If you want to be successful you have to set goals for yourself. Weekly, daily, monthly, and yearly goals keep productivity high and focus strong. As a university student it has taken me a couple of years to refine how to make effective and timely goals in order to experience overall success.

I want to share with you my list of tips to setting goals and keeping yourself motivated!

1) Create SMART Goals

Specific, measureable, attainable, realistic, and timely. S.M.A.R.T goals lead to smart people. You need to be able to set specific goals in order to complete a task. For example “finish my essay assignment,” might be a goal of yours. But how can you make that more specific? Maybe something like “spend 1 hour each day for the next 4 days to complete the essay assignment by Friday.” See the difference? Creating a SMART goal will increase your motivation to complete it.

 2) Have goals that motivate you

You have to see value in the goals that you create or else you will lack the motivation to complete them. Goals need to be specific to the person who is setting them. Your goals can range in complexity, and length. In addition, make sure you have an understanding as to why you made the goal because it will help you stay confident and motivated until you complete it.

3)  Length – Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly

You will probably set different goals depending where you are at in life. Deciding on which goals to set depends on the number of commitments and priorities in your life. Personally, as a student, I set daily and weekly goals because it helps me keep track of the tasks that I need to complete day by day.

4) Write down your goals

Every day approximately 60,000 thoughts cross your mind. With so many thoughts going on it can be hard to remember what goals you created and to what extent you plan to complete them. Writing down your goals will help create clarity and encourage you to stay focused at achieving them in a timely manner.

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I challenge you to make a list of 3 new goals to be completed within whatever time period you want. Remember to make each goal SMART, to write them down, and understand why you made this a goal.

Good luck and let me know how you do!

-Liv