Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Goal Setiing

Source:
Sankara Pitchaiah Podila (2019) Personal Goal Setting, International Journal of Recent Scientific Research, Vol. 10, Issue, 02(B), pp. 30767-30772.


‘Life without a goal is lifeless’.  Everybody needs a goal to lead the life in a successful path. If there is no goal, in which direction one shall have to move? So, to set a proper direction to one’s life all need to choose a goal(s). Goals give you a road map to your future (https://www.youtube. com). Life without challenges is no life at all (https://www.aconsciousrethink.com). We have only one chance at this life, so treating life as a journey of personal development, with plenty of challenges along the way, has to be the best way of ensuring we get the very most out of our allotted span (https://www.aconsciousrethink.com).

People endeavor to reach goals within a finite time by setting deadlines. A goal is roughly similar to a purpose or aim, the anticipated result which guides reaction, or an end, which is an object, either a physical object or an abstract object, that has intrinsic value. A goal is a desired result that a person plans and commits to achieve (Hudewale, https://www.slideshare.net/).

Goal Need

Goal helps you to achieve your highest. It allows measuring your progress because you always have a fixed endpoint or benchmark to compare with. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge, and helps you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.  It gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation (Hudewale, https://www.slide share.net/).  We can control our life to direct towards happy, healthy, peaceful and successful life. We can also focus on the important things and can make good decisions. Right goals give not only personal happiness/satisfaction, but also pave for healthy and peaceful society. Then only, the present day society becomes livable and lovable for mankind.

Setting goals can affect outcomes in four ways (Latham and Helene, 2007).
Choice: Goals may narrow someone's attention and direct their efforts toward the goal-relevant activities and fromward goal-irrelevant actions.
Effort: Goals may make someone more effortful. For example, if someone usually produces 4 widgets per hour, but wants to produce 6   widgets per hour, then they may work harder to produce more widgets than without that goal.
Persistence: Goals may make someone more willing to work through setbacks.
Cognition: Goals may cause someone to develop and change their behavior.

Well-defined goals appear to help individuals discover and use ever more efficient strategies and modes of thought and perception (Locke & Latham, 2002; Locke, Shaw, Saari, & Latham, 1981; Smith, Locke, & Barry, 1990). Personal goals reflect consciously articulated and personally meaningful objectives that guide perception, emotion, thought, and action (Elliot, Chirkov, Kim, & Sheldon, 2001; Wiese & Freund, 2005, Dominique et al., 2010).

Bryan and Hartner (1897) found that the performance of telegraph operators improved when they were working toward a specific task goal. Mace (1935) showed that the standard that was set affected a person’s performance, but only when the person’s ability had developed to the point where there was a reasonable expectation by the individual that the standard could be reached. Otherwise, urging people to do their best led to the highest performance. Ryan (1970) argued the importance of intentions to anticipate future obligations or to avoid them.

Goal setting plays a prominent role in social-cognitive learning models of academic achievement. According to such frameworks, successful achievement involves positive feedback loops between self-efficacy and goal commitment (Schunk, 1990; Zimmerman, Bandura, & Martinez-Pons, 1992). As a student experiences successful goal attainment, self-efficacy increases; this in turn enhances goal commitment and mobilizes the self-regulation of cognitive and motivational resources to facilitate subsequent achievement (Pintrich, 2000). Emmons and Diener (1986), for example, found that goal attainment was strongly correlated with positive affect among undergraduates (and that the lack of goal attainment was correlated with negative effect, although somewhat less strongly).

Dominique et al., (2010) studied the impact of goal setting on the academic performance of undergraduate students. After a 4-month period, students who completed the goal setting intervention displayed significant improvements in academic performance compared with the control group. The goal-setting program, thus appears to be a quick, effective, and inexpensive intervention for struggling undergraduate students. An easily administered, standardized, and time-limited goal setting intervention produced improvements in academic success among struggling university students.

Personal Goal Setting

The goal setting should be aimed at creating meaning for the life. It shall not be based on the will and pleasure of the individuals. Personally, people expect cooperation and support from others. All we shall understand that the others also expect the same from us. So, one’s goal shall aim towards extending cooperation and support to others for happy and peaceful society.  
The goal setting shall be based on the scientific facts about the human body. The human body is in the midest of the Nature. The Nature and its components (Planets, Continents, Oceans, Atmosphere, etc.) were explained scientifically to some extent. The human body, its parts their structure and functioning were also explained to some extent. Based on the available data the human body responds positively to certain things (good food, positive emotions, melodies, etc.) and differently to some other (bad food, negative emotions, pop music, etc.).

Before constructing personal goals one should consider how meaningful their objective is so it can establish a sense of value for the person pursuing the goal. Adding value induces a motivational component that is needed to achieve the goal (Davis et al., 2016).

Earlier, Goal-setting theory was formulated based on empirical research and has been called one of the most important theories in organizational psychology (Miner, 2003). Locke and Latham (2002) provided a comprehensive review of the core findings of the theory. In summary, Locke and Latham found that specific, difficult goals lead to higher performance than either easy goals or instructions to "do your best", as long as feedback about progress is provided, the person is committed to the goal, and the person has the ability and knowledge to perform the task (Stajkovic et al., 2006).

According to Locke and Latham (2002), goals affect performance in the following ways:
1. goals direct attention and effort toward goal-relevant activities,
2. difficult goals lead to greater effort,
3. goals increase persistence, with difficult goals prolonging effort, and
4. goals indirectly lead to arousal, and to discovery and use of task-relevant knowledge  and 
     strategies.

A positive relationship between goals and performance depends on several factors. First, the goal must be considered important and the individual must be committed.

Essential of Goal Setting

 The author opined that knowledge about the following aspects is essential for personal goal setting.
1. Science of Human body
2. Emotions and Health and
3. Life skills
For the details refer Sankara Pitchaiah Podila (2019)

References
Bryan, W.L., & Hartner, N. (1897). Studies in the physiology and psychology of the telegraphic language. Psychological Review, 4, 27–53.
Davis, W., Kelley, N., Kim, J., Tang, D., & Hicks, J. (2016). Motivating the academic mind: high-level construal of academic goals enhances goal meaningfulness, motivation, and self-concordance. Motivation & Emotion, 40(2), 193–202
Dominique Morisano, Hirsh Jacob B., Peterson Jordan B., Pihl Robert O. and Shore Bruce M. (2010) Setting, Elaborating, and Reflecting on Personal Goals Improves Academic Performance, Journal of Applied Psychology, 95, 2, 255–264.
Elliot A. J., Chirkov, V. I., Kim, Y., & Sheldon, K. M. (2001) A cross-cultural analysis of avoidance (relative to approach) personal goals. Psychological Science, 12, 505–510.
Emmons, R. A., & Diener, E. (1986) A goal–affect analysis of everyday situational choices. Journal of Research in Personality, 20, 309–326.
Latham, Gary P.; Budworth, Marie-Hélène (2007) "The study of work motivation in the 20th century". In Koppes, Laura L.; Thayer, Paul W.; Vinchur, Andrew J.; Salas, Eduardo. Historical perspectives in industrial and organizational psychology. Series in applied psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.  353–382 (366). 
Locke, E. A., Shaw, K. N., Saari, L. M., & Latham, G. P. (1981) Goal setting and task performance: 1969–1980. Psychological Bulletin, 90, 125–152.
Locke, E.A.,& Latham, G.P. (2002) Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57, 705–717.
Mace, C.A. (1935) Incentives: Some experimental studies. In Industrial health research report (Great Britain), 72.
Pintrich, P. R. (2000) The role of goal orientation in self-regulated learning. In M. Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 452–502). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Sankara Pitchaiah Podila (2019) Knowing Self-A Solution For Personal And Global Challenges, International Journal of Recent Scientific Research, Vol. 10, Issue, 02(C), pp. 30889-30898.
Schunk, D. H. (1990) Goal setting and self-efficacy during self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 25, 71–86.
Smith, K., Locke, E., & Barry, D. (1990) Goal setting, planning, and organizational performance: An experimental simulation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 46, 118–134.
Wiese, B. S., & Freund, A. M. (2005) Goal progress makes one happy, or does it? Longitudinal findings from the work domain. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 78, 287–304.
Zimmerman, B. J., Bandura, A., & Martinez-Pons, M. (1992) Selfmotivation for academic attainment: The role of self-efficacy beliefs and personal goal setting. American Educational Research Journal, 29, 663–676.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV3LwXL8tPU.
https://www.aconsciousrethink.com/8586/types-of-goals/.




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