The Eventus Recruitment Group shares 5 top tips for goals success.
There’s a lot of media hype at the start of a new year, encouraging people to be a new version of themselves. A “New Year, New You” is often the headlines in retail outlets, encouraging you to sign up for a gym membership or purchase a new piece of exercise equipment. This is often followed by people feeling like failures as they break their New Year resolutions before they’ve had a chance to start.
New habits take time to become automatic and the time depends on behaviours, personalities and circumstances. Studies have shown new habits can take anywhere between 18 and 254 days to form. On average it takes 66 days (Click for source: Lally et al, 2009).
Here are our top 5 tips from The Eventus Recruitment Group on how to ensure goals success and enjoy sustained change:
Start with a 12 month outlook
1. The most important thing is to take an overview of the whole year ahead. Think about what you would like to achieve by the end of 12 months from the date you are at now. Consider all aspects of your life from lifestyle to health and wellbeing, family, friends, career development and community work. “In 12 months time, by ______ insert date_____ I would like to have achieved……….”
Carry out a goals success review
2. After creating your 12 month outlook, rank your list in terms of how motivated you are to achieve them. Use a scale of 1-10. If you score anything less than six, then cross them off. It’s not the right time in your life, right now, to focus on those.
Think long term and SMART for goals success
3. Defining your goals using SMART will help you be realistic and think about the long term. Be realistic about where you are in your career and what you can expect to achieve in 12 months. The Eventus Recruitment Group offers free careers consultations. Please contact us to arrange a consultation or register your CV. You may have ideas for your career or job plans, but not know how to achieve them. This is where we can help.
Specific: Relates to an objective having a clearly defined purpose in mapping to a given goal.
Measurable: Relates to an objective supporting measurement of the progress being made in order to attain it.
Attainable: Relates to ensuring that the measured goal is actually achievable – in practice – rather than simply in theory.
Relevant: Refers to the relevancy of the goal to you (different goals may well have different priorities).
Time-frame: Relates to the time frame that has been set in attaining a given goal. For example, is a given goal achievable within the specified time-frame.
Document and Display Your Goals
4. It is important to write down your goals and be reminded of them. Record keeping is also important to record progress. You may find yourself recording additional achievements, that were not on your original list. Keep a diary or an electronic document to track progress. Display your goals somewhere prominent, such as, using a whiteboard where you work or pinning to your fridge.
At the end of your 12 months, you’ll be able to go back and review your achievements. This can help you celebrate your goal success and gain a good overview for future planning on what can be achieved.
Set review dates and milestones
5. Ensure you schedule and diarise regular review meetings for yourself to track your goals. You might want to team up with a friend or colleague to do this. Friends and colleagues can keep you motivated and help you focus, to keep on track.