6 Reasons All College Students Should Set Goals

Colleges must spend more time teaching their students how to set goals. After all higher education is centered around the concept of mastering a new subject on your own. From my experience higher education provides students with learning resources, but ultimately the students end up teaching themselves. How can students successfully teach themselves without learning to set goals first? The purpose of this post is not to teach you how to set SMART goals. Click here if you would like more information on how to do so. Rather the purpose of this post is to emphasize the importance of goals to college students. Setting the right goals could:

1. Impact your grades

By setting daily, weekly, and monthly goals to prepare for exams students experience much less negative stress. We encourage you to take your syllabus on the first day of class and reverse engineer it. Work backwards and set small study goals leading you to prepare for the final. The sooner you start setting and executing your study goals, the easier test day becomes.

2. Improve your mood

Setting goals puts us in the driving seat of our own life. It allows us to have our own metrics for success and not depend on other people to define it. By setting goals, and achieving them, we are giving ourselves the power to define our own success. This process is very empowering and results in an improved mood.

3. Help your health

Health goals may be one of the most important goals yo ever set in life. They can determine the quality and longevity of an individual’s life. College students are often known for working and partying too hard and sleeping too little. The importance of sleep cannot be emphasized enough. Setting adequate sleep goals is a great place for college students to start being health conscious. Exercise and nutrition are two additional areas of health where college students benefit from setting goals.

4. Make you money

Having specific and measurable goals is the common thread behind all top operating business executives. Leaders not only set goals for themselves, but they set goals with and for their teams. I am not saying you need a lot of money to be a leader or set goals. But I am saying you must be a leader and set goals to make a lot of money.

5. Keep you focused

Goals keeps us on track. They remind us what is important and what is a priority. It’s no secret that college is full of distractions. We encourage you to enjoy your time in school, but we also encourage you to read your goals three times day. Doing so will keep you focused on the three things that matter. Graduation, health, and happiness.

6. Save you money

As mentioned before setting goals is a tool used to maintain focus. As a student, if you focus, you will finish school in less time. This will inevitably lead you to save money on tuition and other school expenses. Setting a spending budget is also a form of a goal that will help you save money. If you are looking for ways to get healthy while saving money, click here.