How to set achievable goals

Whatever your association or relationship with maternity care, you can make a difference.

To do this, you’ll need to set achievable goals, then make sure you’re clear on how you’ll work toward those goals.

Setting achievable goals

Your goals may be in many different areas of maternity care. You may want to raise awareness around birth, what women need, or what models of maternity care are available. Maybe you’re a midwife who wants to deepen your work in relationship-based care with either the women and families you serve or the other health professionals you work with.

Perhaps you plan to change the model of care because you’re the director of maternity services, similar to what we heard that Hazel is doing in her video earlier this week. When you know what drives you – and you’re clear on where you’re going – setting goals is easy.

Before you define your personal or professional goals, let’s have a look at how you can set goals in such a way that they’re likely to actually happen.

Be SMART

How do you create goals that are achievable? Be S.M.A.R.T.

Specific – if you don’t know exactly what you want to achieve, it’s hard to get there. It’s like setting the GPS – you need to know exactly where you are now and where you’re going to be able to get there.

Measurable – How will you know when you’ve achieved your goal? Having specific measurable outcomes means you have clarity. Often you’ll be able to state when, or how much you want to achieve when you’re setting your goal.

Agreed-upon and attainable– everyone within the team you are working with is heading in the same direction.

Realistic – don’t bite off more than you can chew, but don’t make it so small that there’s no excitement or motivation to work toward it.

Timeframe– creating clear-cut timeframes for when you’ll take each step makes it easy to keep moving forward in your goals.

Be S.M.A.R.T. and you’ll achieve your goals.

If you’d like to learn more, check out the full online course from Griffith University, below.