Originally posted on blog.accolades.dev

Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. By setting clearly defined goals, you can measure the achievement of those goals, seeing forward progress in what you think might be a long project.

Hello,👋 I am Luc, a web developer in his 40’s and I document my journey into a web development career.
Seeing the big picture.

When it comes to a career both web development and financial goals go hand in hand. Make a step back, sometimes this helps to see the bigger picture and arrange by priority your goals. A Romanian artist by the name of Constantin Brancusi said that “the higher you go, the wider you see”, so stopping and focusing by writing down my goals helped me to get closer to them step by step.

1. Setting goals is effective.

Working towards a goal is a major source of motivation which improves performance. I give you four goal-setting principles that can help improve your chances of success, according to Locke and Latham article “Toward a Theory of Task Motivation”:

• Clarity
• Challenge
• Commitment
• Feedback

Clarity and specific goals eliminate the confusion.
Challenging goals helps you accomplish more.
Commitment helps you achieve the goals.
Feedback helps you improve it.

2. Setting a goal keeps you focused.

Setting a goal helps your mental boundaries, what I mean by this is that when you have a certain endpoint in your mind you’ll automatically stay away from distractions. It’s like preparing for your trip with the bus and you know that at 10:30 you’ll have to be at the bus station and you’ll organize your time in such a manner that you’ll be there to get the bus.

3. Goals help you measure your progress.

I tend to look at other developers’ progress and see if I can do that as well. I have to be real when it comes to reality check as I can’t compare to anyone and I don’t allow myself this luxury as each of every one of us have different circumstances and lives. I compare my own progress. I don’t see myself “arriving” until I am not there, thus avoiding discouragements. Nevertheless, measuring progress helps me see the advance that I’ve made and brings me closer to the end goal moving me in the right direction.

4. Goals help you overcome procrastination.

I’ve let this one the last on purpose as it’s the most important for me.
When it comes to procrastinating, I am a Jedi Procrastinator.
When you set a goal you make yourself accountable. On the other hand, this is going to do things not according to your mood and it brings a Reminder because they tend to stick in your mind. Learning to not succumb to my mood took me time, I am still fighting with it but I see over the years a great improvement.

A briefly personal view on Goals.

Setting goals can help us move forward in life and give us a roadmap to follow. Goals are a great way to hold ourselves accountable, even if we fail. Setting goals and working to accomplish them helps us define what we truly want from life.
Goals also help us prioritize things.
We can definitely choose to wander in life without any goals, but setting goals can help us live the life we want and brings happiness.
Of course, we don’t have to live every moment of our lives planned out because we all need those days when we have nothing to accomplish, but having goals gives us also a purpose when we think everything else is falling apart.

Hopefully, this week’s article brought to you value and you enjoyed reading it. Until next time, keep your focus on your goals.

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