What’s the difference between a goal and a priority? A goal is an outcome around which you focus your attention — it’s the purpose toward which your efforts are directed. A priority, on the other hand, is a goal that is more important to you than other goals. Priorities are simply the goals that are most important to your success. All goals are important, but as an athlete, you need to set priorities to help shape your destiny. Which goals you’ve prioritized as most important will determine the magnitude of your success in your sport. Choose your priorities wisely — they’re critical to your success. It is important to remember that sometimes your priorities will involve setting certain goals in specific aspects of your sport development — such as a certain skill, a fitness area such as speed, or a mental area, such as learning to manage pressure and maintain poise more effectively.
Here are some examples of long-term goals:
Be the starting goalie on the team.
Improve my national recognition among college coaches.
Become all-conference.
Be one of the mentally toughest players in the state.
Midterm goals
Next, set approximately three midterm goals that you intend to achieve in about six months (or half a season). These goals should be what we like to call process goals, or goals that deal with how you plan on going about doing things. For example, if your long-term goal is to become an all-conference athlete, your midterm process goals might include the following:
Out-hustle every person on the field.
Be the best-conditioned athlete on the field.
Become more offensive minded.
Immediately let go of mistakes and recover from poor performance.
Short-term goals
Your short-term goals are ones that take one to six months and directly feed into your midterm goals. The accomplishment of the short-term goals is necessary for the success of the midterm goals. For example, if your midterm goal is to be the best-conditioned athlete on the field, you could set the following short-term goals:
Run 2 miles in 12 minutes.
Run the 40-yard dash in less than 5 seconds.
Improve my leg strength.
Practice my post-mistake mental-toughness routine every day in training.
These are sometimes called “performance” goals — where you attach actual statistics to the goal, such as running the 40-yard dash in under 5 seconds.
Immediate goals
After you’ve set your short-term goals, your immediate goals take over. Immediate goals are actions you engage in to better the chances of your short-term goals happening. So, if you take the short-term goal of running 2 miles in 12 minutes, the following are examples of immediate goals:
Meet with my strength and conditioning coach once a week.
Time my 2-mile run at the end of every week.
Perform a tempo run (set up by the trainer) four days a week.
Do cross-training four days a week.
Making your goals specific
When you walk into a grocery store, whether you’ve written down a list of items to buy or you have that list in your mind, it’s specific. It says more than just “food.” You know you need milk, bread, cereal, bananas, and so on. If you do show up at the store without a list, you’ll likely get home from the store, walk in the door, and realize you forgot something you needed.
The same is true for your goals in sports. The more specific you can be when you set your goals, the better your chances of achieving them. Clear and specific goals allow you to have laser-like focus in your pursuit of greatness. They leave little to chance or imagination, allowing you to channel your energy accordingly.
Here are some examples of specific and nonspecific goals:
| Nonspecific Goals | Specific Goals |
|---|---|
| Get fit. | Run 2 miles in 12 minutes. |
| Serve well. | Have a first-service percentage of 60 percent. |
| Play hard. | Make three tackles per game. |
| Let go of my mistakes. | Follow my post-mistake routine in games. |
When you say that you want to “play hard,” what exactly does that mean? How are you going to measure it? Playing hard could be turned into a specific goal, but as it stands, it’s broad, ambiguous, and lacking in clear direction.
