Week 7 Written Assignment PDF

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Strategies on setting effective goals and also characteristics of good goals, plus a section for short term, mid-term, and long term goals....

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Running head: EFFECTIVE GOAL SETTING

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Written Assignment Unit 7: Effective Goal Setting University of the People UNIV 1001 Online Education Strategies Tiffany Millacci, Instructor May 25, 2021.

GOAL SETTING A TIME WHEN I SET A GOAL AND DID NOT ACCOMPLISH IT When I was really young I had a goal of becoming a footballer. Watching Ronaldinho on TV playing for the Brazilian national team at the 2006 world cup in Germany sparked in me a passion for football that I still feel to this very day. A few months after the world cup I made up my mind that I wanted to become a professional footballer and I made that my goal, my dream, and I started to chase it down every day. I thought that if I practiced enough I would somehow get picked to play for a team and from there I would be given a contract and I would live happily ever after. But life happened and my

EFFECTIVE GOAL SETTING consistency with the practice started to wane plus I had also sustained a knee injury that made it difficult to play. Slowly I got to a point where watching football on TV became even more interesting than playing it, and that’s how the goal of me wanting to become a footballer ended. A TIME WHEN I SET A GOAL AND SUCCESSFULLY ACHIEVED IT I have always loved video games and I fancied myself getting into the profession of game development, but at 21 I came to a painful realization that I lacked the technical skills as well as the technical knowledge on how a video game is made. So I set out with a new goal in mind, the goal of building my technical skills through learning to code so that one day I would be able to get a job in a major game publishing studio like EA or Ubisoft. I knew it was going to be the hardest thing I ever did, so I put in the work, I did research on what I needed to learn and I started learning it. I practiced my programming every day I took tests on various sites and I eventually started to build projects and now I can comfortably say that I have achieved my goal of wanting to gain technical coding skills that are relevant to game development. WHY WEREN’T YOU SUCCESSFUL THE FIRST TIME Looking back the major reason I would say that my goal of wanting to become a footballer did not work out is that I lacked the knowledge of what it takes to truly become a professional footballer, I thought all I needed to do was just practice and train all day and then magically I will become a pro.

EFFECTIVE GOAL SETTING The reason why knowledge was my Achilles heels was that becoming a pro footballer goes beyond training all day which is not even advisable because as a pro your body has to be given time to recover from the stress and strain of the training you did. As a pro you have to watch what you eat, as certain foods can greatly impact your performance on the pitch, you also have to have good time management skills so that you are able to train, rest, eat and travel the right way. Other external factors like how to get recognized by scouts were something I just did not know was very important. So in summary the reason why my goal of becoming a footballer was not successful was that I lacked the technical and practical knowledge of what it takes to not only become a professional footballer but to also succeed at being one and with that lack of knowledge no sustainable plan was made and that’s why I just kept training all day thinking that was going to be enough to succeed as a professional footballer. WHY WERE YOU SUCCESSFUL IN YOUR SECOND EXAMPLE By the time I had set out to accomplish this goal, I was a little bit older and I knew that the goal I was chasing was a difficult one that required proper research and careful planning. So to ensure that my goal was successful I used the S.M.A.R.T principle of goal setting. Which just simply means that any goal you set should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. Specific: Learning how to code to build my game development skills Measurable: I took regular quiz and tests on sites like hacker rank to test my knowledge and know what I needed to improve.

EFFECTIVE GOAL SETTING Achievable and Realistic: I had a laptop and access to decent internet and my time management skills were improving, all this combined to make my goal achievable and realistic. Time-bound: I had to add a sense of urgency to my goal by putting a reasonable time-frame of 6 months to achieving it. The use of the S.M.A.R.T principle combined with my willpower to succeed enabled me to be able to achieve my goal of learning how to program and improving my overall technical knowledge of game development. WHY DOES EFFECTIVE GOAL SETTING HELP US ACHIEVE OUR GOALS. There’s a common saying that goes like this, “Failure to plan is planning to fail”. College Success (2015), says that “A goal is a result that is mostly achieved throughout voluntary actions”. well since achieving a goal has to be done one’s own voluntary action, then having an effective plan that guides a person’s actions towards the success of the said goal is very important, and this is where effective goal setting comes in. It is the careful planning of the activities and actions required to achieve a very specific goal. So in summary effective goal setting is essential because it serves as a guide to achieving one’s goal by offering clarity on things like who benefits from the success of the goal, how much time and money should be invested in the pursuit of the goal, how can progress towards this goal be measured, and can given a person’s current situation can the goal be achieved in a realistic time frame. Effective goal setting forces you to answer these questions, and these answers can often determine the success of your goal. WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD GOAL

EFFECTIVE GOAL SETTING Below are some of the characteristics I think every good goal should have and it is based on the S.M.A.R.T principle of goal setting. 1. SPECIFIC: A good goal should be very specific in what it wants to accomplish example a goal like “I will take an online course to gain relevant skills for my upcoming projects at work” is better than “I want to improve my skills”. What skills, And how ?. 2. MEASURABLE: A good goal should have a way to be effectively monitored for progress. Every good goal should have some way that progress towards it can be tracked and measured, and this could be in the form of tests or exams or some other metric. 3. ACHIEVABLE AND REALISTIC: Every good goal should be made and pursued based on the understanding of your current capabilities and abilities. Wanting to be a formula 1 superstar, when you are a terrible driver seems a bit out of touch and unrealistic. Or wanting to become a professional athlete when you are out of shape and have bad personal hygiene is just plain old wishful thinking. 4. TIME-BOUND: Every good goal should be bounded and achievable within a reasonable time frame. This helps keep a sense of urgency in terms of seeing the success of the goal through. Lastly, I think every good goal that should be pursued should be in line with your personal interest and it should be something at the very least you are intrinsically motivated towards.

EFFECTIVE GOAL SETTING SETTING GOALS SHORT-TERM GOALS: The short-term goal I want to achieve is to try and finish my school work 2 days before due dates so that I have enough time to revise. MID-TERM GOALS: My mid-term goal is to start up some interesting programming projects that I can put on my portfolio in order to get internships in the near future. LONG-TERM GOALS: My long-term goal is to graduate from university with high honors and get a good job with a good game development company, preferably Rockstar games. Word Count: 1374

References

Authors Removed At Request Of Original Publisher. (2015, December 4). College Success – Open Textbook. Pressbooks. https://open.lib.umn.edu/collegesuccess/...