Are Your Academic Goals Giving You These 5 Results?

Setting goals and planning has always been one of my favorite activities.

A really effective goal setting and planning session may take a significant chunk of time, but it can produce a wealth of results.

There are countless ways to go about the process, and one method may work for you while another for someone else.

But no matter which method you choose, the important thing is that your planning yield these 5 critical results on a daily basis.

1. Vision

Planning causes you to think ahead and consider the possible future. In doing so, you’re forced to see what tasks are really important and what can be left out.

Maybe there’s a task you’re doing which you think is necessary, but after planning you realize it doesn’t fall in line with your goals at all.

2. Accountability

A written plan can be printed or posted up somewhere for you and others to see.

When you make others aware of your goals it creates a sense of accountability and you are more likely to follow through with your goals.

An effective goal setting planner will allow you to write down your goal and the steps needed to achieve the goal. Once you’ve done this, you can then break those goals down into monthly sub goals.

3. Focus

Have you ever sat down to work and got distracted by something else before figuring out what to you ought to be doing?

Of course we all have!

Not knowing what task you ought to be doing on any given day can cause you to lose a lot of valuable time.

A well thought out plan will keep you focused on the most important tasks.

A weekly or daily planner can minimize this. Using this type of planner, you would simply jot down your plan for the week or day and use it as a guide to keep you focused.

4. Organization

Once the academic year gets started again, you may find yourself swamped with homework, BJC or BGCSE coursework, extra curricula activities and other activities.

In order to keep track of all the demands, you’ll need to first organize everything.

A useful tool for keeping all of this in order is the activities schedule. With this type of schedule you can list the days and times for all activities and make sure nothing coincides with anything else.

5. Saves time

When you’re ready to get to work, sometimes it’s difficult to know exactly where to start, or what project to work on.

However if you’ve planned ahead thoroughly, there would be no need to wonder what to do next.

A useful academic planner will highlight the next important item on the agenda. They’ll be no need to waste time re-planning or micro-planning  each time you sit down to work.

What about you?

What has worked to help you achieve your goals? Or could you use a little more planning in your schedule? If so, download the Complete Student Planner . It includes 10 pages of planning sheets to help you organize your academic journey.