Reasons Setting Goals Is Important

How often do you set goals? How often do you revisit your list?

We all know that setting goals is important, but we often don’t realize how important they are as we continue to move through life.

Tony Robbins says, “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”

Goal setting does not have to be boring. There are many benefits and advantages to having a set of goals to work towards.

Setting goals helps trigger new behaviors, helps guide your focus, and helps you sustain that momentum in life.

Goals also help align your focus and promote a sense of self-mastery. In the end, you can’t manage what you don’t measure and you can’t improve upon something that you don’t properly manage. Setting goals can help you do all of that and more.

We will look at how goal setting can lead to greater success and performance. Setting goals not only motivates us but can also improve our mental health and our level of personal and professional success.

What are the Benefits of Goal Setting?

Edward Locke and Gary Latham (1990) are leaders in goal-setting theory. According to their research, goals not only affect behavior as well as job performance, but they also help mobilize energy which leads to a higher effort overall. Higher effort leads to an increase in persistent effort.

Goals help motivate us to develop strategies that will enable us to perform at the required goal level.

Accomplishing the goal can either lead to satisfaction and further motivation or frustration and lower motivation if the goal is not accomplished.

Locke and Latham stated that there are five goal-setting principles that can help improve your chances of success.

1. Clarity — Clarity is important when it comes to goals. Setting goals that are clear and specific eliminate the confusion that occurs when a goal is set in a more generic manner.

2. Challenge — Challenging goals to stretch your mind and cause you to think bigger. This helps you accomplish more. Each success you achieve helps you build a winning mindset.

3. Commitment — Commitment is also important. If you don’t commit to your goal with everything you, have it is less likely you will achieve it.

4. Feedback- Feedback helps you know what you are doing right and how you are doing. This allows you to adjust your expectations and your plan of action going forward.

5. Task Complexity — Task Complexity is the final factor. It’s important to set goals that are aligned with the goal’s complexity.

Here are six reasons why setting goals is important.

1. Goals Give You Focus: Without a goal, your efforts can become disjointed and often confusing. It allows you to zero in on each day’s tasks with laser precision, weeding out wasted effort and idle movement.

2. Goals Help You Measure Progress: Being able to keep track of your progress toward achieving a goal is only possible if you set one in the first place. Being able to measure progress is extremely rewarding and will help you maintain focus, and keep your head held high and your energy up. It will also keep you from getting down.

Sometimes, when working towards success, it’s easy to become discouraged because you don’t feel you have “arrived” yet.

However, when you measure progress while working towards a specific goal, you will be able to see that though you might not be where you are wanting to get, you have made movements in the right direction and are a lot better off than where you started.

3. Goals Help You Stay Motivated: It’s easy to put off work until tomorrow when there is no goal on the line.

For example, let’s consider the life of an athlete. If they have to get in shape for say an NFL combine, you better believe they are going to be working out each and every day, whether they feel good or not, whether they are sore or not, whether they are tired or not, whether they want to or not, because they have a goal.

They have a destination. Their desire to achieve their goal keeps them in the gym which they would much rather skip. In much the same way, having a goal will keep you motivated!

4. They Help You Beat Procrastination: Procrastination is something we all battle from time-to-time, myself included. However, when you set goals in life, specific goals for what you want to achieve, it helps you understand that procrastination is dangerous.

It is wasted time. It is another day you aren’t moving closer to that goal.

5. You Achieve Even More: When you set a goal and reach it, it gives you the taste of victory. You will want to taste that again.

What does that mean? You push yourself towards the next rung of the ladder, challenge yourself to move past another ceiling, and you achieve even more. Working towards meeting and surprising goals help you achieve way more than you ever thought possible.

6. Goals Help You Determine What You Want In Life: The act of setting goals forces you to contemplate what you truly want out of life.

What is the level of success you want to achieve? What is the income level you want to have? What does your life of ease look like? What about your dream home? What do you need income-wise to achieve your dreams?

Once you set this end goal, you then break your desires down into attainable, measurable goals.

These goals keep you motivated, helping you avoid procrastination and keeping you laser-focused on achieving your dreams. It is, therefore, the act of setting, achieving and surpassing goals that make living your best life possible.

A Message to remember:

Setting goals can help us move forward in life. Goals give us a roadmap to follow. Goals are a great way to hold ourselves accountable, even if we fail. Setting goals and working to achieve them helps us define what we truly want in life.

Setting goals also helps us prioritize things. If we choose to simply wander through life, without a goal or a plan, that’s certainly our choice. However, setting goals can help us live the life we truly want to live.

Having said that, we don’t have to live every single moment of our lives planned out because we all need those days when we have nothing to accomplish.

However, those who have clearly defined goals might just enjoy their downtime even more than those who don’t set goals.