It’s past midnight. You’ve got an essay due the next day, and all you’ve got is the title and a few lines of a paragraph on screen. You’ve been typing for so many hours, though!

Where’s it all gone?

Look over to Facebook. Maybe it was spent having two or three different conversations that all at some point involved you typing, “I’m writing an essay,” then going on about some other much more interesting topic.

Has this ever happened to you? You’re not alone. Surrounded by all your friends and entertainment and all your work, you never run out of ways to keep yourself busy. Unfortunately, when it really counts, it’s so much easier to lean away from doing work rather than towards it.

To get stuff done AND enjoy your day, you need to create a schedule that integrates the work you must do, the material you’ve got to study, the sports you have to play, the family and friends you want to hang out with, and whatever other non-categorical-conformist goals you have. The first step to all this? Goal-setting: meaningful, useful goal setting.

Turn your goal-imagining into goal-setting

1. State objectives that are entirely within your control.

If your goal depends on external factors, you are automatically giving yourself a self-saving excuse if you don’t succeed. When you work with factors out of your control, you may feel helpless. By working only with what’s in your direct control, you can begin to confidently self-manage.

2. Base your goals on your expectations – not someone else’s.

People’s perceptions and expectations are different from yours. If you hold yourself to other people’s standards and not your own, you may put yourself under a lot of unnecessary stress! Working only with your expectations of yourself makes for a much more fulfilling and empowering experience.

3. Always state your objectives in the present using positive language.

If objectives are stated in the future tense, you’re telling yourself that you’ll eventually get around to it – and you want to leverage the desire to begin immediately in your mind’s eye. On top of this, you want to use positive language as it is goal-focused. If you say, “Resist distractions,” or, “Stay away from Facebook,” your focus is solely on the negative setbacks. “I’m studying redox reactions in chemistry,” and “I’m memorising ‘I’ve made out a will, I’m leaving myself’ for English,” are examples of positively, presently stated goals: they are goal-focused and happening in the present.

4. Break down your overall goal into smaller, achievable steps.

Consider having to study an entire 2-year syllabus, or write a 4,000 essay. Sounds pretty daunting, right? When you work at one skyscraper of a goal, it can fill you with stress and anxiety. Instead, imagine going up the skyscraper floor by floor. Much more managable, right? Apply this metaphor to your goals: are there individual sections or unit topics that you can tackle one by one with ease and confidence?

5. Make sure your goal includes something you enjoy.

Whether it is creativity, fun, excitement, joy, happiness, love or something else, make your objective compelling. If you aren’t drawn towards your objective, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle. If you can find a positive meaning or purpose within what you do, you instantly dissolve any lingering sense of pointlessness or coerced obligation. Be curious to discover what is possible!

It’s all great in theory, but how do you use it?

I went from not studying at all to studying an average of 10 hours a day to ace my final International Baccalaureate exams. How?

I stated only objectives within my control: I looked at how much I could study and where. I found that by working in an environment where I felt at my best, I could go hours without breaking a sweat. For me, working in a public space provided the human interaction I needed to endure long hours of studying without losing my mind.

Where are you most focused and in the zone? What factors can you change to influence how you behave?

I based my goals on my expectations of myself as a learner. I held myself accountable only to my own perceptions of what I should be doing and my own desires of what I wanted to get to enter university. We’re all capable of doing this – after all, my years of not studying were only possible because I held myself only accountable to my own expectations of what I would – or wouldn’t – do, and not someone else’s!

What is important to you as a learner, and as an individual?

I stated my objectives positively and in the present. I defined what goals I wanted to get accomplished each day and immediately worked at, from acid-base chemistry to mathematical vectors to developmental psychology. The whole time, I maintained focus on the outcome and not on avoiding the “anti-outcome”. I was conscious of how I framed the goals in my mind, and this kept me focused on striking them down one after another.

How do you set your goals? What words do you use in the ones that get done versus the ones that don’t?

I broke down my overall goals into smaller, achievable steps using my exam schedule as a framework: I considered the exam order and the amount of necessary revision for each subject. Remember those chemistry and English examples from earlier? “I’m studying redox reactions in chemistry,” and “I’m memorising ‘I’ve made out a will, I’m leaving myself’ for English”? These were two of the goals I used to manage the monumental goals of “Memorise a 2-year-long chemistry syllabus” and “Memorise 8 different poems”. See the difference? Creating smaller, tolerable steps allowed me to work at a comfortable pace and win “mini-victories” to sustain me up until the big, final “win”.

How can you break down your goals to allow accomplishing parts of it feel more rewarding?

I made sure my goals included something I enjoy: my study goals were all based around my love of knowledge and the possibility of how I could use it. That alone made one and half weeks of daily chemistry study worth it in the long run! I may not like studying for the sake of studying, but I do innately value learning for the sake of learning.

What do you enjoy, and how does it owe itself to being a part of your goal process?

 

Whether you’ve got exams, an essay or a project at work coming up, never underestimate the power of language and emotion to motivate your efforts!

Will you keep trying to work harder, or make the leap to work smarter?