How to Set Goals

Over the next few weeks I’m going to focus on a topic that is near and dear to me which is goal setting. One of the things that seems to be becoming apparent is that members of the younger generation have difficulty setting goals and tracking their progress. If you remember back from a few weeks ago with the executive function skill of self-monitoring there is an inability at times to have an accurate idea of where students are in task completion. Goal setting is a great way to help build executive functioning skills that can be academic in nature or not. As a kid one of my favorite things was the March of Dimes Read-a-thon because I was always someone who read anyway but now there was a goal and a reward as well as a way to track my progress. This also was actually teaching me important skills about goal setting and not about reading. Tracking my progress was a way of self-monitoring, and it also allowed for my competitive side to come out because I wanted to read more than everyone else. The one thing that a lot of people have trouble with is creating measurable goals as well as breaking goals down into actionable steps. Today we are just talking about the first step which is setting goals because there needs to be something to measure before we start measuring it. So think of some things you want to accomplish. Categorize them out to make the next pieces easier. Then work on your prioritizing skill by identifying the goal that is either the most important to you or the easiest to accomplish and focus on that. Put your attention to it. Identify possible habits that will help in achieving them. Next week I’ll give an example and a way to break down the goal into different steps.