When it comes to setting goals, a lot of people have a lot of different ideas. A simple Google search will yield numberless different formulas, plans, and outlines for goal setting and for laying out a plan to achieve what you want. There are speakers and writers who have built their entire careers around helping other people set goals; and to be honest, there are a LOT of people who should really listen to at least some of this advice!

I have always been a fairly goal-oriented person. I have always been pretty good at achieving my initial goals and in getting my projects off the launch-pad, but I have also always struggled with the goals higher on the list. I have a tendency to get very distracted and frustrated when I start to reach middle to high ranking goals on my list. I start to get burned out, irritated, and begin to wonder why I ever started the project in the first place.

Throughout my life I have actually given up a few of my projects, mostly because my own goals seemed too far out of reach to achieve. Through my failures, I have always gone back to try to figure out where I went wrong, and I have learned that through every single one of my failed projects there was a common vein that almost always manifested itself as the root cause of my problems… many of my middle to high-ranking goals ended up being too much for me to handle, and ended up getting the best of me.

Avoiding ‘Burnout’

For me, burnout is a word that I need to pay attention to. Every failure that I have ever experienced started with burnout. As I have grown, however, and as I have come to understand where I went wrong in my past failures, I have realized that burnout was almost always caused by me setting unrealistic goals for myself. If I would have paced myself and stayed consistent with goals that moved at a more realistic pace, I might have found that I could have avoided burnout altogether.

Setting goals that you can achieve is incredibly important. On an older episode of the “Affiliate Buzz”, a long running podcast on Internet marketing, that I was listening to the other day, I heard host James Martell make a statement that really stuck out to me.

“It is not about doing everything at once, it is about consistency. “

For anyone who might not know who he is, James Martell is an extremely successful affiliate marketers, and speaks regularly at industry events. I enjoy listening to his show because he has a lot of good ideas and experiences to share with his listeners. In this same episode, James also shared that he has his goals written on his computer, and they are the first thing that he sees when he logs in every day.

James Martell is only one example of a successful professional who knows how important it is to set goals that you can actually achieve, and the results of his work prove that goal setting is not just ‘fluff’, but that it is a necessary step to success.

Effective Goal Setting Tips

Here are some tips that might help you set more effective, achievable goals for yourself.

• Start at the bottom. Start with the basics. Your first goals should be relatively easy to meet.

• If a particular goal seems unreachable, or if you do not fully understand how to go about achieving it, then break it down into several small goals… the first one being to research the problem and to come up with a game-plan to overcome it

• If you are starting to experience burnout, then recognize it and take action! Immediately come up with a new set of goals that does not put as much pressure on you. It might seem like a waste to go from big goals to smaller goals, but it is worth it if it saves your project!

• Remember to keep yourself motivated. Even something as simple as buying a Ferrari ball cap to remind you of the car that you would like to own someday can be an incredibly effective way to stay focused on the future

Write Down Your Goals

While setting goals might seem like a no-brainer, really taking the time to write them down will make a big difference. There is a lot of power in writing out your goals. They will mean more to you on paper than they will in your head, and writing them out will give you a much clearer picture of what you have to do.

Josh Sigafus is a web content writer and an aspiring novelist. He lives in a small rural community with his wife and two children, and often splits his time between working on his laptop at home and logging onto the wifi at the local coffee shop to get a change of scenery. Josh believes in setting goals and staying motivated, which is why he regularly utilizes websites like www.enzolifestyle.com to stay positive and focused on the future.