1. To provide clarity & focus on what you want to achieve.
Goals help you look into the future and think about where you really want to be and what you’d really love to achieve. Goals can help you focus and be more productive on the things that are important to you. Remember, no one who has ever won Wimbledon has won it without dreaming of winning it first.
2. To motivate you.
Your goals should excite you and make you want to achieve them. As a consequence this can help motivate you to work towards them whether you are motivated intrinsically (satisfaction, fulfilment, enjoyment, purpose, passion) or extrinsically (money, trophies, prizes).
3. To help you manage your time and prioritise what matters.
It is easy to get distracted from the actions that will get you to where you need to be. Setting clear goals will help you manage your time on the tasks that will have the largest impact on you achieving your goal. For example, you are losing tennis matches on serve and return but you are spending too much practice time on baseline hitting. Prioritising serve and return would have a far bigger impact on you winning matches.
4. To encourage you to ask for support from people you trust.
No athlete has ever won a grand slam, word title or podium performance on their own. Setting goals allows you to think about who you need on your team to succeed. Support could come from family, friends or professionals such as a coach. You need cheerleaders as well as people who will hold you accountable to your progress.
5. To help you evaluate.
Goals are useless unless you review them. If you have a goal you are working towards sit down regularly and ask questions of yourself to help you evaluate how much progress you have made, whether you are still going in the right direction, whether you need any further support, whether you need to re-prioritise the actions you are taking and where you distribute your time and energy going forwards.
I hope this post was of value to you. I’d love to hear your thoughts, please do send me a message on Instagram (simonjamescoaching).
Thank you for reading.
Simon James
