One main difference between winners and losers is that winners have goals, while losers only have dreams. Having dreams is better than having no aspirations at all, but those dreams eventually have to be turned into goals or they become useless. A dream and a goal may theoretically be the same thing, such as the desire to become a successful doctor, but a goal will have a time limit while a dream will not. A goal is something that you want to achieve within, for example, six months or four years. A dream is something that you want to achieve someday, when you get around to it. Which one of the two do you think is more likely to actually be achieved? If you said “goal,” you’re right. When we give ourselves time limits for achieving things, we are more likely to quickly take the necessary steps toward achieving them.
What Happens if You Only Have Dreams?
If you want to be a successful student, you must work on developing goals instead of just dreaming up dreams. For example, instead of saying, “I want to eventually have an ‘A’ average,” you must say something like, “I want to obtain an ‘A’ average by the end of this semester.” If you only use the qualifier “eventually,” or something else vague like “someday” or “later” to define your aspiration, you’re leaving when you will actually reach it up to chance. Therefore, by doing this, you won’t feel like you have to urgently take steps toward becoming an A-student right away. You might study a bit more here and there, and put a bit more effort into your homework assignments when you’re not tired, but you won’t feel terribly driven to make improvements. If you end up getting a ‘B’ average instead, you’ll know that you can just say, “Well, I said I’d get an ‘A’ average eventually, right? I didn’t say that had to happen this semester.” Some losers actually do not put time limits on their dreams on purpose, so that they are able to avoid responsibility when they don’t achieve them.
What Happens When You Set Time-Sensitive Goals?
On the other hand, if you say, “I would like to obtain an ‘A’ average this semester,” you will be more likely to achieve your goal quickly and become a winner. If you know you only have four months to achieve the goal, you will naturally work more urgently toward it. Instead of studying a “bit” more when the mood strikes, you will likely plan to spend a certain number of additional hours studying each week. You may choose specific strategies, such as studying in accordance with your learning style, or starting up a study group, which will make you more likely to reach your goal “on time.” If you inform people close to you about your deadline, your sense of urgency will only increase. You’ll be more motivated to achieve your goal, since you won’t want others judging you negatively if you don’t. However, winners do accept failure if it does occur; they simply analyze where they went wrong, and set new goals to re-motivate themselves.
Being Specific is Best
Clearly, in order to win the studying game, you need to get specific—don’t engage in any of that wishy-washy, “sometime-in-the-future” business. At the beginning of each semester, you must set a couple of specific goals that you want to achieve by the end. These can be directly related to grades, but they can also be related to intangible things; for example, you might say “I want to become personally involved with my course material,” or, “I want to form better relationships with my professors.” After you’ve set your goals, decide on at least two or three actionable strategies that you will use to reach them. For example, if you want to become personally engaged with your history coursework, visit museums which feature historical exhibits in your free time, so that the subject really comes alive for you.
Learning how to set time-sensitive goals that you must hold yourself accountable for will not only help you as a student, but will also help you in your future workplace. When you start your career, there won’t always be someone else setting a deadline for every single task you have to complete, so you’ll have to take what you learned here and set your own specific deadlines instead of saying, “I’ll finish it whenever I am able to.”
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