You need Smart Goals if you want to be successful.
You might be familiar with the acronym SMART, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Actionable or Attributable, Realistic, and Timed if you've been to business school or read books on goal setting. If you will give me a minute, I will briefly explain to you what each letter of the SMART goal formula stands for.
S = Specific: This means that your goals should be concrete and detailed, not fuzzy and open to definition. For instance, "To be more successful in 2011" does not provide a definition of success and so it is too vague to be an effective goal. One person's idea of success may be passing their classes in school, someone else may consider it successful to get a promotion, and for someone else success may be to earn more money this year than last year.
M = Measurable: Besides making your goals specific, you should also make them measurable. If you set a goal that is related to money, then you might say something like, "Earn more than $100,000" or "Increase my monthly income by 25%." If your goal was related to sports, you might say "To qualify for the next major tournament" or "To shave three seconds off my personal best time".
A = Attributable or Actionable: In other words, there is no sense in setting a goal that is not going to be attributable or actionable; for instance, something which you have little to no control over the outcome. For example, it would be ludicrous to set a goal for a particular sports team to win a pennant since you have no way of influencing what happens. Now if you happen to be the team coach, owner or one of the players, this would be an actionable goal. However, if you happen to just be a fan, then there will be nothing that you can do in order to have an impact upon the outcome. Therefore, your goal will be neither actionable or attributable.
Similarly, "Win the lottery" would not be an attributable goal for you to set because you have no control over the lottery and who wins. It's not actionable because although you can buy one or even many tickets, you have no control over the numbers that will be drawn.
R = Realistic: When setting goals, they should be realistic. If you cannot sing, have never made a record, and do not have a recording contract, it would be unrealistic to set a goal to be the world's best-selling singer. Even if this happens to have been your main goal, it is still a good idea to break it down into a lot of much smaller steps. You may want to begin with taking some voice lessons, creating a garage band, writing or recording a song, or maybe trying to find a record deal; but the point is that making your first goal "to be bigger than Styx" is not a realistic idea.
T = Timed: A well defined goal has to include a time limit. For instance, the goal of "increasing my sales production" is too vague. A much better goal would be: "To have 3 more Real Estate closings in the next 60 days"
