Sharing is caring: Goal Setting

Dear Ana,

Since I started to study, I have learned a lot about goal setting and how it influences the way I live. Especially the experiences from AIESEC showed me how goal setting helps you achieve the things you dream of and to not lose track of your goals.

An example: When I finished high school, I decided to study international business communication in English and French. My studies were not really what I expected them to be, both content and people wise. I had built up this huge idealistic image of university life that I was vastly disappointed when I was confronted with reality. I knew very soon that I was going to switch to another profession and ended up in the English department, which I loved very much. The entire process of switching and deciding was very difficult and somehow painful because I did not really know what I was good at and what I wanted. A year after I switched, I suddenly realized why I had signed up for international business communication: I really loved the German-French TV station ARTE and I had the goal to work for them, I just had pushed it away from me, being too concerned about not being content. Today, I think that I might have tried harder to pursue my first study line, if I hadn’t lost that goal out of my view.

In AIESEC, I learnt fast how to do goal setting and I use some personal methods for myself, when I have to make decisions or want to check my path. And it makes me more conscious about my choices and changing mind.

Currently I have to decide what to do after my internship. I know that I want to take a MA degree starting October and I also know what I want to study, I am just not sure how to use the time until then. This is a good reason to look at my life from a bird perspective and to refresh my goals in order to know what is important for me and which values I have gained in the recent past.

In this video I go through my goals and reflect a bit on them. Funny fact: I did it in pajama pants, as I actually was sick today. Below you find an introduction to why I chose the spaces and how I filled them.



Here is my Banana Goal Setting from today:

PERSONAL:
It is important to know what I want to achieve on a personal level, because my professional decisions depend on it and I get a clear picture what is important to me as a person right now.

PROFESSIONAL:
I want to recapture why I did the things that I did and where I want to go. I also put down what is important for me during this journey.

FLUFFY GOALS:
The above goals can somehow be measured, my fluffy goals are more the mindset of my lifestyle. It is things I want to remember doing or act upon on my way to the other goals.

THE NEXT 6 MONTH:
Here, I put down what opportunities and challenges I see for my goals right now. I list down every opportunity I have, no matter how I think about it and then list the challenges I face. These can be real life challenges like lack of money, or just personal obstacles.

These charts cannot be filled in one night, I just got started tonight. I already saw that I forgot to put down my guitar playing as a personal goal. I do these things very intuitive and don’t use any SMART method or whatsoever. I am more concerned about getting my thoughts on paper and to order them. I can structure them and make them measurable along the way.

So tell me, did you find this post useful? What would you do differently?