Taking tangible steps towards your goals

We are well into the new year now and whenever I begin a new year or quarter I find it really important to reflect on the previous season I had and see where I did good, and where I could have improved. From these improvements, I make a few goals that I can work towards in the new year.

Most of the time, I set these goals, start intensely working on them for the first few weeks of the year, then my passion for meeting these goals starts to dwindle. This is not sustainable! So, one change I am making this year is to make sustainable goals and plan how to take tangible steps towards them.

Firstly, I like to split my goals into different aspects of my life. So, for me, my main focus points are my faith, medical school and my future career, my health, my social life. Once I identified my strengths and weaknesses in each of these sectors of my life, I began writing my goals out.

A lot of us may be familiar with the SMART acronym for goal setting. Whilst I think it's useful in corporate settings, I find it just as useful to adapt to my own personal goals.

First is specific. For me, this means making my goal tangible. So, for example, instead of saying I want to become fitter as a goal, I’ve decided that I want to go to the gym three times a week. This would ultimately make me fitter, but having this specific goal means I have defined what I am working towards. 

Next, I have to make each of my goals measurable, so referring back to my fitness goal, I personally have a notion page where I track when I go to the gym and what I did - so I can see how often I am going and which exercises to do each day.   

I also like to think about making my goals achievable in this step. As a medical student who also runs a society at uni, I realised that going to the gym every day, or even 5 days a week wasn’t sustainable with my schedule. Therefore, making it 3 days a week is something more realistic for me and well within my capabilities each week. 

The last step for having tangible goals is a timeline for completion. For me, this would be scheduling time to review my goal and see if I should change it. For me, that would be at the end of the quarter seeing whether I managed to go to the gym that often on average and see whether I need to adapt my goal.

So as we’re at the end of January, I think it's a great time to reflect on any New Year’s resolutions you may have already set and adapt them to make them tangible goals.

Comment below the steps you’ll be taking towards your tangible goals!