This article will provide you the ultimate guide on how to break down your specific goal into one-word goals.
At the start of a new calendar year, all of us tend to set smart goals for ourselves, however, these goals can be confusing and vague.
So, the solution is to divide your year’s activity into shorter yet simpler one-word goal and process your actions to match your journey to your dreams.
What is a One-word Goal?
However, before we begin to delve into how to create your one-word goals, let’s first develop our understanding of the concept.
To understand one-word goals, assume that you have to define the nature or character of a goal in one little word. So, simply put, a one-word goal serves the purpose of guiding your life toward that direction.
It can be a struggle to specify your desired idea into a single word, but it helps in developing clarity about your goals.
If you feel confused by the mention of the word resolutions or the word ideas, then one-word goals are the most appropriate solution to make things crystal clear.
But, now you might ask yourself what is the purpose of one-word goals? Well, it is simple.
If you could use just one word to focus on for the rest of the entire year, wouldn’t that make things simpler to achieve and prosper?
This is the whole justification behind one-word goals, they help in avoiding complicated goal-setting processes.
How to Get Started?
If you are still a bit confused about one-word goals, this section will make it easier for you to use a few words to narrow down your larger New Year resolutions.
If you feel that your room is a mess, you can’t find things at the right time and your life is becoming messy then the word for you is ORGANISED
If you want to develop better relationships then go for FRIENDS or FAMILY
If you feel negativity is engulfing your life then your single word is POSITIVITY
If you are falling behind on grades for the past few years, then CONSISTENCY
The same word of CONSISTENCY can be used when you want to be better at exercising and feel that you only exercise for a few weeks in the year
If you feel unhealthy then one-word
resolutions for you are HEALTHY, MENTAL HEALTH,or PHYSICAL HEALTH
Do you have difficulty in following through with your commitments? Then your word is AMBITION
If you cannot find the incentive to get work done, then go for MOTIVATION
If the word resolution is daunting then go for COURAGE
If you feel lost then your word is GOAL SETTING
These are a few examples of what you can do to become better at finding your word of the year to achieve and sustain your progress in the New Year.
Let’s Talk Resolutions
Now that we are done with goal setting for word of the year, let’s begin with the concept of one-word resolutions.
Both terms mean one and the same thing, but an underlying difference exists between choosing one-word goals and one-word resolutions.
The direct link between one-word goal and resolutions is the use of a single word, but resolutions are more innate and goals can be external.
As an example, we can assume that your goal can be to be healthier but your resolution is innate, and therefore your one-word resolution for this will be FOCUS.
Check our guide on How You Can Be Focused To Achieve All Your Goals.
So when choosing a one-word resolution, you have to focus on the inherent, the internal, and the innate that can be changed in your perspective, which then changes your habits, your activities, and any other external changes.
A few examples of one-word resolutions are:
PEACE for you and for others
LISTEN to avoid being self-obsessed
LOVE to show and feel
So far, we have covered one-word goals and one-word resolutions, but if you’re interested in something more constructive or related to your professional career or academic outcomes, then the next section is for you
One Word Smart Goals
We have covered one-word goals and New Year’s resolutions, but there’s another area of goal setting that deals with smart goal setting. In simple terms, SMART goals can be defined as
S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Attainable
R: Relevant
T: Time-Bound
The purpose of SMART goals is to establish easy, navigable, and actionable goals, which clearly define what needs to be done. It measures your progress and helps to achieve better end results.
How to Set One Word Smart Goals?
At the beginning of a school year, it is always a smart move to look towards the year ahead and make changes.
However, choosing one specific word to define your whole school year or professional career in the New Year can be complicated.
So, follow this guide and focus on establishing one guiding word for the New Year:
Step 1: Brainstorm
Before you can filter down your idea or goal into a single word, first you need to look forward, look into your past and brainstorm as many ideas that come into mind.
Begin with an area you want to work towards and make a one-pager of all possible words or ideas.
As a student, it can be for your grades, or as a professional worker, it can be for your career in the future.
In general, you can choose an area of your physical health or mental health or any other aspect of yourself that you want to improve
The next step is to brainstorm and write down as many ideas as come to mind.
Step 2: Actionable Steps
Once you have written down all your brain fog into one place, your next step is to find direct links between each idea and try to specify what you want to improve.
Once you have a set goal in mind, your next step is to devise actions to reach that goal. In this goal, you will therefore be looking at ways to reach your set goals.
Step 3: Milestones
By this step, you have a goal and actionable steps that need to be taken.
However, to make feasible for completion, breakdown your feasible steps into achievable milestones to measure your progress.
These milestones can be weekly, monthly, or bimonthly. The overall purpose of setting milestones is to review your performance after a certain time period and make sure you are on track.
Step 4: Outcome
You also need to be clear on your outcome about what you want to achieve from your year’s activity.
Your outcome is highly specific and aligned with your vision and hopes for the end result.
To give an example of this process, let us assume that you want to achieve better grades in the next year, then you will begin with brainstorming ideas about better grades, reading more, do homework, working with your teacher, consulting friends, going through Google slides, online courses, etc.
Once you have brainstormed, then you make actionable steps of finishing essential readings to better your understanding of one individual subject, you can set milestones to read a certain number of pages in one week, followed by the outcome of scoring higher grades.
Step 5: What is the core?
The last step is to take a step back and look at what you are willing to achieve through your goal-setting.
You will look at your desired resolution for the year, oversee your actions, milestones and the end result you want, then simply choose your one-word resolution.
All of this will highlight at least one commonality that needs to change in your behavior or action, and that is your word of the year.
Going by the example given above, the main goal for the next year is to get better grades through working on your reading and improving your academic activities, so your word for the new school year is HARDWORK.
5 One Word Smart Goals
Now that we have established how to reach a one-word smart goal, below are a few examples of smart goals that can be broken down into one-word accomplishments.
The tricky part of turning smart goals into one-word goals is to effectively analyze the inherent nature of your smart goal and then boil it down to one little word. However, if you go through the examples given below, you can see that it’s simpler than you realized.
Performance
Specific: I will post more on my business website
Measurable: I will hire a social media manager to develop a social media strategy
Attainable: The skills of the social media manager and my own experience will help to post more on the website
Relevant: If I post more on my website, it will be critical in driving more audience to my business
Time-Bound: I will be done with this goal in 3 months
Savings
Specific: I will save 10% of my income from paycheck received each week
Measurable: I will create a savings account and deposit 10% of my income every week.
Attainable: I have measured my costs and expenditure, and I can afford 10% of my savings
Relevant: by saving 10% of my income, I can hope for affording a bigger car in 6 months.
Time-Bound: I will be buying a new car with my 10% in 6 months.
Diet
Specific: I will eat more fruits and vegetables as my dinner
Measurable: I will buy more fruits and vegetables in my grocery shop
Attainable: The expiry date of fresh produce will act as a reminder to eat it within 1 week
Relevant: I want to eat healthy to minimize my struggle of consuming copious amounts of junk food
Time-Bound: I will eat fresh fruit and vegetable for dinner every day in the course of next year and improve my diet from the last year.
Love
Specific: I will express more love to my children
Measurable: I will increase my expression of love to my children by weeks and months.
Attainable: I will take time out to reflect on my relationship with my children and come up with 3 things I love about them
Relevant: The good reason for expressing more love to my children is to make them feel loved and become a better parent
Time-Bound: I will accomplish more expression of love by consistently taking out time every week to reflect and share 3 things I love about my children
Knowledge
Specific: I will read one book in one month
Measurable: I will make sure to set myself the challenge of reading one book in one month
Attainable: By posing reading as a challenge that needs to be accomplished, I will feel motivated to do it
Relevant: Reading a book will help me increase my knowledge and become better at conversing with friends.
Time-Bound: In the next year, my progress should be one book per month.
Goal Setting
If you have reached this far, you must have read through the word goal setting numerous times.
It is a simple yet sophisticated word that can mean a number of things to a number of people.
When setting goals, it involved a series of different steps, considerations, and changes that need to be made, although the purpose remains the same; to make tangible changes and improve oneself.
Goal setting can be done through various tools like a vision board, which can be used to get an idea of what needs to be done.
On the other hand, progress for setting goals can be measured through a bulletin board, which can prove helpful in tracking the progress of the goal-setter.
But you might ask yourself, is goal setting even one word to be used as a one-word goal?
Well, goal setting can be written as goal-setting as well, with the hyphen making it sure that it becomes one little word.
However, you have to keep in mind one aspect of one-word goal setting that it does strictly follow only single-word policy, as long as the true nature of the change you want to make is engulfed in the word.
Parting Thoughts – One-Word Goals
After reading this, I hope you have had a better idea on how to make one word goals or resolutions and how to be smart in goal setting.
When you sit down to write your own goals, just remember that a good goal is one that motivates you and compels you to do better, if it stresses you out, then it is better to go back to the vision board.