Imagine that you are visiting a new town for the first time and your cell phone dies before you’re able to pull up directions or order a cab. You would likely wander aimlessly until someone offers you help. Now imagine you are the only person in that town. That would be life without goals. Goals are our roadmap. As Zig Ziglar once said, “I don’t care how much power, brilliance or energy you have, if you don’t harness it and focus on a specific target, and hold it there, you’re never going to accomplish as much as your ability warrants.”
Why We Should Set Goals
At one point or another, we have all been asked to set goals, whether that was in school, at home or in our professional lives but have you ever taken a second to think about why setting goals is so important? Goal setting is absolutely crucial for development, both personal and professional as it provides motivation, gives direction, and outlines a path for success.
Utilizing proper goal setting can help provide direction and focus. How can we know the path without having a destination? Once we set goals, we can work backwards to determine how we will achieve them.
In this age of technology and ever shortening attention spans, it can be far too easy to get distracted. Setting goals helps minimize distractions and helps us focus on what is important. Additionally, setting goals helps us prioritize tasks and activities so that our resources and time are efficiently used.
Setting a goal for yourself can inspire action and give us purpose. Below, we discuss one common framework for goal-setting: SMART goals.
SMART Goals
Once we’ve outlined our goals, we have made a commitment to achieve them which is why it is so important that our goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound, aka SMART goals. SMART goals are a great way to keep yourself accountable, either personally or through sharing with others.
Specific
It’s important to set goals that are specific. Creating goals that are too broad or vague makes them nearly impossible to achieve. For example, setting a goal to be famous is too broad to be actionable. How do you define famous? What qualifies as success? Instead, make sure your goals are specific. In this situation, a specific goal may be to have one million views on YouTube.
Measurable
The measurable part of a goal has always been my personal favorite. If my goal is to become an astronaut, that is not nearly measurable enough to track progress. Becoming an astronaut is a specific goal, but setting measurable checkpoints along the way will allow us to celebrate our progress and track our success. Breaking bigger goals down into smaller goals helps us track our progress along the way.
Achievable
Achieving and celebrating a goal, no matter how big or small, boosts our self-esteem and our confidence. What a great feeling to know that you’ve accomplished what you set out to do. Feeling accomplished and more confident can help reduce stress and uncertainty. I think everyone would welcome less stress in their lives. Setting and achieving goals helps us in overcoming setbacks and builds our resilience.
Relevant
Your smaller goals need to be relevant to your large goals and plans. Setting a goal to become an astronaut is a terrible idea if you hate heights or fear confined spaces. You should set goals that are relevant to your life and overall goals. If you want to become a penetration tester, a relevant goal would be passing the PNPT certification!
Time-Bound
It’s important that we set time-bound assessments of our progress and allow an opportunity to adjust our strategies, if necessary. Setting and achieving our short-term goals helps build the momentum to achieve our long-term goals. Setting time limits or deadlines encourages us to focus to achieve our goals. To conclude our example, most astronauts are under the age of 50! To achieve this goal, you have a limited amount of time to obtain the necessary education and experience to qualify for this position. It’s not impossible, but will be difficult without proper planning.
Conclusion
Effective goal setting is vital to enhancing personal and professional growth. Typically, setting goals involves obtaining new knowledge and learning new skills which will ultimately contribute to growth. Professional goals are a great way to prove to yourself and your team that you are ready for career advancement and new opportunities. Setting personal goals in varying areas can promote a balanced and fulfilled life with a sense of purpose.
We all know that we need to set goals, either in our personal lives or our professional lives. The importance of why we set these goals are to provide direction and focus, create motivation and commitment, measure our progress and success, build confidence and reduce stress, and enhance personal and professional growth.
I hope this will inspire you to set SMART goals and celebrate all the victories along the way.
About TCM Security
TCM Security is a veteran-owned, cybersecurity services and education company founded in Charlotte, NC. Our services division has the mission of protecting people, sensitive data, and systems. With decades of combined experience, thousands of hours of practice, and core values from our time in service, we use our skill set to secure your environment. The TCM Security Academy is an educational platform dedicated to providing affordable, top-notch cybersecurity training to our individual students and corporate clients including both self-paced and instructor-led online courses as well as custom training solutions. We also provide several vendor-agnostic, practical hands-on certification exams to ensure proven job-ready skills to prospective employers.
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