One CEO shares his favorite trick for achieving goals in your 20s
Aug 11, 2015, 21:52 IST
Jacquelyn Smith/Business InsiderTry this - it can help.Setting and achieving goals can feel extremely overwhelming - especially for recent college grads.
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But there are ways to make the process less daunting.
Kevin E. Lofton, CEO of Catholic Health Initiatives, a nonprofit, faith-based health system, has a trick.
When Adam Bryant of The New York Times recently interviewed Lofton, he asked: "What kind of advice do you give to new college grads?"
Lofton told Bryant he gives many talks to students and almost always closes by telling them this:"Take a blank sheet of paper and an envelope, write down a goal of something that they want to do over the coming year, then seal it. Nobody's ever going to see this except you, I tell them - it's not for your teachers; it's not for your parents; it's just for yourself."Then a year later, he told Bryant, "you take it out and grade yourself on whether you worked toward that goal, and then you set a new goal for the next year."Of course, this doesn't guarantee that you'll actually achieve the goal in the first year or two - but it can help keep you motivated enough to get there eventually. Lofton told Bryant that this exercise is really just to get 20-somethings in the habit of "looking at the things they need to work on, setting a personal goal, and then seeing how they've done against that goal."He concluded: "I still do this myself every year."Read the full New York Times interview here.