A Student’s Guide to Setting Achievable Goals
For students to succeed in online learning, they need to set their own goals. But, learning how to set goals is just as important as the goals themselves. After all, if you set the wrong kind of goal, you may end up being overworked and stressed. The idea of a goal is to keep you motivated and help you get through your course. A good goal can improve your performance and self-confidence. If you’re struggling with setting goals, our student’s guide can help out. Here’s a handy student’s guide on how you can set achievable goals:
1. Create Positive Goals
The words you use can have a powerful impact on how achievable your goal is. This is why you must always use positive words while framing your goal. Instead of saying you won’t do something, say that you will. We can understand this better with an example. The goal ‘I will improve my spelling’ is positive. On the other hand, the goal ‘I won’t write with so many spelling mistakes’ is negative. Positive goals could include things such as:
• I will complete one chapter every two days.
• I will read one new book every week.
• I will complete my assignments within 2 days.
2. Make Sure Your Goals Are Accurate
Goals that are vague are difficult to achieve. Your goals should be accurate. You can use dates, times and quantities to make your goals accurate and measurable. Once again, let’s look at an example to understand this. A vague goal could be something along the lines of ‘I will finish this chapter’. An accurate goal would include more information. It could be ‘I will finish this chapter by 5 PM today’. Measurable goals are easier to achieve and cross off your list.
3. Set Goals That You Can Control
You can only set a goal if you have control over that aspect of your course. For example, you cannot set a goal that talks about when your instructor will complete a particular concept or chapter. On the other hand, if there’s an assignment or some work that you need to complete by yourself, you have complete control over that. Small goals that you can control are more achievable that bigger goals that you can’t. A good example of a goal you can control is, ‘I will finish all the reading for this chapter in 3 days’.
4. Prioritise Your Goals
You will never have only one goal at a time. You might be working on accomplishing 2 or more goals at a single time. So, it’s important that you prioritise your goals. Figure out what is most important or urgent and move that to the top of your list. This way, you won’t feel overwhelmed by having to achieve all your goals at once. Instead, you can focus on them one at a time.
Once you achieve each goal, don’t forget to reward yourself. You can enjoy a quick break or even munch on a sweet treat to celebrate accomplishing your goal. Remember, online learning doesn’t have to be difficult. You just need to create a distraction-free study zone and get your goals in order. After that, it’s easy sailing.
