8 Benefits of Goal Setting
What are the benefits of goal setting? Well, perhaps you are someone who already carefully analyses your situation, sets your goals, then gets on with achieving them.
Or perhaps you agree that goal setting is a useful notion but you never seem to get around to doing it. Perhaps worse still, you just don’t see there are any benefits to be had in taking the time and effort to set goals. Why bother?
We think one way to motivate yourself to set goals is to think more closely about the benefits that goal setting may bring you. So here, to start you off, we suggest eight benefits of goal setting. Hopefully they may do three things.
Firstly, they may help you to address the value of setting goals. Secondly, they may prompt you to take action. Finally, they may just help you to achieve your goals.
Eight Benefits of Goal Setting
After thinking about these you may come up with some of your own, but in the meanwhile, here are some of our thought provokers. Setting meaningful goals should bring:
1 Clearer Focus
Properly thought out and stated, goals clearly set out your intentions and desires – the things you really want to achieve.
2 Optimum Use of Resources
There are never enough resources to do everything so setting goals can help you to prioritise. Place your resources behind what you really want to do, rather than on things you are doing by default or by deflection.
3 More Effective Use of Time
Of course time is a resource, but it deserves special consideration because it is so important. As Peter Drucker says: “If you want to improve how you manage time – stop doing what doesn’t need to be done!”
4 Greater Peace of Mind
Too often you can have many things on your mind. Writing down your goals can help you take all of those ideas, apply perspective and priority, then galvanize you into commitment and action
5 Clarity to Decision Making
Knowing what you are trying to do means that you can now ask: “does this activity get me closer to my goal?”
6 Easier Measurement of What You Do
Setting goals, especially SMART and SHARP goals, allows you to measure how well effectively you are moving towards achieving them
7 More Freedom of Thought
Setting goals can help to release your creative energies so you can focus on how to achieve them. You’ll start to look for ways to make it happen.
8 Easier Communication with Others
Setting goals enables you to clarify with other people what you are trying to do, and therefore what they need to do to contribute or support.
Take some time now to think about what benefits you would gain from goal setting. How might they motivate you to start achieving them? After thinking through our eight benefits of goal setting, it might also be worthwhile thinking about both the kind of goals you set, and on how you set them.
In our article Why is Goal Setting Important, we have asked what kind of goals are more likely to make you happier. Goals per se do not necessarily lead you to happiness, only certain types. Secondly, in our article SMART Goals we suggest a particular variant of the acronym that focuses on setting goals that are challenging and specific, and are more likely to motivate you to achieve them. How do you get the benefits of goal setting? It’s far more likely when your goals are specific, challenging, and related to the things that really make you happy.
If you want to read more about why goal setting is important, see our range of goal setting articles or read our goal setting quotes for more quotes similar to those used in the article.
More benefits of goal setting
You can also find our more about the benefits of goal setting in our e-guide: SMART Goals, SHARP Goals to help you do just this. The guide contains 30 pages and 5 tools to help you to set SMART goals, then take SHARP action to achieve them.
Contents
- How do you define goal setting?
- What features of goal setting are important, if we want to ensure they are more likely to be successfully achieved?
- What kinds of goals are more likely to make us motivated to achieve them?
- How do you set SMART goals?
- Why do goals matter?
- What kind of goals should you pursue to be happier in what you do?
- How do you set team goals?
- What strategies can you apply to overcome barriers to setting goals?
- How do you develop SHARP plans of action that help you to achieve your goals?
- What techniques can you use to get things done?
- How do you set personal goals?
Tools:
Tool 1: Conventional goal setting
Tool 2: Setting SMART goals that motivate
Tool 3: The kind of goals that will make you happier
Tool 4: Taking SHARP action
Tool 5: Team goals flowchart
Tool 6: Eight personal goal setting questions
