Guest Post (Ft. Em)

Hello Luvs!

By the title you probably know that I have a guest today!

I am honored to have her, for she is a great person to talk to and has a lovely blog herself! 

Welcome EM!

Em blogs over at Piplup's Shadowy Bookshelf, 

To learn more about the wonderful Em visit here. 

I'll let Em have it from here! 

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Today I'll be doing a Guest Post for Alexis and we've decided to do a New Year's theme. If you want to see Alexis' post, just click right over here. My post is: How you can make goals that you can actually accomplish.

Now you're probably thinking back to possibly a reading or a blogging goal you made last year and completely failed. (I know I am.) So now you're probably thinking, "well Em, how can we make goals that we can actually accomplish?" Well you've come to the right place!

Maybe you've heard of this or not, but the acronym SMART is your best chance of making a goal that you can follow through in. Here's what it means:

Specific
When making your goals, you want to be as precise as possible. For example, if you want to read more, your goal shouldn't be "I want to read more," but instead many "I want to complete my Goodreads Challenge of 35 books by the end of 2016, so that I can work towards cleaning out my TBR." In this case, you are and should be answering the 5 W's (who, what, when, where, and why).


Measurable

In addition to making it specific, you want to make your goal measurable. This means you should incorporate how you are going to know when your goal has been accomplished. For example, if you just say "I want to write more blog posts this year," you can't really measure your outcome! How much is "more"? So for your goals, it would be best to give it a number somewhere in it, like "I want to write 100 blog posts in the next year." This would give you an easy indicator of when you have achieved your goal! 



Attainable

Okay, this is the part where you really have to think... is your goal actually reasonable? Can you ACTUALLY accomplish it? Normally when I think about this part, I think about my performance of a past year's goal if it was similar. Like for my Goodreads Challenge, last year I made it 30 and barely accomplished it. So when setting a number for this year's, I made it 35 thinking about all the factors leading up to the accomplishment of last year. When making it attainable, also remember to push yourself a little bit! That's the whole point of making goals!

Relevant
Now it's time to get serious. At this point of the stage, you want to ask yourself "is trying to accomplish this really worth my time?" Time is something that goes away after it's been used up, and you only have so much. Think about it, will the accomplishment of this goal help you succeed in your overall long term goals? Of course, you could always do it for fun, but don't let it get in the way of other goals that you need to do!

Time Based
The last thing you need to think about before putting your goal into action is to constrain/limit the amount of time you have to complete it! Why? Because for procrastinators like me, you wait till the last minute to do things, and you'll never get it done in time. For example, last year I set a goal to read 30 books in 2015. If I didn't set that time limit, I would probably still be at 20-something books right now lol. The time limit gives you a sense of urgency to actually complete it, and not procrastinate! Please don't procrastinate!

Okay, my second last tip for you. Make sure you actually follow through with that plan. Too many times, I've seen people I know set a really great goal at the beginning of the year and do it for a week or two, and then drop it for who knows why. As my karate teacher always says, "if you don't do it (properly), you are only cheating yourself." Karate is a one-man sport; it's about discipline and honour. If you don't do it properly, no one will care until you have to do a test and you make a huge fool of yourself because you didn't do what you set out to do. So please, if you set a goal, try your best to do what you set out to do. 

And lastly, have fun with your goal! Make sure you are enjoying ever last second of it! I'd hate to see you setting a goal that you are dreading to fulfill everyday! 

So that's it with this guest post! I hope you've enjoyed learning about some of the strategies I use while setting my goals for the year! What are some of your goals for 2016? If you ever need help, you can always shoot me on here, or on Twitter! You can check out my goals for 2016 right here! 

Go visit my blog to see Alexis' post!

Thank you for letting me do a guest post Alexis! I had a great time writing this one up! <3

Happy New Year everyone! And good luck with your goals for 2016! :)