Goal Setting: 6 Tips From MasterClass Instructors

Goal setting is a process by which you make plans for short-term or long-term achievement. You can apply the goal-setting process to many parts of your life, such as business goals for professional development or self-improvement goals for your personal life.

There are many different types of goals. While a goal can be as simple as a target deadline, the best goals also come with an action plan to help you execute them. You can break large goals into mini-goals to prevent procrastination and make the achievement process more manageable. A popular goal-setting rubric is “SMART goals,” an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Though initially developed for business goals, the SMART goals system is useful for goal achievement in creative and personal endeavors.

Goal setting is crucial for personal and professional development. Whether you are setting goals for a New Year’s resolution, major life milestone, a new skill, or a promotion at work, effective goal setting helps you:

1. 1. Create a vivid picture of success: A key benefit of setting specific goals is that each goal offers a concrete benchmark or milestone for your idea of success. Knowing where you want to head is effective for designing a plan and working toward it. Knowing what you’re reaching for helps you succeed.
2. 2. Hone in on how to achieve your desires: Once you have a specific idea of what you hope to achieve, you can review the different paths to get there and choose the one that makes the most sense for your situation. Defined goals allow you to focus on the crucial steps, helping you with time management and decision-making.
3. 3. Trace your progress: Measurable goals are crucial to understanding your progress. As you continue achieving goals, you can recognize your hard work and how much you’ve completed in the time frame, allowing you to be proud of your accomplishments and enjoy a feeling of self-confidence. In addition, you can see how far you have to go and feel motivated to continue.

Goals are vital in any achievement process, from athletics to social advocacy. Here are some tips to help you set goals:

1. 1. Always write down your goals. Simone Biles, a gold–winning Olympic gymnast and the most decorated world championship gymnast of all time, physically writes down her goals to make them feel more real. “I really had to sit down [and] write down my goals,” she says, “and that's when I started my mental training.” For Simone, writing down each one of her goals is a journaling exercise that helps her get motivated, showing her where she is and where she wants to be.
2. 2. Create incremental goals. Joan Benoit Samuelson, winner of the very first women’s Olympic marathon, likes to create sets of short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals. Therefore, every smaller goal leads up to her biggest and most challenging goals. “Don’t take a crash course and say, ‘Okay, I just ran a 5K; now I’m gonna run a marathon,’” she says. “It’s only fair to you and yourself to take it one step at a time: 5K, 10K, 15K, half marathon, marathon.” Allow yourself to work your way up to your ultimate goal through smaller steps.
3. 3. Develop SMART goals. Malala Yousafzai is the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the activist behind the nonprofit Malala Fund. Malala emphasizes the importance of SMART goals. She explains the Malala Fund’s goal is specific: “achieving twelve years of safe, free and quality education for all girls around the world” and further breaks it down using the SMART framework. The goals are measurable (the fund tracks statistics each year of how many girls are out of school), attainable and relevant (focusing on girls’ education in incremental achievements), and time-bound (emphasizing twelve years).
4. 4. Look at your goals in chunks. Olympic gymnast Simone Biles understands that a huge list of new goals can look like a big to-do list and hurt your motivation. She explains, “If you look at your overall goal package, it can get a little bit stressful and overwhelming.” She likes to separate her performance goals into groups, taking them in chunks of short-term and long-term rather than looking at them all at once. “I split it into the two so that you can really dial down in and try to accomplish what you want,” she says. This grouping method emphasizes mental well-being and motivation rather than overwhelming yourself early on.
5. 5. Make your goals both attainable and ambitious. Nobel-winning activist Malala Yousafzai says you should not only set an attainable goal, it should also be ambitious. When brainstorming, you want your goals to hit that perfect sweet spot, so each is a realistic goal and a challenging one. “Some people might not be very optimistic about . . . such a big goal,” Malala says. “But I think we have to be ambitious as well. . . You have to keep it in balance and ensure that you motivate yourself to do the job.”
6. 6. Make your goals joyful. Olympic marathon runner Joan Benoit Samuelson has spent her life setting goals and breaking records. One of her tips is to make sure any goals you set are ones that excite you. When setting goals, she recommends you pose a simple question to yourself: “Would it give you joy?” She says that these “joyful goals” are more likely to inspire you. “[You want] something that motivates you to get up and train every day,” she explains. “Something that’ll give you a sense of accomplishment when that goal is achieved.”

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