Setting goals is one of my favorite things to do. They give me more motivation to complete things, and achieving my goals gives me a huge confidence boost.
I used to hate setting goals though, because no one taught me how to set good ones, and so I ended up feeling as if my goals were either too easy to achieve or too difficult. This left me believing that goals were just a waste of time.
If I could go back in time, I would tell my past self that I just wasn’t setting the right kind of goals.
The first thing you should do before making any goals for yourself, is determine how much time and effort it will take to complete them.
If you want to learn how to code in Python, find a video tutorial series or find an online course. If the series or course has 20 hours of teaching material, and it’s a safe guess that you’ll also spend 20 hours doing exercises and making programs, then you will have to do 40 hours of work.
If you do 2 hours of work per day, over 5 days per week, then it will take you 4 weeks to complete the series/course.
Once you figure out how long it will take you to complete your goal, plan out the individual steps that you need to take.
This process is good for both short term and long term goals.
If you have a short term goal, breaking it down into steps should be pretty simple, just visualize what you’ll do to complete it.
When planning out a longer goal, breaking it down into simpler steps can make it seem less intimidating and will help you plan out how long it’ll take to complete.
I find that often planning out how long my goals will take and what the steps for completion are go hand in hand, so you may want to do those two steps at the same time.
One of the great benefits of planning out the steps it takes to achieve your goals, is that that will also help you figure out what rewards you’ll get from completing your goal or parts of your goal.
Another great benefit that comes from planning out the steps and knowing how long it’ll take to achieve your goal, is that you’ll be able to schedule time out of your day to work on those goals.
If you need to work for an hour everyday to achieve your goal, you could get up an hour earlier and work in the mornings, or you could stay up an hour later and work in the evenings.
When setting goals for yourself, make sure that they are achievable.
Trying to blog every day for a month isn’t realistic if you know that you don’t have the time or energy to do so, or if you’ve never done blogging before.
If you found this post informative and helpful, check back next Monday for a new post on homeschooling, unschooling, and/or self-directed learning. And if you have any requests for future blog posts, let me know.
Cozy Rebekah 