Remember my friend Jesper who has just read my book and asked me to show him more specific and actual steps about how I went after a goal – in my case, my goal to become World Masters Beach Flags champion in 2014. You can read the first post here in which I talk about figuring out this next challenge / goal and then figuring out why I wanted it.

Here’s the second instalment.

Step 3 – Structured Goal Setting
Here’s my actual goal setting for my 2014 Beach Flags goal. See below. You will see that I have:
1. The Big Goal – The big,shiny outcome goal written down for 2014

2. Yearly planning – I have the key dates written down over the next 18 months

3. Monthly planning – I have broken this down into each month for the 18 months leading up to the World Championships so I know generally what I’m doing in my training, what my aims are and where I’m heading

4.  Weekly planning – I have a weekly training schedule. What do I train on which day ? I spend a fair bit of time on this weekly plan to get it right as I want to make sure it fits into the other parts of my life eg I don’t want to train on a Friday night as I want to relax and chill out. I want a life too ! And when I don’t feel like it is all-consuming I never get that feeling of resenting my training. It adds to my life rather than takes away from my life. I plan to train at lunch on weekdays so it gives me a break from work and I then work better in the afternoons. And also because I am not good at training in the morning – I prefer just to get into work. I also make sure that the daily program makes sense by ensuring that I have enough recovery for various sessions, that I am training when I have energy (eg not at the end of the day if I can help it), and that I am doing enough training in each of the important training elements (speed, strength, flexibility, technical flags training) so that I ensure I am working on improving weaknesses, maintaining my strengths, are well-rounded in my training etc.

5. Daily planning – then each day for that particular session I will know what I am doing. What weights I am doing or what running session? This is a plan only though so it may change depending on how I am feeling / injuries etc. But the important thing is that it is still a plan. I don’t just turn up to training and then try and figure out what I am doing.

* Write my goals down
Tick.
(As the saying says “A goal is a dream written down or a dream with a deadline !” And surprisingly most people don’t do this as numerous studies have shown. For example see this blog post which describes a well known study by Harvard on goal-setting which Mark McCormack talks about in his book ‘What They don’t teach you at Harvard Business School’. The point – there’s a power in writing your goals down).

* SMARTR goal setting
Specific – at this stage I don’t have enough of these very specific milestone goals. I need to add these. They will be in terms of technique improvements, speed tests, weights I want to lift, diet etc.
Measurable – I will see how I am tracking at State and Australian titles this year. That will be a good measurement. But the more specific milestone goals will all be able to be measured of course.
Achievable – my big outcome goal of World Champion is absolutely achievable if I can stay in great shape and learn the technique from the best. But getting to this point of absolute belief is the topic of another blog post. Or read my book of course.
Regularly assessed – as I add more milestone goals they will be regularly assessed in accordance with the timing I put on them. Again – more need to get added here. But goal-setting is an ongoing process not a set and forget.
Timed – as above
Reward – the fitness and health I gather along the way is enough for me now as I have no big result expectations this year. But as I enter the next 2013/2014 season, as I have encouraged others, I will come up with a specific reward for winning the Australian title and then another one for winning the World Championships.

Step 4 – Support for my goals
Tick. I still train with my brakeman from the last Olympic season (Duncan Harvey) on Sundays to keep me training at that higher level as he is still in training for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi.
I have a great family and partner who are supportive.
I have a coach on the beach flags side who knows his stuff. He is a multiple Masters World Champion himself and his son just won the open World Championships this year.

Step 5 – Get input on my plan
Tick. I always let other people critique my plan and I welcome their input. Sure, it is not cast in stone and will change over time anyway, but my goal-setting is nonetheless the big roadmap that I will follow. So for this reason I want knowledgeable people to look at it and make suggestions and comments to help me make it better. That is why there are scribbles on this page. The point – you can always learn and improve so input from the right people can be invaluable.

…  I hope this is helpful. Stay tuned for the next instalment shortly as the last few months have been busy leading into the Australian Championships which have just finished. So there’s more to share on this journey.