Values and goals
Before setting any specific goals, our first step is to reflect on our values. Identifying those values will help us set goals that reflect what matters most to us, making the goals more deeply meaningful.
Learning activity: Free-write/think: what are your values (big picture)
Instructions: In this activity, you will reflect on your values then eventually use those values to set goals for this course and for your overall program.
Workbook
Please download the Workbook. We will regularly ask you to do activities in the Workbook, especially those that are private or that could serve you in the future.
1) Take some time to write down your top three values. The list below can serve as inspiration but you can also identify your own.
Accountability
Achievement
Adaptability
Adventure
Altruism
Ambition
Authenticity
Balance
Beauty
Being the best
Belonging
Career
Caring
Collaboration
Commitment
Community
Compassion
Competence
Confidence
Connection
Contentment
Contribution
Cooperation
Courage
Creativity
Curiosity
Dignity
Diversity
Environment
Efficiency
Equality
Ethics
Excellence
Fairness
Faith
Family
Financial stability
Forgiveness
Freedom
Friendship
Fun
Future generations
Generosity
Giving back
Grace
Gratitude
Growth
Harmony
Health
Home
Honesty
Hope
Humility
Humor
Inclusion
Independence
Initiative
Integrity
Intuition
Job security
Joy
Justice
Kindness
Knowledge
Leadership
Learning
Legacy
Leisure
Love
Loyalty
Making a difference
Nature
Openness
Optimism
Order
Parenting
Patience
Patriotism
Peace
Perseverance
Personal fulfillment
Power
Pride
Recognition
Reliability
Resourcefulness
Respect
Responsibility
Risk-taking
Safety
Security
Self-discipline
Self-expression
Self-respect
Serenity
Service
Simplicity
Spirituality
Sportsmanship
Stewardship
Success
Teamwork
Thrift
Time
Tradition
Travel
Trust
Truth
Understanding
Uniqueness
Usefulness
Vision
Vulnerability
Wealth
Well-being
Wholeheartedness
Wisdom
2) In your workbook, spend some time writing freely about those values. Why those ones? What are some examples when they are most visible? While writing, don’t criticize anything. Just get all your ideas down, written in any order.
Go to your Workbook and write your answers, and then click on the checkbox.
Now that you’ve identified your values, you can use them to guide you as you set SMART goals for the goals.
SMART goals
Setting goals is important but setting SMART goals is even better. SMART goals help you better prioritize, strategize for your learning, get focussed and organized, seek help, and ultimately, reach your goals faster and better!
Specific
Your goal should be as simple, precise, and defined as possible. Think what, why, when, and how.
Measurable
Describe the tangible evidence that you have achieved your goal. What will you see, hear, be able to do (ideally outwardly visible or demonstrable). Establish criteria to measure your progress.
Accountable
What is the mechanism to keep you accountable for your goals? Individually, this could be another person or yourself. In a group, project goals must be agreed upon and understood by all stakeholders.
Realistic
Goals should be challenging but achievable. You need to possess the required skills or be able to develop them in the identified time frame, and have access to the required resources.
Time-defined
Goals should have unambiguous timing associated with them, which should also be realistic.
There are a number of areas that you can make goals for. Here are just a few examples:
- Research,
- Professional contexts,
- Mental health,
- Personal growth & improvement
In this course, we focus primarily on academic and research goals, but you can make them for anything.
Learning activity: Identify a SMART goal
Instructions: Select the correct answer then click Check.
Learning activity: Improve a goal
Instructions: Pick one of the non-SMART goals from the previous question and transform it into a SMART goal. Your answer does not have to match exactly, but it should have all the components of a SMART goal.
Go to your Workbook and write your answers, and then click on the checkbox.
You could also add some examples to our conversation space on Discord
Check that your goal meets all the criteria of a SMART goal . Here is one example of an updated goal:
Old goal: Get a high grade in my first graduate course.
New SMART goal: I will achieve at least a B in my first graduate course by studying 10 hours per week, actively participating in discussions, completing assignments on time, and seeking feedback from my professor.
Goals can vary in their scopes
Learning activity: Set short and long-term goals for graduate school
Instructions: Using the values you set earlier, set SMART goals for (A) this semester (short-term) and (B) the next year (long-term) of graduate school using the goal-setting worksheet in your workbook.
Go to your Workbook and write your SMART goals, and then click on the checkbox.
Make your goal sufficiently challenging! Sometimes you want to set goals that have a high chance of success. Sometimes the goal has a higher risk of failure.
Consider resources and capacity: with any goal, be sure to be clear about the resources you have available.
Goals need to reflect outcomes, not activities (for example: a goal can be a process but it needs to be visible, tangible, observable). In a research context, the goal would have measureable outputs that allow the team to know what will be produced over the course of the project.
Is it okay to change my goals?
- Maybe! Sometimes!
- It’s important to constantly monitor your goals and change them to adapt to evolving situations (e.g., new research results, changes in mental health, learn new skills)
- Always/regularly changing goals can be problematic, as you may never ultimately reach the goals you set…
Learning activity: Set short and long-term goals for graduate school
Again, using your values as a starting point, create and commit to a SMART goal for this course, writing it down in your workbook.
Go to your Workbook and write your answers, then click on the checkbox.
Now that you have set some SMART goals, how do you maximize your chances of reaching them? Let’s start that process in the next section.