What is Goal Setting?

Setting Goals is the process of drafting your goals and mapping it out into manageable chunks (tactics) over a period. It is the road map of what you need to do (plans) and it guides you from drafting out of your goals.

It helps you to increase your chances of success because you are able to work within your goals and not wandering away from your goals, as well as, help you to achieve your dreams faster because you are able to get things done.

Setting goals is essential because with proper goal setting in place, you should be able to plan your goals, track your goals and achieve your goals in a reasonable amount of time.

Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Write Down Your Goals

1. Setting goals will not let you forget important steps because it will be a constant reminder; especially when you place it in a location where it is easily accessible to you
2. It gives you greater clarity and help you focus
3. You cannot be easily distracted by the next best thing in town. Buying into lots of things only to realize later that you are far from your goal
4. You will not be wondering aimlessly and putting off what really and truly matters
5. Setting goals will help you not to put important things last or even worst OFF
6. You will be able to prioritize your project and work in-line and in-sink along your targeted path
7. setting goals will help you to prevent procrastination which is part of the characteristics of resistance
8. Things will not be overwhelming or stressful because you will put them in order
9. You will be able to get more done in less time because it is not cluster when you stretch your plan into manageable bits
10. Setting goals will help you to develop more confidence in yourself because you are able to get things done in less time.

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— Sidetrack start —

One of the questions I received was why does it feel like I’m alone in my work at home business?

Here is my answer,

Your spouse or parent or friend may not understand why you are doing what you are doing and in most cases that is why they are not buying into what you have to say which makes it to seem like you are alone on a very lonely journey.

Remember, it is your vision and it is up to you not to allow situation and circumstances to limit you. Nurture it, work it, and learn whatever you need to learn to achieve your dreams. Invest in yourself to help you boost your self esteem and build your YOU Inc.

In most cases your loved ones will actually support your project and render some helping hand when they can see something tangible, something worth investing in. I know, life suck sometimes, but that is just the way things are, people just don’t like pain and they will do anything to avoid pain or invest their money or time in anything what will not bring result, they would rather invest their time and money to acquire pleasure which is instant gratification.

— Sidetrack end —

A typical scenario for work at home business is to be alone working all by yourself, which involves a lot of work especially at the beginning when you don’t have enough money. Your situation could be limited budget to contract things out. Furthermore, you may need to start something to make ends meet or even moving to the next level in your career. Setting goals or using Franklin covey planner may help work at home journey.

There are many obstacles to face which may make getting to your goals almost impossible and can cause your internet business doomed to fail. Some of the possible odds are:

• Discouragement from friends, family and/or spouse
• Lack of cash and other resources
• You are alone with no support, loneliness
• You do not have time to invest because you still have a J.O.B to help you pay the bills e.tc.

At this time, no matter what you do or how passionate you are about your niche market, things can get overwhelming due to some boring projects, menial projects or technical issues/glitches because not all projects and/or process you need to build your business will align with your passion. Some of the things you need to do as an internet business sole owner include but not limited to:-

• Develop and maintain website(s)
• Set up auto-responder
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Auto-responder
• Articles submission to e-zines
• Writing and or understanding HTML, JavaScript, Perl or PHP scripts
• Write contents e.t.c. to mention a few

There are days that you would think you’ve achieved a lot, only to find out the following day that with all your efforts you couldn’t get a single thing to go right for you. Some days you will be much excited and your spirit will be rejoicing and you can visualize the future to be shinning. Amazingly, before you could finish imagining things you are down again because your next project was not as easy as you thought it would be okay, I am talking from experience here, please bear with me!

Setting goals and working towards achieving it to make it a reality would be your only way out of these up-and-down mood swing and as long as you know you are closer to your goal, you will be motivated to keep you going and moving forward with building your internet business because you know you’re closer to your victory or success.

Wouldn’t it be great if you are able to get more done with more result while you put in less time and energy ? it can be attained if you could apply the 80/20 principle into your daily activities focusing on the 20% of the tasks that has the potential of generating your 80% of results. This philosophy is referred to as work smarter not harder.

Basic Questions To Ask Yourself That Will Help You Set Up A Proper Goal

No. 1) What is your purpose? A life without purpose is a meaningless one, ask yourself why are you doing the internet business? There is a reason for everything that we do in life. Some example would be to have more time with your family or to have more money to live a good life and my favorite is having a successful and fulfilling future. My reason for this is the fact that I can work and struggle NOW, but what happens when I need more time to rest and be there for my family in future? Will there be enough resources to do that?

No. 2) What is your vision and mission statement? There is a saying that “where there is no vision, the people perish”, so in other not to go astray, you need to have something to guide you and keep you on-track, setting goals will help you to keep working on the path of your goals so that you don’t go off-track. The quality of your vision will give you the ability to spark others and move in your targeted goals.

No. 3) How to write goals and set reasonable amount of time within an achievable time frame. Take one manageable project at a time; one skill at a time; one small improvement at a time. You should be able to hold yourself accountable for your progress and measure your performances.

• Track the effectiveness of your efforts like every ad and every campaign you use
• How many visitors actually visited your site and what pages did they visit
• How many of your e-mail recipient responded (opt-in or opt-out)

It’s the only way to consistently improve your return on investment in case of pay-per-click advertisement dollar, measure your site progress and process to know what to improve on overtime.

Setting Goals Is The Easy Part…

Setting goals is easy; the most difficult thing is actually doing it or achieving goals or working on your goals. Because if you don’t work on your goals, you don’t get any reward since you did not get anything done.

When you put a goal setting plan or strategy in place, you will be astound with what you are capable of doing and amazed with what you’ve actually accomplished when you go thought with your goals.

I am not saying that the process of working on your goals will be easy; actually nothing good is achieved easily or by lazing around. Great achievers work hard even harder than the people they have to pay to do things for them.

You need to realize that ordinary things consistently done, will produce extra ordinary result.

So, when your project doesn’t  turn out the way they should, try it again and again and again. Try different methods, learn from your mistake and don’t give up, always remember your goals.

One of the methods I use that keeps me focus on my goal and be on my toes plus believing in the future is by listening to motivational speakers, reading books/listening to great achievers autobiography and learning from the ordeal they went through for them to get to where they were. How many times they were rejected before someone finally gave them a change, more often than not, one question kept popping up in my mind, what if they have stopped trying because of their circumstances?

I am a strong believer in motivational speakers and inspirational true life stories about how people were able to go against all odds, situation and circumstances to make it in life and some of the characteristics that are common amongst them are PERSISTENCE, CONSISTENCY along with SELF EXPECTATION that they will make it one day.

There are so many motivational speakers and mind set tools out there that you can use to guide you in the right path toward setting goals and achieving your personal goals. They can prevent you from giving up easily just because some things didn’t go the way you thought they should within your time frame.

Tapping into the right resources and using the correct tools can also help you with your goal setting effectively and help map out a fulfilling future, remember, no one is an island and you cannot do these things alone. It is always better to tap into the wisdom of others, especially those who have walked that path before and was able to make it out successfully to help you with your goal setting.

I will encourage you to do the same by buying goal setting books and e-books, read and listen to goal setting motivational speakers and see how they will inspire you toward setting goals and achieving your own goals – no matter what you’re trying to achieve On-line or Off-line.

Tips for searching on Google or Amazon

Type setting goals or goal setting or goalsetting or achieving goals or goal-setting then put a plus sign (+) and then include motivational speaker. This will help the search engine to know that you do not just want setting goals information, but you want a speaker on goal setting.

I have included some of the motivational speakers that I have listen to in the past and found inspiring to help you with your goal setting. You can listen to their sample recordings and if you don’t like it, just use the tips above to search the web and get the speaker of your choice that can help you with goal setting.

Special Advice

If there is anything to take away from this goals setting article, it would be, while you are waiting to achieve your dreams, you should seize the time to upgrade yourself, upgrade your work and build your YOU Inc. because everything you do even after you’ve achieved your success depend on it.

Best wishes,

Abby Lawal

P.S. Remember, taken action is a major KEY in the goal setting plan. Feel free do more research online for motivational speakers and pick up Franklin Covey Planner if you find it useful!