Write a Journal to reach your Goals

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promptjournal(5)I use my Career Journal as my example, but these rules apply to any GOALS in any type of journal.

A journal is a fantastic method for CREATING your goals, for TRACKING your progress and for REVIEWING your goals. All three of these stages can be recorded in your journal. The journal itself can help you understand these stages from setting your first set of goals, to reviewing and updating your To-Do List on a regular basis. You should also use your journal to periodically check your longer term plans and change them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.

Setting Goals

Goal setting is a powerful process. For thinking about your ideal career and for motivating yourself to turn your vision of this future into reality. The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life and act as sign posts along the way.

By knowing what you want – you will learn what you need to do (and what you don’t have to do). Setting goals and using a journal to reach your goals will help give you a long-term vision, but provide you with short-term motivation to help you move forward. By setting measurable and specific goals you can SEE your progress and achievements along the way.

You should set a number of goals on a number of different levels.
  1. Write your mission statement. Think about the BIG Picture. Identify what you want to achieve over the next 10 years.
  2. Break these down into a number of smaller targets that you must hit to reach these goals.
  3. Break these down into 12 goals for the next year
  4. Finally write a number of small steps that you can do each achieve each of these.  You don’t even have to write all of these now. It can be a work in progress.
Setting smaller goals can be harder to manage, and how much structure you impose will determine whether these steps will be daily, weekly, monthly…. WRITE them in your Journal. If you are using your Career Journal specifically for the purpose of achieving your goals you might also want to consider using the Career Development Goals Notebook.

Tracking your Goals

As well as being great for setting your goals, your journal is a great mechanism for keeping the process going by reviewing and updating your to do list and action plan on a regular basis. You should use your journal to periodically review your longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.

To track your goals you may want to write about your progress and the steps you are taking and review your progress. By tracking and reviewing you specific goals by having regular reviews and ticking them off your to-do list.

Reviewing your Goals

Your journal can also be used to review your goals. To absorb and reflect on your achievements and observe the progress you have made as a whole (not simply each thing you are ticking off). The review process can also give you an opportunity to consider the goals that you are setting and the way you are going about achieving them and whether it is working. It might even inspire new goals to be added to the list.

If you haven’t already started working on your goals… what are you waiting for – let’s get started today!

 

3 thoughts on “Write a Journal to reach your Goals”

  1. Pingback: Prompt: 10 Year Plan | Prompt Journal
  2. Pingback: Prompt: Developing your Career Goals | Prompt Journal
  3. Pingback: Prompt: Mid Year Check-in | Prompt Journal

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