Excerpts of my recent lecture on “Goal Setting” delivered to young engineering graduates of an engineering college.

1) Planning and goal setting for a journey: we prepare a lot for a journey of 2 or 5 hours. But ever we prepare for this life long journey we have to accomplish? Do we ever check where we want to go? How to reach there? Who can be our companion for that? What will be the way? How long will it take? Normally answer is no…. here comes the goal setting.
2) Who is a good footballer? One who can run constantly around the ground for 1.5 hour with kicking the ball with him? Or one who shot it to the goal post in shortest possible time? We say healthy to first one but not successful. We must have some yardstick to measure the success one. That is the goal.
3) How the goal should be
a. Goal must be one which you want to achieve and not your parents etc.
b. Goal must be precise and specific
c. Set priorities
d. Set performance goals and not outcome goals
e. Set realistic goals
i. Unrealistic goals vs higher goals
f. A goal should be time bounded.
g. Never have Negative goal
h. Meaningless goal
4) Goal setting process: Top down approach of goal setting. Breakout your overall goal in smaller goals. Break them out to further levels till maximum possible level which finally will represent a time bounded task list. Finish each of these tasks successfully in specified time and you are the winner of your goal.
5) Balanced goal setting and failure cases
a. If you don’t stand for something you will fall for every thing
b. Our goals should have bases of dharm, arth, kaam, and moksha, the all four objectives a human being should achieve in his life span as per Indian mythology. Concentrating life on only one or two will end it up like a nightmare.