How to set goals and achieve them

Course Content

Total learning: 5 lessons Time: 10 weeks

Section 3 – Types of Goals

Types of Goals

Generally, people set personal goals like their relationship goals, financial savings goals, educational goals, etc. While some may call these goals, but technically they are more like stepping stones in a person’s life. Each of these goals is interconnected to a long-term goal, which is basically the primary goal. For example, if you want to become a doctor, your stepping stone would be finishing high-school by doing well in science, finding a good university that deals with medicines, start general medicine and slowly move on to specialize in a particular branch. So, in this case, the specialty is a long-term goal, while everything else is just short-term or stepping stone goals. Let us look at them in detail. 

Stretch Goals
These are goals that encourage you to do the work and are not meant to scare you in any way. This is similar to the example that I gave you in the previous section about overachievers. With stretch goals, you learn to be pro-active, push yourself even further, stay motivated, and learn how to think out of the box. 

SMART Goals –
SMART goals are goals that help you stay inspired and in-force. The full form of SMART is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-sensitive. These goals are generally set within a particular time limit. When you set smart goals, you have to ensure that you have an action plan to back it up. 

This action plan will contain strategies and goals that are set on a step-by-step basis. For example – If you want to lose 10 kgs in one year, you need to set up your action plan for three months, six months, nine months, and finally, the one-year mark. 

Stepping Stone Goals –
These goals are otherwise known as transitional goals. These goals are like small stepping stones to your main goal. Now to understand this, let us take the previous example. As I said, if you want to lose 10kgs, you need to have an action plan for every three months until you reach your main aim. The stepping stone goals will be the smaller ones that will help you reach the end of the 3-month mark. So, in this case, it would be having an action plan for your first three months, then another action plan for the next three and so on.

If you want to lose 10 kgs in one year, you need to set up your action plan for three months, six months, nine months, and finally, the one-year mark.