How many times have you approached the start of a new year with a list of positive goals you want to achieve, only to feel like you’re still stuck at square one when December rolls around again?
Creating and setting goals is great, but actually achieving them can be much harder. This is where utilizing some tried and tested goal setting exercises can help you, not only in setting a goal that is achievable but the individual steps and process needed to help you get there.
That’s what we’re taking a look at in this article: how goal setting exercises work, why they’re important, and a whole heap of resources to help you get started.
Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free. These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients create actionable goals and master techniques to create lasting behavior change.
The author Annie Dillard once said in her book The Writing Life, ‘How we spend our days is how we spend our life’ and I think this is a great quote to contemplate in the theme of goal setting. How we spend our life – the things we want to do – is made up of all the smaller days in-between, and the same is true of achieving a goal. It’s the small steps in the middle that create success.
Goals are our aspirations. When we set a goal, we create an aim for a set of behaviors (Latham and Locke, 2002). Whether that’s achieving a level of proficiency or skill in an athletic endeavor, a weight-loss goal or paying off financial debt: Creating a goal helps us to know what we’re aiming for in life.
Change rarely happens magically overnight. It happens because we make a daily commitment to adapting our behaviors, mindset, and habits to work towards creating the change we want. Small, daily and consistent changes can lead to big results over time. This is how effective goal setting exercises work.
While goal setting can be short or long term, formal or informal, to really achieve results psychologists have found that goal setting exercises are most effective when the final aim is specific and measurable (Locke and Latham, 1991, Latham, Winter and Locke, 1994, Latham and Locke, 2002).
Locke (1964) came up with the very first Goal Setting Theory, where he focused on goal setting within the workplace. He found that employees were motivated more by clearly set goals and actionable feedback to help them achieve those goals.
While it probably makes a lot of sense today to be told to ‘secure four new clients by the end of the month’ rather than ‘increase the customer base’, this was revolutionary when Locke proposed his first paper. He provided the foundation for modern goal-setting techniques that many use today.
Locke also found that motivation is key to achieving our goals, and we feel more motivated when we’re not 100% certain we can achieve the goal we’ve set for ourselves. Taking on challenges is highly motivational as it allows us to develop our skills, flex our problem-solving muscles, and gain a deeper sense of personal achievement.
Based on Locke’s research, it seems for goal setting exercises to work they need two key things:
More recently Miner (2005) examined goal setting within organizational behavior and positive leadership strategies. He suggested the following three core principles for how goal-setting works. Goals:
While both Locke and Miner have focused on goal setting exercises in a work context, these core principles can be applied to personal goal setting too.
It’s one thing to know about goal setting, and how it can help you, but another entirely to know how to actually set goals and stick with them. Goal setting tools are a great way to help you set goals, keep track of, and stay focused on what you’re trying to achieve.
These tools and can be informal, for example:
Or they can be formalized, such as:
Which tool is right for you will depend on what you’re specific goals are, how long you want to take to achieve them, and whether it is an individual or group goal.
These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients create actionable goals and master techniques for lasting behavior change.
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Below I’ve collated a few useful goal setting tools I’ve found while researching this article. I’ve broken them down into two sections: non-digital goal setting tools and digital goal setting tools. Depending on your preference and goals, you might find one more beneficial than others, or prefer to use a mixture of both mediums.
This one is particularly good for personal development goals. Even ten minutes a day to review and write about your goals will help to keep you focused, motivated, and feeling more positive about the journey you’re on (Robinson, 2017).
Keeping a journal allows you to keep a record of your progress, any setbacks you come up against and how to overcome them. It’s a strong visual and physical representation of how far you’ve come already towards achieving your goals.
Backward Goal Setting is a nifty tool to try when you’re feeling a bit stuck. It’s all about switching up your perspective and approach, so if you have a goal you failed to achieve before, this could be a great tool to try to switch up how you tackle it.
With Backward Goal Setting, you start with your ultimate end goal (quite similar to traditional goal setting). But instead of thinking about what the first step might be, then the second, third and so on, you start at the end goal and work backward.
Essentially you reverse the process. As mentioned, this can help you think about your goal in more broader terms, and help you identify key milestones that traditional goal setting wouldn’t. Used alongside traditional goal setting tools, it can help you create a strong final plan for achieving success.
As a tool for success, nothing beats a good few people you can rely on to keep you motivated and encouraged towards achieving your goals (Adams Miller, 2015). Research has found that the people we surround ourselves with – even distant acquaintances – can have a dramatic impact on our behaviors (Christakis & Fowler, 2009).
By telling those you trust and value about your goals, they’ll respond with actions and behavior that will actively aid you towards success, and be great cheerleaders when your own motivation seems to be waning.
You probably spend a fair amount of time in the day using your mobile phone, so have you considered how you can use it to help you with key areas in life such as achieving your goals?
Luckily, many app developers have thought about just this thing and there is a multitude of apps and functions on most phones to help you work towards successfully achieving your goals. Below I’ve listed three popular apps that focus on setting and achieving goals:
Way of Life is a daily habit tracker app that allows you to create multiple daily goals you’re hoping to achieve and check them off as you achieve them. It’s got a very user-friendly interface and the ability to set yourself reminders.
As a goal-setting tool, it’s great for simple things such as drinking more water, setting time aside to read more or avoiding sugary drinks but for more in-depth or layered goals, this is probably not the best tool to reach for.
This app offers more in-depth functionality. Not only can you create goals and milestones, but it also gives you access to a whole community of like-minded people all reaching for goal success.
It allows you to interact and motivate each other and also has professional coaches you can hire via the app for one-to-one support if you need it.
Another great function is the ability to add up to six family members or friends – great for team or group goal work!
Similar to Way of Life, Momentum helps you create set your goals and create smaller, daily habits to help you work towards achieving them. You can curate your home screen and set reminders to help you stay on track. It’s extremely user-friendly and has previously been rated as one of the ‘Best New Apps’ in the app store. Unfortunately, it’s only designed for iPhone and Macs at the moment.
You might also find this handy Goal Setting Toolkit PDF helpful. Created by Mindtools it’s a comprehensive write up of what makes successful goal setting, and a great resource of different tools you can try.
The tools that are right for you will depend on your specific goals and preferences for tackling them. For me, a handwritten goal journal works really well as I like having something tangible that I can sit down with every day away from digital distractions.
King (2001) asked students to write about a traumatic experience, their best future self, both topics or a non-emotional control topic for twenty minutes a day, across four days.
The student’s mood was measured before and after writing and followed up three weeks after the initial test. King found that writing about life goals – or best possible future self – was associated with a significant increase in feelings of wellbeing compared to writing about trauma.
What this tells us is that writing about positive, self-regulatory topics – such as what we want our future to look like – can be hugely beneficial for our wellbeing. It can also be hugely beneficial in helping us achieve our goals.
Below I’ve outlined three easy to do goal setting writing exercises to help you get started:
You can do this exercise in a journal, blank notebook or on your computer, and as the title suggests it’s pretty straight forward – you write about what your average perfect day looks like.
Focus on what your perfect day looks like without any added extras or surprises (so no winning lottery tickets or surprise romantic getaways). The idea here is to create a detailed list of what an average day looks like, step by step. This could include:
And so on. Create a day you will never get bored of, that you could happily repeat five or seven days a week. Create an ‘Average Perfect Day’ for your work day and your downtime days. With or without your partner or kids.
Really think about the individual behaviors that go into that day. What you’ll begin to see clearly are little habits you can start actioning straight away to get you closer to your idea of a perfectly average day.
Similar to King’s exercise of asking students to think about and write down what their best possible future self might look like, you can adapt this to think about what your best possible life might look like one year from now.
You can do this exercise alone, with a partner, family or a close friend. It can be really rewarding to share your ideas with someone you trust, who will also challenge you to consider things outside of your comfort zone. Some of the key areas to think about when completing this exercise include:
Once you’ve created what one year from now looks like for you, start thinking about the steps required to achieve those things. Be reasonable and don’t try and commit to achieving everything at once. Pick one or two achievable and measurable goals for each area and build a goal-setting plan for each. Include a rough timeline of when you’d like to achieve that by so you can keep yourself accountable.
Again, you can write this down on good old fashioned paper, in a journal, or use a computer – whatever works best for you. Make sure it’s written up somewhere you can refer back to it and add to if needed.
The Treasure Mapping exercise begins with some basic visualization techniques and takes it one step further.
Visualization is a wonderful tool to help you build a picture of what you want certain aspects of your life to look like. When it comes to goal setting, visualization can become tricky as it takes time to concentrate and re-visualize what you’re working towards when you need a quick boost of inspiration and motivation. Visualization is a strong tool and the Treasure Mapping exercise can help to take it to a new level!
With Treasure Mapping, you create a physical representation of your visualization. You can do this with a drawing, painting, collage, or digital art. It serves as a manifestation of your goals and intensifies the work you put into visualizing them in your mind. A few tips on getting started:
Once finished, place your treasure map in a place where you can see it easily for a regular hit of motivation and inspiration. If you created in using some digital art software, print it or keep it as your background screensaver so you see it daily.
These exercises are just a starting point. Some might work better than others for you, so it’s worth trying a few and getting a feel for what you respond to the most.
This PDF from Act Mindfully titled ‘The Reality Slap’ is another great goal-setting resource, despite the title! It contains five short and easy to follow exercises to help you on the way to set some realistic goals.
