Specifying Goals: How To Know If A Goal Is Right For You

School

Improving in school is an especially common goal. Education is important, and we all crave that A+. However, the content may be overwhelming or incomprehensible. Or maybe we study for hours at a time, but our grades don’t reflect them. How do we tackle this?

Studying techniques: How effective are your studying techniques? Did you find a style that works for you, or are you simply replicating what you believe everyone else is doing? If you find your studying to be lacking, then this would be the goal to focus on for you. Narrowing down how you can study could involve techniques such as identifying whether you’re a visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or reading/writing type of learner or what blend of all four you are. Once you identify your specific study style, it is time to research various methods that are tailored to your strengths. Play around with a variety of methods, and pick out parts you like and discard those you don’t. Your studying doesn’t have to follow a basic blueprint, mix-and-mash a variety of them to create something that you both enjoy doing and retain the most information from in a time-efficient manner. For a deeper look into studying techniques and how we study, keep an eye out for one of my future posts.

Distractions: Maybe you do have a good studying technique? When you focus, you’re able to digest old and new class material easily and score good grades. However, that’s only when you focus. Unintentionally, you may have been distracting yourself from the act of studying in favor of something that provided instant dopamine. This can include listening to music/a podcast/an audiobook, texting/calling with friends, doing group study sessions, scrolling through social media, playing a video game, staring at a wall, et cetera. It is important to recognize how long you can study before you start zoning out and turning to other stimulation. To test where your deficit is, set up a timer and perform a control test and an experimental test. In the control test, you will do what you normally do, such as listen to music. In the experiment, remove whatever you believe is making you distracted; if you chose to listen to music prior, you’d not listen to music now. Time yourself both times and based on the metric you assigned (words written, problems solved, et cetera), see whether either test caused a greater increase or decrease in progress. If your control showed a stable or increased result, then you can keep the stimulus since it hasn’t distracted you from your work. If it shows a decreased result of productivity, take measures to remove it. Common techniques include: studying alone (studying with friends can lead to side conversations and little work done), no technology in the room, timed studying sprints, working at a designated time, and working in silence.

Learning: Maybe it isn’t your studying itself that is tripping you up, but the fact that you didn’t understand the content in the first place. It can be daunting to attempt to study unknown material without help, which is why it is important to seek out those who can. These can be friends, other teachers, parents, tutors, or others. The important aspect is that the person must know the concept and be able to explain it to you in a way that you can now understand. If you’re feeling extra confident, you can attempt to teach the concept to them, a study technique known as the Protégé Effect. 

Overall, improvements in schooling come from finding and targeting weaknesses in your studies and information retention. Rather than trying to improve your grades through the same tried methods or by simply hoping, try instead identifying where your current study plans fall through so that you can fix them.

Health

When wishing someone good fortune in their life, it is often common to wish for them to be healthy. But what exactly does this mean? It can be difficult to pinpoint where exactly to improve your health in your unique life, but that doesn’t mean you should turn to fad diets or rigorous workout routines from the Internet. Establishing some guidelines that are tailored to your needs will help guide you to improve your well-being.

Exercise: No, you do not need to do that “Summer Body in 30 Days Workout” or go take up running. Many people do not reach the recommended 150 minutes of physical activity each week. This is about 30 minutes for 5 days, but you can break it up however you need. This should be moderate-intensity and can be achieved through activities such as brisk walking. To achieve this goal, you must work up to it slowly and steadily. If you sit all day, don’t expect to suddenly be able to commit to a rigorous workout routine. That will only lead to burnout and quitting. Find an activity you enjoy, even if it isn’t the typical sport or the gym. Dancing, yoga, pilates, running, swimming, tennis, and more are all examples of what you can do. It doesn’t have to all be in one session, work around your schedule to incorporate a few more minutes of movement than what you’re currently doing. Exercise should be an enjoyable experience. Don’t use it as punishment for food eaten or laziness. Don’t view it as a chore. Exercise should become just another daily part of your life, and it shouldn’t be viewed negatively.

Rest: As an underrated part of health, I felt it was important to draw clear attention to this. Even if I do say that exercise is important, it is essential that you rest. For those in eating disorder recovery, it may be required that you quit exercising entirely for the time being and only rest. This, and even just taking a rest day from exercise, can seem monumentally scary. I remember it was a struggle for me to feel comfortable with the idea of rest. But, when you put strain on your body and mind, you need time to decompress and process. Exercise, stress, and general existence press pressure on your body. Only by resting can one recover and greet the next day with full energy. Along that same line of thought, it is best that adults get 7-9 hours of sleep every night, with teenagers needing 8-10. Although it may seem difficult to acquire that much sleep, by consistently sleeping in a routine, your body’s circadian rhythm (the system that releases melatonin to make you feel sleepy) will adjust and allow you to naturally feel tired at night. Consistently getting enough sleep will allow you to focus better, feel refreshed, and recover from the day’s activities.  

Diet: Eating healthily doesn’t mean you need to discard all your old foods. Yes, it is best to limit your consumption of junk food and sodas (unless you’re in eating disorder recovery, in which it is healthy for you to indulge in what you crave), but that doesn’t mean eliminating them from your diet entirely. Eating healthy also doesn’t have to break the bank. Food is meant to nourish both the soul and mind. Incorporate your favorite foods and ADD to them, not remove them, to improve nutrition. Add an extra veggie to your dinner and fruit to breakfast. Try to get in the appropriate amounts of carbohydrates, protein, and fat that will allow you to feel your best (these are known as macronutrients, and you need a sufficient amount of each of them to feel your best). 

Mental: Mental health is just as, if not more, important than your physical health. Just like your body, your brain undergoes daily stress and pressure from living and benefits from both rest and training. It is important to dedicate time to something that mentally makes you feel good, whether that is participating in a hobby or spending time with friends. Dedicating a moment of every day to doing something that satisfies you will increase your mental health and enjoyment of life.

Hobbies

We all want to do something with our lives. We don’t want to go to work/school all day, eat, sleep, and repeat. But it can be a struggle to find something that we want to dedicate our time to. Whether it is fear of being good at it, fear of not liking it, or worry about the time it would take, we all have grievances holding us back from trying something new. However, a hobby is an enriching way to take up free time and boost life enjoyment. Although it isn’t guaranteed that you will like every hobby you try, there are some guidelines you can set for yourself to attempt to find a recreation that suits you.

Category: What interests you? Perhaps you’re saying, “Nothing, that’s why I’m on this article!” I understand the feeling, but I assure you, you like more than you let on. Take a look at your daily life. Do you just scroll social media? Some people are satisfied with passive hobbies, such as watching movies or playing simple mobile games. These activities are good for those who are too exhausted after daily life and want something simple to zone out. However, they can end up monotonous and less stimulating the more you do them. In that case, look at what media you’re ingesting. What content do you like watching? Does anything seem inspiring? If the stories and characters of movies interest you, then maybe you’d enjoy going the literary route of reading books and writing stories. If playing games is fun, maybe join groups and expand your game library to include options such as RPGs and simulations. Other categories that may appear interesting include art: drawing, painting, sculpture, clay, and digital media; plants: growing, flower arrangement, and taking care of the yard; physical activity: running, swimming, tennis, dancing, and other sports; mental health: yoga, journaling, puzzles, and meditating; among many others such as cooking/baking, sewing, crocheting, and manufacturing. All these choices may sound overwhelming and hard to pick from, but you will never start until you pick. Narrow what sounds interesting to a couple of categories, and then you can either go with both or pick one to proceed. Remember, you’re under no obligation to continue if you feel as if it isn’t a good fit. And do not allow being a beginner to bring you down, we all start from somewhere. If you’re purely doing this for your own fun, then there is no rule stating you must get good. All that matters is you’re enjoying yourself and the activity, not whether you do it as well as others. 

Preparation: When starting something new, always start small. Do not go buy that new Dutch Oven because you want to learn how to cook when you only know how to make ramen (yes, this is a self-roast). Do not buy the highest quality cloth for your sewing or the 100-color pack of expensive colored pencils for your art. These extravagant purchases may make you feel worse about yourself if you “waste” the materials by making mistakes or not using them at all because you feel too novice to use them. If you end up not pursuing the hobby, the unused materials will be a reminder of a waste of money and can subconsciously craft barriers preventing you from starting a new hobby due to the feeling that you must use expert materials to even begin. Start with your normal oven, your leftover clothing, and a pencil and paper. You do not need to make extreme purchases when starting out. If you like the hobby after using regular materials, then you can start making more expensive purchases. Until you believe that your hobby is something you’d like to continue pursuing for at least the foreseeable future, you should hold off on ordering from your shopping cart.

Conclusion

Whether schooling, health, or hobbies, it can be hard to adjust vague goals to fit our own lives. Working on our improvement in our mental and physical lives involves setting guidelines to shape the path we want to walk down. There is no need to follow the majority who do their own thing because you are not them. Your life is uniquely yours, and your goals should reflect that. By focusing on your own weak areas and strengths, you will be able to mend the weaker parts of yourself and highlight the core traits that make up your amazing self. Keep up the hard work, and never stop enjoying life!