My New Approach to Goal Setting

by Tiffany | Mar 13, 2012 | Goals

All too often, goals will be set with great passion and desire for achieving a major objective. This could be doubling one’s income, writing a book, losing 100 pounds, or organizing the entire home. These are great and grand goals to have, yet in supporting you to set yourself up to succeed, I invite you to apply the MTO formula by Raymond Aaron to help increase your odds and pleasure with goal setting and achievement.

When we set goals that are a huge stretch, we will likely either overwhelm ourselves and back off the goal, not believe it’s truly possible, or perhaps not even start the goal process in the first place.

When it comes to goal setting, I invite you to think of “scaling” your goals for optimum success. When it’s scalable, we can see the goal in chunks and as a series of progress versus an all or nothing, black and white scenario.

Consider each of your goals – sales, income, health, relationships, organization, etc. Now, apply the MTO formula to setting goals in those areas.

MTO stands for: Minimum, Target, Outrageous. 

With each goal, identify, what’s my minimum achievement level that I must/will do no matter what? What’s my ideal target that I’m reaching for? What would be my outrageous, over the moon level?

For example, let’s use health as a goal. You’ve been setting high goals with your exercise and it’s just not happening. Perhaps it’s too unrealistic with your time constraints or you simply aren’t in the habit of it.

Minimum: Exercise 2X a week for 15 minutes a session

Target: Exercise 3X a week for at least 20 minutes a session.

Outrageous: Exercise 4X a week or more for at least 30 minutes a session.

Do you see how you could do the same thing for your sales calls? Organizing projects? Writing that book?

Doesn’t that feel doable for at least the minimum level? And once we get moving – we get into momentum with our goals – our odds go up of achieving even more.

This strategy is especially helpful if you feel that perfectionism is undermining you in following through and taking action. You can always commit to the minimum level and in doing so you’ll often hit the target level and in some cases, your outrageous goal.

By offering yourself the opportunity to make your goals about progress and not perfection, you keep yourself motivated and in the game of goal achievement. As you achieve one goal or level, you will feel inspired to go on to achieve more. Momentum is now in your favor and your confidence is higher, inspiring you to believe in and go for your outrageous goals!