No one plans to fail, but we fail to plan and evaluate our progress. In the middle of it all, it can be hard to figure out if we are still on the right path or there might be other adjustments we need to make. Our goals can be well intended, but life and not knowing how to evaluate where we are at can be frustrating. From my experience, I generally have four main types of goals: Financial, Career Oriented, Health and Personal. While there are more examples and each can also branch out to different categories, they also require different types of attention and evaluations. And based on these specifications you will be able to apply, what I'm coining as the 5 Es Assessment: Expectation, Execution, Education, Engagement and Evaluation, to know what types of adjustments you may need.
When you are assessing your goals, there are different levels of attention needed to make sure you are moving in the right path. Expectation is when you may want or predict the timeliness of the goals to be reached. Execution is how and what action you will take to move toward that goal, whether it may be consistency, working with increments, or massive action in relation with the deadline. Education will indicate if you already have enough knowledge to continually act on your goal or might you need to learn more as time or mindset or situation changes. Engagement is the amount of attention you should put in as some may only need for you to see numbers while others will require a heavy amount of acknowledge and practice. Evaluation is how often should you measure monitor and adjust so you can be on the right track.
Financial Goals
For simplicity sake, I will be focused on financial goals that are usually a saving for or paying off where an incremental approach is used to reach the goals. Some of these can be saving for a down payment, emergency money, for a vacation, college fund, a car or pay off debt and everything in between. Things that involved investments that may have fluctuating growth or liability won't be used in this example.
How To Apply:
Expectation: Determine the time that makes the most logical sense while taking in consideration your other financial obligations like bills.
Execution: Based on whether it's a short-, mid- or long-term goal you can see if you should apply weekly, monthly or yearly action
Education: Understand the basic knowledge of what you are saving for or paying off, while acknowledge varying changes can happen depending on the market
Engagement: If you are able to consistently put in without seeing fluctuation, it should require a low amount of engagement to the process
Evaluation: Based on your execution, you can see if you are still on track or may need to adjust
Career Oriented Goals
Career oriented goals can vary from person to person. You may want to switch to a certain path that fits your passion, get a promotion or salary that meets your standard, improve your skills or make an impact in the industry or world. These will take different amount of attention and work.
How to Apply:
Expectation: Some skills can be acquired short-term whereas changing a career path that requires additional education can be a long-term resolution. This is heavily determined based on your industry and your efforts between education and engagement level
Execution: Because career oriented goals focus on education and engagement level, you will need continuous action with the sense of priority and urgency
Education: Research and learn how each industry works. What type of experience is needed to successfully reach those goals. There is also a sense of continued education to stay relevant and distinguish yourself from others
Engagement: This requires a great amount of focus and attention to what you do. To be a professional and successful at what you do, you kind of need to through yourself in to make it happen in my opinion
Evaluation: Biggest evaluation is before you make any drastic changes to see if that is something you want to do. After you move into each stage to see if you are still on the path
Health Goals
Health goals also depend on what you are looking to achieve. If you want to lose weight, gain strength or stay fit, the focus is going to be different, however the approach is going to be relatively the same. Eating healthy, exercising and providing adequate amount recovery and rest are the pillars for a healthy body.
How to Apply:
Expectation: What is a healthy range of weight gain or loss and are you willing to do the same thing as what others are doing to reach that time goal or adopting a new habit
Execution: Consistency of action is going to be key for a long-term result especially if you are also looking to keep the result
Education: Everyone works a little bit differently, research on a plan that can cater to your lifestyle and something that is sustainable. Something that is drastic and cannot be done in the long run usually have a habit of falling out
Engagement: In the beginning it will require a heavy attention to what you do and how you do it. Once you learn the basic idea and can apply it efficiently, you'll be able to mold that into your lifestyle and generally seamlessly become a routine
Evaluation: Some may require a bit of a boost before you see any change, but a weekly measure of how you are doing is going to be helpful to see if you need any adjustments along the way
Personal Goals
Personal goals are probably the most diverse in what people may want to achieve. It can relate to what we mentioned above or anything relating to self-development. Most of which is going to take practice and consistency as it's a life skill that can strengthen other disciplines you have in other aspects of your life.
How to Apply:
Expectation: This is usually an ongoing practice where I feel is a life-long journey. Nevertheless, you can still feel accomplished or having a growth of the skill and continual practice
Execution: Execution will range from things you want to do everyday to measure the progress like waking up everyday or practice of improving listening skills at every instance you get the change to do it
Education: Because we adapt differently with each goal, some of them will require more education to fully understand or polish the skill
Engagement: Some will take full on engagement, while others that a practiced and normalized into your behavior will come easier. To understand better of yourself, it is recommended to be more engaged in how you approach these goals
Evaluation: Since this is an ongoing process and can contain a lot of different components that is hard to measure, the evaluation process doesn't really matter too much here. As long as you see improvements and are open to conversations and discussions with others, it will be a healthy way to gauge those goals
This can be overwhelming and a lot to digest and take in. However, I want to use this as a way to help you with different aspects of your life that you are focusing on. If something resonates with you more, use your time on that instead. Whatever is a priority in your life will need that attention. Being able to unravel some of the frustration because the expectation and the execution usually didn't match and the acknowledgement of that provides an answer to what I should do. In addition, executing the same thing without additional knowledge and engagement also give light to why I wasn't advancing as fast as I would like. Now I have the control back and the ability to change those circumstance. If you find it useful, please give it a like and share.
- Cheers,
Q