New School Year, New You

On New Year's Eve, many people have a list of goals they want to accomplish throughout the new year. The First Day of School offers students the same opportunity. Notebooks are empty, teams and groups need members, and there are new people to meet. How do you even begin to distill down all of the possibilities into an achievable list of goals?

It is commonly recommended to have no more than three to five yearly goals. It's natural to want to create a long list of goals, but in reality, you only have time for a few. So don't set yourself up for failure! Instead, invest the time into well-defining a few goals and continue to improve from there.

The most popular approach to goal-setting is to create SMART goals. The SMART acronym stands for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. The anatomy of a great goal contains all of these features.

For example, last semester you got a B in your math course and this semester you want to get an A. To make this goal SMART, you would write:

"To obtain an A in math class (what/outcome) by the end of the fall semester (when/time) as evaluated by tests and homework (how) so that I can apply for academic scholarships (why). This can be achieved by building on my knowledge from the previous math course (means)."

 This doesn't seem entirely helpful. You may be thinking, "That just says what I want, but not what I need to do everyday to get there." That's an accurate observation. A goal is the end result, it doesn't talk about the journey. To plan the journey, you need to break that goal into smaller pieces. Anna Akana's video, "How to Level Up Your Productivity," gives some advice on how to achieve your goals. She explains that defining your goals and breaking them into steps is the easy part. The hard part is staying accountable to the plan. Akana recommends making to-do lists with only tasks that help you reach your goal, creating a "not-to-do list," and creating a daily routine [1]. So what would this look like with our example above?

•  Read chapter before class.
• Complete the weekly homework in advance of the due date.
• Study 3 nights a week for at least an hour.
• Complete all study guides (if given).
• If not on track, seek extra help from teacher, peer group, or tutor.

Goals are a great way to refine our focus on what's really important. Give it a try! Think of one or two academic and personal goals and try to reach them by the end of the school year. You never know what you may accomplish!

[1] Akana, Anna. "How to Level Up Your Productivity." Online video clip. You Tube. 10 Mar 2016. Web. 17 Aug 2016.