There are many online articles and books on the subject of setting goals using the ELEGANT acronym
I would like to use my own words and experiences to relate this without referring to any of the material already available.
To make it easier to understand, let’s use the example of Alice trying to cook a meal for a family of four.
SPECIFIC
When it comes to being specific, Alice has to specify what exactly she is trying to do. Is she trying to prepare a meal for breakfast, lunch or dinner? Suppose Alice decided that it will be a dinner meal. Then the next factor for her to think about is what is the content of the food. Will it be Western, Japanese, Italian, Mediterranean, Chinese food? For an Italian-style meal, you’ll probably go for pasta and pizza. So what kind of pasta exactly are you going to make? What kind of pizza are you going to bake exactly? And what about the sides and drinks to accompany it?
MEASURABLE
Alice needs to be specific about her goal of preparing an Italian dinner. She then she can divide dinner into parts. Parts like: buy the ingredients, prepare the ingredients, cook the pasta, bake the pizza. serve food, wash dishes, clean the table. When she has this list of smaller tasks, she can estimate time and resources.
Alternatively, you can also measure these tasks in terms of serving portions and ingredient amounts. You can set a small task to cut 3 tomatoes and chop 500 grams of chicken meat.
Another factor to consider is that you only have some money to buy ingredients. Therefore, you need to plan and shop carefully so as not to exceed your budget.
Each time you act and complete separately, you’ll know what’s next. That is some form of measurement in terms of percentage complete.
REALIZABLE
When it comes to this factor, the easiest way to relate to Alice is if you know how to cook pasta and bake pizza.
Do you have the equipment and tools for these? Does your kitchen have the knives, cutting board, pots, pans, or even an oven that you can bake in? Do you have enough time to complete all the tasks so that food can be served at dinner time?
REALISTIC
To be realistic, this is the first time Alice is going to cook in the kitchen. She has no idea how to cook pasta because she has never even eaten or seen one before. She doesn’t have any recipe to follow or experience in the kitchen. It’s only 30 minutes until dinner time. Therefore, it is not even realistic for her to complete the kitchen even if she knows how to do it and she has all the ingredients and cooking utensils available.
PROMPT
When the time comes, Alice can assign the duration to all the smaller tasks. Buying the ingredients should take a maximum of 30 minutes, preparing the ingredients should take 1 hour, cooking the pasta is about 20 minutes, baking the pizza is another 45 minutes, consuming the food takes 20 minutes, doing the dishes and cleaning up takes another 30 minutes.
With all of these durations in mind, you can work backwards and decide what time you should start cooking and when you should finish cooking.
Basically, when we pay attention to setting our goals with these five factors in mind, our goals will naturally become clearer and more defined. If we start to focus on one of the factors, a small change occurs. If we work on all five, it can lead to wonders. We will get more motivated and this will still help us reach the goal.
By the way, would you like to learn more about how to improve yourself in your daily life and financially with goal setting? If so, go and read more on MY BLOG.
