Goal setting: Ensuring that it isn’t a vanity project

After a well-earned break it’s great to be back and raring to go with the first edition of the Limitless Learning newsletter.

If you’re a long-term subscriber, you’ll know that we often drill down the importance of goal-setting and having intent behind what you target yourself on, whether this is in your day to day life as a recruiter on something you’re working towards personally.

But, if you’re finding yourself straying away from your goals already (or you’ve thought about changing them altogether) here are a few things you can do to make them tangible and inspiring.

Make the goal visual

If possible, ensure that you are “seeing” your goals at least once a day.

Whether this is changing the background on your phone to show them, having a sticky-note on your laptop, or even a daily reminder (which is free to do) pop up is a great way to stay accountable.

It can be easy to make a New Year's resolution and forget it a few weeks later, so having a physical reminder every day can be motivation in itself.

Ensure (to a degree) it’s realistic

We love ambitious goals at Limitless Learning, but setting goals that are unrealistic can end up doing more damage than good.

For example, let’s say your goal is to save money for a deposit for a house, how realistic is it (in your current situation) that youll be able to achieve it?

The idea when setting a goal is to make it an improvement on where you’re currently at, instead of a complete lifestyle change overnight.

Similarly, with professional goals, sit down with your peers (or your manager) and discuss your professional goals and what you need to do to make it happen.

It’s important to aim high - but also not have your head in the clouds.

Break down your goals into smaller quarterly, and monthly goals

Setting an annual goal is great because it gives you something to work towards all year round. But, losing motivation is going to happen at some point - it’s human nature.

To make your goals tangible, break them down into monthly and quarterly actions and use that as your motivation.

Let’s take the example of saving for a deposit again; your goal is to save £20,000 by the end of the year.

That would be £1,666 per month, and £4,998 per quarter. Displaying this visually and breaking the goal down even further (£416 per week saved) can help to keep you on track.

If your goal isn’t financial, and it’s for a promotion (for example), sit down with your manager and find out the exact metrics you need to aim towards on a monthly and quarterly basis to hit it.

Ensure there’s a mix of professional and personal

We spend the majority of our lives at work, so creating balanced goals is important to keep us motivated in all aspects of our lives. Aim for a 50/50 split if you haven’t already!

Choose someone you trust to help keep you motivated and accountable

Working towards a goal and having someone else who is on the same wavelength (or even has a similar goal to you) can be a great way to stay accountable.

Whether this is someone you work with who you can regularly check in with, or someone in your personal life - having a person to talk to about your aspirations can only be a positive.

This can also work really well if you want to focus on fitness and wellness, as a gym partner (or someone who can help you with healthy eating) makes the process easier.

Good luck with achieving your goals this year, you got this.

P.S. If you have the ambition of building a reading habit this year then check out this post where a ton of recruiters shared loads of must-read books for high performing recruiters.