Learning to set goals will greatly increase your odds of getting where you want to be!
Goal setting can be applied to many areas of you life, some examples are: school, sports, hobbies, and you guessed it planning for college.
Start with setting attainable expectations of something you want to achieve. Now create a plan for how to get there. The principle of having an idea and a plan is the focus of this post on goal setting.
For example, you want to be on time for class. Getting to class on time is the idea. Now you need a plan to help get you to your idea.
Start by figuring out how much time it will take for you to get to the location of your class before it begins.
It’s safe to always be at the location of class seven to ten minutes before class starts.
Let’s say your first class starts at 8:30 AM.
You will want to give yourself plenty of time to get dressed, eat breakfast, and complete any parts of your morning routine.
Set a schedule of when you want to wake up, and what you need to do to get ready for class. This example uses an on-campus living scenario involving a person who lives on campus, and has class at 8:30 AM.
I create a plan for what time I should wake up, how long it will take for me to get ready for class, and how long it will take to get to class.
For example:
Objective: Arrive at the location of my 8:30 am class by 8:23 AM at the latest.
Wake up: 6:45AM
Eat breakfast: 6:50AM-7:15AM
Get Dressed and ready for class: 7:20AM-7:45AM
Now, you have to put this schedule to the test. This is the only way you can see if you achieved your goal.
After trying this schedule for getting to class in a timely manner, ask yourself these two questions. Did I achieve my goal? What can be done to improve this goal? Maybe you still found yourself a few minutes late to class. Even the opposite maybe you had too much extra time. Refine, the steps needed to achieve your objective of getting to class in a timely manner.
Now to apply this principle to setting other goals, in other areas of your life.