For the record

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal." --Henry Ford

Setting goals helps people create vision or insight into their missions. Goals can exist in either short-term or long-term forms, or both simultaneously. "I want 2 pull-ups by the end of January" or "I want to take 20 seconds off my 'Fran' time over the next year. I will do the workout every month to check my progress."

Learning how to set goals and track progress as you achieve them are fundamental life skills.

Keeping records (tracking your success against your mission) allows you to look back and measure your success/failure toward reaching your stated goal. It also helps you set challenging but realistic future goals that build on the ones you've achieved.

One approach to goal setting is the S.M.A.R.T method. While the S.M.A.R.T acronym has many forms and mutations, the one I have seen used mainly is as follows: specific, measurable, achievable, results-based, time-specific.

Specific
State exactly what you want to achieve, in precise terms. Keep it simple and not too broad.

Measurable
What means are you going to use to track your success? How can you measure progress and completion?

Achievable
Ensure that what you are setting out to do can be achieved. Dream big! But break the complex problem into smaller manageable pieces, and work through those one step at a time.

Results-based
Have a vision of the actual end results of achieving the goal.

Time-specific
Set a date or time that you will achieve your goal by. If your goal is distant, create milestones when you will assess on your progress (and change your course if needed to keep on track to reaching the goal).

Setting goals and keeping records helps you avoid stagnation in training, provides immediate feedback on performance, and, best of all, allows us to check up on periodically on our individual success-related goals--all part of getting fitter.

"Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another." --John Dewey