Last week I opened one of the drawers in my office space and sifted through several sheets of paper, some stapled into workbooks, some coloured in, some illustrated, some just big blocks of my, admittedly scrawly, handwriting. ✍️

I was supposed to be clearing out, but inevitably spent the next 30 mins reading through what was written on those pages. That's how all good 'clearing out' begins, right?! 🧐

I was sort of curious about testing out my thoughts that I’m not the sort of person who smashes her goals. 👊 And I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised! 🫣

Now, that is most definitely not to say that I have been breaking any world records these last few years. But there were some shifts that I could see developing over those pages in things that I really care about. 🥇

I have tried out more than my fair share of approaches to setting goals. And not setting goals for that matter. 🤗

Reading through those pages, there were some glaring differences between the goals that I had accomplished and those that hadn’t made it much further than the paper they were written on. 📝

Here are the five most common mistakes I spotted :

1, Choosing ‘smash-it’ goals: Controversially, this goes against a lot of common goal setting advice. I’m all for gently stretching ourselves when it comes to goals, but when the goal is just way too big it can feel pretty unrelatable (think ‘start a multi-six-figure business’, ‘get 10k Instagram followers’ or ‘be #1 on Google’), and hence almost like you have failed before you even begin. It becomes a hinderance to progress rather than an inspiration to take action. See point 3. for more on this.

2, Focussing on money goals: I am really moving away from setting money goals. For me, there are just too many variables that go into receiving a particular income from your business. I’ve heard (and tried) so many different approaches to hitting a money goal, from creating really detailed plans to working solely on your money mindset. And while I see importance in both (and still do both), I just don’t feel like I work at my best when money is ‘the thing’ that I’m aiming for.

3, Choosing a goal without a system: This follows on from point 1, and is partly to do with how you frame the goal. For example, if your goal is ‘to consistently share valuable content’ then it’s pretty straight forward to design a system to achieve that goal. You set a regular schedule to create and share a particular piece of content. Of course life happens and things come up, but for the most part you have control over meeting that goal. But if your goal is ‘gain 1000 new Instagram followers’ then you have much less control over making that happen. You need to design a system that supports the goal. See point 5. for more on this.

4, Choosing too many goals: This is something an age-old habit of mine! And one I am working on breaking. It involves choosing too many goals to implement at the same time - without having a realistic look at the time (and headspace) needed for the habits that will allow me to meet the goals.

5, Failing to check in: I think that this is really crucial in the early days of business. For some goals, we just don’t have the knowledge or experience to know if the actions we are taking will lead to the outcome we have in mind. For example, if you want a steady stream of clients, you might think that posting on socials every day will support this, but you won’t know until you try. And so, it’s really important to go back and assess whether the actions we are taking are actually in support of the goal in the way we thought they would.

So there you have it! How about you? Do any of these sound familiar? Have you got your own goal setting strategies to share? Comment below and let me know :)