How to Write Goals Using the Acronym AVID!

Learn how to write goals in a consistent and effective manner by using the simple acronym AVID to remember all of the key components of each goal. I created this acronym because in the Navy, it was easier to remember how things worked when you had a cheat sheet to guide you through.

Goals serve many purposes including motivating you, providing you with direction, and setting a time limit that it should take to achieve the goal. Use my acronym to help you remember how to organize each of your goals so they can be effective, consistent, and motivating every time.

A - Accomplish

V - Vehicle

I - Incentive

D - Deadline

The word Accomplish helps you remember that you must apply detail and define what you want to accomplish with this particular goal. This is also known as your objective. Each thing you want to accomplish will be a new goal.

Do not make your objectives too easy or too hard to accomplish. Too easy creates a lack of challenge and demotivates you. Too hard either makes your goal impossible to accomplish or so hard you lose interest in accomplishing it.

The word Vehicle refers to the method by which you will accomplish this goal. This one is a little tricky when you are first starting out because you may not realize any good vehicles to accomplish your goal.

A vehicle can be a source of money, a particular skill set, a process, a tool, a resource, or anything else that you need to utilize in order to accomplish the goal. If my goal is to write two pages of content and publish them online for this website, my tool is going to be my computer, software on the computer for word processing, and my website hosting service for publishing the content.

When writing down your vehicle, you want to be as specific as possible so it is very clear how you are going to accomplish the task, not just what the objective is. This helps considerably with the planning process.

The word Incentive or reward is used to help motivate you to accomplish your goal prior to or at the date set for accomplishment. This should be the last part of your goal, but must be in your written goal.

Here's an example of adding a reward into your goal: "If you accomplish your goal on time using this vehicle, you will reward yourself with a new computer keyboard."

Rewards are great because they come straight from your dream list. Your dream list is a list of all of your dreams (your wants in life - not your needs) listed in value order. As you accomplish your goals, you reward yourself with the least valued dream on your list. As your goals progress toward your life purpose, you receive more and more dreams from your list. Since the dreams in your list are something you really want, this is an effective reward to help motivate you.

The word Deadline is there to remind you to set a date for the accomplishment of your goal. If you don't set a date, you will never accomplish your goal. You must set a deadline for every goal you have, that way you can actually accomplish something.

How to write goals is very simple once you put your mind to it. It can be tricky at times, but once you make it a habit, writing new goals will become second nature. Here's a goal setting example to show you how to write goals and so you can see all of the key elements of a goal in action.