Even if you have got as far as realizing that in order to be successful you need to set goals, you can still, unfortunately, go astray and become de-motivated if you don’t set goals in the right way. This article will give you some goal setting examples and show you why they were ineffective, so that you can learn from that as do your make your own goal setting examples as good as possible.

The first mistake people tend to make with goal setting is to set themselves too many goals. If you have really looked at yourself and your values, and decided where you want to be in five years time, you will probably find that there are several things you need to do in order to be totally successful in what you want to achieve. So, the temptation is to make too many goal setting examples for yourself. That will only result in failure as your efforts will be spread too thinly. You will also find it difficult to focus if you have too many goal setting examples that you are aiming for.

Another goal setting example which is problematic is when you have two difficult goals which you are trying to achieve at one time. For example, it’s probably not a good idea to set yourself the task of renovating your house at the same time as trying for a promotion at work. That really will tire you out – and probably drive you nuts!

So, you can use these goal setting examples to better understand a few techniques for better goal setting:

Do not aim for too many goals at one time.

Do not try to achieve more than one difficult goal at one time.

Try not to have competing deadlines for your goals.

Make sure your goals don’t clash with each other.

Bear in mind that the world doesn’t stop just so you can achieve your goals; you will have to do other things in your life which will take time away from your goal setting and objectives toward those goals.

Quantify your goals so you can have the sense of achievement, knowing you have been successful.

It’s more difficult to hit a moving target, so make sure your goals are well defined. A goal setting example of a goal which is movable would be ‘finish the garden off’. Gardens are never finished! They take maintenance and upkeep. You will never feel you have achieved something worthwhile if you have that as your goal. So be specific, for example by saying that you will install the decking, prune the fruit trees and cut the lawn. You will know when you have done those things and you can then feel good about them.

So, by using just a few goal setting examples, it is possible to see the pitfalls which there are in goal setting if it’s not done well. Now you needn’t be tripped up by these pitfalls and your goal setting has every chance of success!