It's that time of year when talk turns to our goals and resolutions. And like an old record, there are those stories telling us our good intentions are mislplace, since the majority of new year resolutions are (as this Guardian newspaper article suggests) "doomed to failure".
But at any time of year, those planning their careers, seeking jobs or course opportunities, or simply wanting to improve aspects of their life, can benefit from goal setting.
The things is - how to make them failure-proof? Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire found in research that those who succeeded in achieving their goals, adopted several strategies:
* They broke goals down into smaller achievable steps or focussed on just one goal at a time
* They kept a diary of their progress
* They told their friends about how they were getting on with their goals
* They had a positive focus to their goals rather than a negative one
There are many online tools to use for goal setting. Some are free, others require subscription. Two of the best I have found are inpowr and lifetick.
Inpowr has an excellent self-assessment tool, which will remind those with coaching experience of the "Life Wheel", or UK careers advisers of the "APIR assessment". It helps identify areas where you may want to set goals. It uses a "tag cloud" to help you think of goals you could set yourself, based on what other users have set themselves. It then connects you with those other users, through community features for mutual support and discussion online.
Lifetick is a subscription product, although the free version has most of the same features, including an Iphone version. The main difference is that you can only work on 4 goals at a time. I like Lifetick's approach which first gets you to think about your values, and then links goals to specific values. The process is more sophisticated than Inpowr, and there are on-screen prompts to help you set SMART goals. The reporting features and goal tracking are extensive.
Happy goal setting!
