running is definitely not enough. What many investors fail to notice is that they have not set smart goals as a form to ensure a positive business progress. According to dictionaries, goals are those states of affairs that a plan aims to achieve and that, when achieved, complete the behavior intended to finalize them. Although this may sound a bit pretentious, smart goals can often make the difference between success and failure in business and personal life alike.
The expression smart goals has been used by very many project or program designers and business people. The word smart is nowadays used mainly as an acronym, each letter representing an adjective that should describe the goals. The letter s stands for specific, significant, or stretching. M represents anything that is meaningful, measurable, motivational. A refers to the smart goals that are acceptable, attainable or action-oriented. Relevant, rewarding, result-oriented and realistic define the letter R. Last but not least, t is the letter of trackable and time-based.
Smart goals can be applied both to personal and professional life sectors, and their setting usually requires some basic steps to take. Some career builders have nowadays acquired the level of knowledge that allows them to teach others on how to define, set and pursue goals. The problematic issue comes from the incapacity of social education to focus enough on defining and teaching aspects that would make people more pragmatic and success-oriented. Smart goals and their setting or identification are but a few of the elements missing in our schools. The privileged of smart goals training are those preparing for a career in finance and economics.
To conclude, lots of rewards are spread along the path of one who knows how to define smart goals. High education is not necessarily a condition of success, and there are lots of cases to prove it. A more pragmatic nature and an innate goal setting capacity have shown such people the way. They have made a clear difference between what is realistic, significant, measurable, time-oriented and significant and the opposite of those. Most of the success is therefore based on intelligence and innate skill of setting smart goals.
Posted by admin | Posted in Goal Setting | Posted on 02-01-2010-05-2008
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Personal and professional life depends on goal setting now more than ever. It is all about planning, sticking to the plan, adjusting as one makes progress and adapting, acting constantly towards one greater goal and finally achieving it. But during the planning phase, one may discover that there are short term goals that require all the attention and on which the other larger ones depend. Here is what makes the difference between short term goals and long term ones.
Some people will say that short term goals should be defined according to the plan you make when you first set them. Projects that are envisaged for no more than a month could be described as short term goals, but beyond six months or more, we’re talking about long term ones. Let us not ignore the fact that the two categories are interconnected as we cannot speak of long term plans without relying on the short term ones.
We can only think and plan the former against the background of the latter. For example, you could measure short term aims for yourself in days while someone else will measure their own aims of this kind in months or even in years; that is why the relativity concept in defining short term goals as done in the previous paragraph has a very important role.
A further important element to take into consideration when setting short term goals is the necessity to stay specific and very realistic in terms of planning. If you think that teaching your students past tense during the following week is a well defined and smart goal, you will probably not be able to achieve it. You need to think these types of goals in even more specific terms.
Make clear the difference between regular and irregular verbs next Tuesday morning in class between 9 and 11: here is the realistic version of the plan presented above. In this last example, the planner has set upon something that is small indeed realistic and achievable for a two hour period. That is probably one of the short term goals that a teacher would consider a step in his or her great plan or long term goal of allowing foreign students to understand and use correctly past tense forms of verbs after teaching, practicing, reinforcing and revising for at least several weeks as part of an English course.
Hopefully, the above example sets a different light on the distinction between short term goals and long term plans with the mention that perseverance and hard work remain the keys to success.
Posted by admin | Posted in Goal Setting | Posted on 01-01-2010-05-2008
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Very practical people with a clear focus on what they want to achieve in life, set goals and make plans. Psychological researches have brought action planning more into the spot light when they revealed the necessity for good organization and positive thinking. To begin with, if you set goals, there is a final target, an end of the road where you aspire to be. The absence of objectives will make life look like leading nowhere.
In addition, when you set goals, you get a better definition of time and a superior understanding of effort investment. Time and energy are two resources that need to be used in a focused manner; don’t waste efforts out of neglect or because of lack of objectives and perspectives. People who focus well on reaching one target will surely have better results than those who use time and energy in a diffused manner.
Positive motivation and the power of the will represent other factors that make set goals achievable. Once we discover the working mechanism, most of us learn about the importance of not quitting when faced with obstacles and barriers. Failures are mere stones that pave the road to success. Without having set goals in mind, and without the awareness of how we invest personal energy in goal achievement, we would be very intimidated when confronted with hardships and failures, and we thus would not pursue the path to success.
Last but not least, set goals increase mind clarity about what is or isn’t important. Many people face the challenge of prioritizing, but perhaps their task to establish priorities would be simpler if they remained keen on objectives and goals. A clear idea about should and shouldn’t be done in the pursuit of a goal or dream makes the way to success less sinuous. And once you determine priorities and you organize them under the form of a plan or strategy, you will receive signals under the form of failure or simple lack of progress every time you sidetrack from what you have planned.
All in all, if you set goals that are realistic and achievable there will be only positive results for you both in the near and long term future. Success can be part of our lives whenever we choose, on the condition that we know how to decode the opportunities and stay lucrative in the pursuit of goals and objectives.
Posted by admin | Posted in Goal Setting | Posted on 31-12-2009-05-2008
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Business owners need very smart sales goal setting and strategies to meet these desired successes, especially if the business is one categorized as small or medium. First it is important there should be a clear distinction between the actions integrated in a plan and other random decisions you take forced by unpredicted circumstances. The plan represents one of the ways to trigger success in the business aims. For those actions that do not belong to the pre-established plan, make sure you draw a plan and integrate these actions into a bigger picture that culminates with or focus on some kind of goal. If sales goal setting is neglected, you are most likely on a drifting rug that takes you nowhere where revenues and profit are.
The understanding of pro-action and re-action make two starting stages a business should cover. The former implies the fact that you initiate action according to a plan and that you have something very well-defined in mind regarding where you want to get with numbers and figures corresponding to sales and profit. For such cases the sales goal setting must be ready for a determined period in advance. The latter refers to that kind of action that you take in order to be able to survive in the conditions of very tough competition while you you have to fight back crises out of which you struggle to get; as such, there is no profit to get you higher above the minimum survival line.
This being said, remember that sales goal setting is not enough; you also need to start taking action. According to a well designed plan, you should act along the lines, adapting to all sorts of real life challenges and unsuspected situations. Supposing that you would like to learn a foreign language, and you set a three-month goal to learn the basics; without a good learning material and hard work, in three months little progress will have been made, not to mention anything about achieving your goal. The same thing goes for business, so sales goal setting has no value without actually applying what you plan.
Consequently, sales goal setting and taking action to meet goals are complementary. It would be highly impractical for anyone to think otherwise and to enjoy success quite out of the blue and without the tiniest of efforts.
Posted by admin | Posted in Goal Setting | Posted on 30-12-2009-05-2008
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The beginning of every new year is a moment of reassessment and activity planning for what comes next in one’s life. 2009 doesn’t bring too high expectations given the context of the international financial crisis. Yet, people won’t stop setting personal and professional goals because of the recession, on the contrary, this is the right moment to think positive and work hard to reach our aims.
On the one hand, personal goals should be ever-present in our life even despite this coming year with its somber predictions. First of all, may we all preserve the tranquility of our spirits and the harmony of our homes. For this to come true, let us remember that we should remain the same caring persons full of love and understanding. If kindness is a sore point in one’s life, then perhaps it is time now to become a little more considerate and supportive towards our family members especially if we notice that the professional goals of our beloved ones are in no way going to be achieved this year.
In spite of poor career promises for 2009, let’s stay focused and preserve self confidence to win the war in the end. Moreover, health is, as well, an aspect that should not be neglected. Good shape and wellness of each individual represent a goal that should be maintained no matter what, and action should be taken in that direction.
On the other hand, we may expect our professional goals not to be so well met this year. But even so, the career realm should not lack goals. Keep professional goals a bit more humble or at least realistic in relation to the position you find yourself in. Success will surely appear even if lots of efforts will be required in the direction of achieving goals.
Examples of professional goals include to get higher on the hierarchical ladder within your company, to get a raise due to your exquisite performance and dedication, to get more responsibilities and opportunities to get familiar with new things and thus grow professionally, to get a better job, and so on. If these professional goals however are set too high and you expect too much before the recession is over, you might get exactly the opposite situation while trying to stay on the safe side. Good luck!
Posted by admin | Posted in Goal Setting | Posted on 29-12-2009-05-2008
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Most teenagers go through the confusion of their youth years when they do not know which road to take in life. Well, there are very many people, even in mature adulthood, whounfortunately face the same problem. We don’t go through life as empty shells, we create us, our universe and relationships every moment. Has it ever crossed your mind that perhaps your life is missing an essential element? That you have not set personal goals the fulfillment of which would actually give you a feeling of self-confidence and satisfaction? Don’t let fear, criticism or negative attitudes set you back, action is the best solution!
Without personal goals one may easily end up with a feeling of failure or pointlessness, and that will surely not make life seem any more interesting than it already is. Therefore, whenever at a loss about the direction of the existence, take some time to think about yourself and what you want. Personal goals can be set for lots of life sectors, you just need to define and follow them. These fields of activity or of interest may differ from one person to another, yet they may include family, career, health, finance, social position, education, entertainment and lots of others.
Identify the most important aspects and focus on them before setting the personal goals. How do you picture yourself in the light of these goals a decade from now? Once you’ve set long term objectives, break them down into smaller goals that are designed for shorter periods. You can break these long term personal goals down into monthly or weekly or even daily goals if you practice enough patience and offer dedication to this process of life planning.
It is again very important that you decide on these personal goals by taking into account 5 criteria such as specificity, measurability, attainability, relevance and time. In one word, the long term projects have to be smart. The theory of the smart goals has appeared and became widely used in personal training and counseling with great results in practice. It is very important that you do not set goals that are too hard to achieve. If so, and if fulfilling one hard goal has taken longer than expected, next you can be more indulgent with yourself and set a lower goal level.
Posted by admin | Posted in Goal Setting | Posted on 28-12-2009-05-2008
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Motivation is defined as that set of principles or things that determine one to perform something and achieve success in what he or she has undertaken. Apparently without motivation we’d all be conquered over by laziness and passivity. And indeed, ever since we came to understand the world around us, supposedly at a very young age, we have been involved in experiences filled with many motivating factors. It all starts with the child being rewarded with a candy for listening to his/her mum. Therefore, motivation is taught to children in basic forms without the necessity to conceptualize the process: it simply happens.
Motivation seems to appear when, after performing a certain action, there is some kind of reward that creates pleasure or satisfaction to the individual who receives it. The reward as such can be of an intrinsic nature, meaning that the feeling of achievement or satisfaction is sufficient to cause a repetition of the action later. It can also be extrinsic, according to studies; and that means that money or praise coming from others is the key to making you repeat the performance. As a result, motivation is also of two kinds intrinsic, or inner, and extrinsic, or outer. Like you may know it already, anything intrinsic is limited to yourself, while the extrinsic variant involves external people and elements. The intrinsic type of motivation is also divided into two more subcategories. On the one hand there is intrinsic motivation triggered by sheer personal pleasure like a hobby, and on the other there is intrinsic motivation caused by obligation which usually includes work tasks.
All in all, motivation surely defines the way we move through life. This is the thing that has made us take our first steps, that has supported us in learning how speak our native tongue correctly, that has pushed us forward in school years and university studies perhaps, that finally sets in motion all the life areas from job and career pursuit to children and family providing. Motivation assumes many forms and can be related to many things.
Posted by admin | Posted in Goal Setting | Posted on 27-12-2009-05-2008
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As our society progresses we come up with more and more theories concerning various aspects of our lives, each apparently smarter than the previous. Professional and personal success could not be overlooked under the circumstances. The rather widespread and popular idea about how to set goals consists in the putting together of a plan or trajectory. Without a plan or itinerary it is very difficult to get where you want to regardless of whether the goals are short or long term.
Consequently, the theory on how to set goals relies on basic words of advice and pieces of personal experience. One such tip offers you the steps you are to use in order to make this task of how to set goals simpler for everyone. The most important of all is to make a decision about where you want to get to or what you would like to achieve. Without actually visualizing your success in the back of your mind and getting as many details as possible about it, it would be very tough to actually accomplish your established tasks. Therefore the question of how to set goals becomes not only complex but problematic too.
You need to analyze the situation you are in at the present moment, try to collect as much information about your purpose as possible, learn about the skills you need to have in order to achieve to goal, find out about the resources you can use on your way to getting there and establish whether the plan you are to make is realistic and achievable.
Next on how to set goals and stick to them, is taking small steps but keeping on track. It will be nearly impossible to take major steps in the goal direction because more ample actions usually have a superior failure risk. Should this happen, review your plan and see what amends you have so that it becomes a bit more realistic.
Use the right language if you want to know how to set goals! Psychological research urges us to use as much positive language as possible regardless of the addressee or the intent of the message. So why should we not apply that when thinking if we already do it when talking to others?
Instead of saying: I wont miss my Pilates session at the gym today, a positive variant would be: I know I will miss the Pilates session today therefore I will practice at home for twenty minutes. Can you notice the difference? It is of paramount importance that no negative language is used when you set goals so that keep all the thought channels positive and open when you review the weekly or daily plan.