“Short term diligence is crucial for long-term success”
The beginning of each year traditionally has been the coveted moment in time to assertively establish one’s personal and professional goals to continue one’s pursuit of purpose and meaning in life. which no doubt leads to success in our career and happiness in pursuit of passion for what we are personally called to do and to achieve.
We can learn a great deal from history of a goal-setting project conducted at Yale University in the early 1950s. The graduating class at Yale agreed to participate in a longitudinal study about goal-setting that would span 20 years. A goal-setting seminar, covering approximately 10 different areas, was offered to all eager graduating students with a promise of a 20-year review.
In 1973, the 20-year anniversary was met with excitement and high expectations by the evaluation team. Unfortunately, as the results trickled in, it was evident that only about 10% of the class even partially completed the goal setting as instructed and, worse yet, only 3% of the class had followed through as instructed in 1953.
However, with closer analysis, the evaluation team discovered that the 3% of the 1953 graduating class of Yale University that had properly completed the goal-setting training had accumulated more wealth than the totality of the remaining 97 percent. What a marvelous revelation and yet very few of us take goal setting seriously! Wouldn’t you like to become the successful 3 percent? Here are the steps.
Always establish your goals in writing. Solely thought or unwritten goals are like fleeting dreams: write down your goals in positive behavioral words, as if completed. For instance, if your goal of “transportation” means a new automobile one year from now, you write for January 2026: “I now own a red Nissan Pathfinder Platinum. As you back up from that one-year goal to 9 months, you may have written “I have saved nearly three thousand dollars for the downpayment of the car…. then 6 months several more thousand….3 months… send to one month, and today: “I’ll put $100 to complete my new automobile account.”
There are usually 12 goal areas I recommend: career development… with ongoing change, personal income, residence, family relationships (what can I improve/or develop), social relationships, HEALTH/exercise, education.. always ongoing, hobbies, spirituality, community service and wild card- that exceeds reasonable expectations. Wild card is the stretch one! Goal setting helps us to empower oneself to oversee your personal and business life.
Let me share a story that helps to put goal setting in perspective. Several years ago, a small business owner, John, consulted with me about the problems in his business. He was a bright, energetic person with a good personality, but he had become burned out and frustrated with his business. The business was declining because of competition, and with his loss of direction, etc. and John really felt stuck!
As a business psychologist, I assisted him in quickly understanding his self-defeating cycle that he was struggling with, frustrations, and his lack of direction and goals. We initiated an effective goal-setting strategy based on the 12 areas most relevant in our daily life. John immediately began to write out his goals and especially zeroed in on his primary passion to become a financial planner. After some research, he set his goal for a year with increments of accomplishments each a month. Simultaneously, he was able to sell his old business and placed all his newly found energy into developing a successful financial-planning business.
John rather quickly became happy for the first time in several years and he realized he was making more money than he thought he ever could, but most especially he felt successful and happy. Occasionally I run into John, and he often reminds me that he still does his goal-setting every January, places his completed goals in his swimsuit drawer, and checks his progress in late spring when he opens the drawer for swim season!
Tim Lynch PhD. Licensed Clinical Psychologist
