Goal Setting: My Report Card

The best way to succeed in life is to act on the advice we give to others.

~ Author Unknown

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post outlining 5 Goal Setting Guidelines as part of the Balance Basics series. Yesterday I wrote about our financial plan for 2010, and I got to wondering whether I followed my own guidelines or not.

The short answer is no, not really. But I found the process of comparing my advice to my own actions really informative, as it raised some issues that might help you out too. Lucky you. My inability to follow my own advice has resulted in more advice. I hope that’s a good thing. If not, I hope it at least makes you go hmmmm . . .

My Goal Setting Report Card

Put Them In Writing:  A  OK, so I wrote a blog post about them, so they’re definitely in writing (and public, which is another good goal setting guideline). I didn’t take the A+ because I was a bit tardy writing them out. Having said that, anytime is a good time to set goals. The end of the year just happens to be my regular time.

Be Specific:  C  I didn’t really get that specific with my plans, partly because of the large number of unknowns surrounding our income. At least one of my kids would tell you that this is a perfectly fine grade. All of them know that for me, it’s failure.

Have a Timeframe:  B-  I did give a timeframe of one year, but I haven’t written out my longer term goals in quite a while. I did it once, but I have only a vague idea of where they might be. I need to get more organized with this. Pieces of paper don’t seem to work for me. (Yikes – you should see my desk!) They are lost too easily.  Maybe I’ll try putting my goals on my computer instead.

Be Flexible:  A- I‘m all over this one, maybe to a fault. Our financial situation makes a fair bit of flexibility necessary, but I may have given myself a little too much slack. Again, it’s all about balance. I’ll let you know in the quarterly updates how it’s working (or not) for us.

Be Realistic: B+ I think I was pretty realistic with my goals. I included a few contingency plans in case things don’t go as expected. I’m really big on contingency plans. If there’s a worry anywhere on the horizon, I’ll spot it and plan for it, even if the likelihood of it actually happening is one in a million. Just ask my kids.

Goal setting rules are all over the place. Very recently, MoneyNing, Financial Highway, and Gail Vaz-Oxlade had some good posts on the topic. Really, you can’t hear this stuff too often. I’m going to retroactively say I decided to call mine “guidelines” rather than “rules” because rigid rules usually don’t work – and because I didn’t quite follow them myself.

This exercise has helped me understand 2 things:

1. Good advice is wonderful, but it must always be tailored to fit our unique situation.
2. Setting goals is the easy part. Sticking to them and evaluating your progress regularly is a lot harder.

Even though I didn’t get straight A’s, I’m glad I showed up for class and I learned a lot.

How often do you evaluate your goal progress?