How Do I Reach My Goals?

Ah, crushing your goals. We all love that feeling: the dopamine rush, the satisfaction, the victorious smile. Big or small, goals are an extremely important part of living a successful life. You may find that successful achievers, such as top level athletes or business owners, all set goals for and While on the surface some goals may seem insignificant, they can all impact your psychological wellbeing due to the nature of dopamine.

SMART Goals

However, there is in fact a process to settings goals - at least if you want to maximize their effectiveness. The acronym SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) allows you to set goals that are not only tangible, but keeps you motivated by allowing you to write them down and cross them off as you go through, adding up all the small victories. These victories have proven effects on your wellbeing and psyche, further encouraging you to continue taking your life by the reins and achieving anything you put your mind to.

Goals in the gym

If you're as passionate about working out as us, you know just how amazing hitting a new PR, crushing that workout, or performing well despite having a bad start feels. These feel so rewarding for so many reasons - you know it happened because of your hard work and your hard work alone. Nothing was given to you, everything was earned.

This is exactly why goal setting and accomplishment is so critical. It is a self-fueling loop: you set a goal, you work hard for it both in and out of the gym (with a regimented diet, exercise and consistency) and eventually, reap the rewards. This is a perfect place to start setting SMART goals.

When you set yourself up to achieve something that is realistic, won't take an extremely long time to start seeing results from, and provides some sort of viable reward, you are setting yourself up for a victory sure to only push you further towards becoming a confident and disciplined athlete.

Multitasking

Ah, multitasking.The skill everyone wants to have yet no one truly does. Why? Because when it comes to truly accomplishing it without sacrificing quality, it simply isn't feasible. Data across many studies has proven that the human brain simply isn't wired to do more than one thing at a time, no matter how much you tell yourself otherwise.

So, what really happens when you try and do more than one thing at a time? It is just your brain rapidly switching from one thing to the other. It's a rapid flipping of the switch, with each one taxing your energy and time just that slight bit more. This "switching tax" is a term recently coined in psychology, and is the metaphorical price we have to pay when doing anything more than one task at a time.

Unfortunately, this isn't an excuse for not being efficient. Studies show that nearly three in four employees feel the need/pressure to multitask throughout their day in order to accomplish what is necessary in their professional and personal lives. This fact further complicates the issue and traps many people in an endless cycle: find yourself swarmed with responsibilities, trying to multitask to accomplish them, getting nothing done or at least not to the highest standard, only leaving you with unfinished or crappy work, only to repeat this the next day, week or month.

At the end of the day, multitasking is something many of us consider a necessary evil - however, now it turns out to simply be a useless tool that only worsens your productivity, and is in fact even bad for your mental health, leading to burnout for many people in all different aspects of life. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to get rid of this habit and become a truly efficient and confident in your abilities.

Once again, this all ties back to being intelligent with your most valuable asset: time. By incorporating tools such as a weekly or even monthly schedule, daily checklists organized by priority, and even blocking out entire tasks throughout each day you will find yourself much more likely to stick with the smart goals you set in place, with each tick of the box further building up your confidence and oh so important skill of goal setting.

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If you want to learn more about focus and improving your productivity, make sure to check out our other blogs!

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Sources:

https://positivepsychology.com/benefits-goal-setting/#:~:text=Setting%20goals%20helps%20trigger%20new,you%20don't%20properly%20manage.
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/focus-on-your-goal
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_90.htm
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffboss/2017/01/19/5-reasons-why-goal-setting-will-improve-your-focus/?sh=5f71ce0a534a