Characteristics of Goals

Goals will not do you much good if they are not useful. To be useful, a goal must possess three attributes, or characteristics.

To make a goal useful, the first requirement is that it must be specific and measurable.

• Look at your responses to Activities 6-9. Do the goals you stated there contain words like "some" or "more" or "better"? These terms are too vague or general, and these goals might not be as useful as ones that are more specific.

• To make your goals more useful, replace any ambiguous words with numbers or more specific terms.

  For example:

  Instead of saying, "I will lose some weight within the next year," you could say, "I will lose ten pounds within the next two months."

  You could replace something like, "I want to make good grades," with, "I will make a 3.5 GPA this semester."

Click to open Activity #10, Part A and follow the directions.