Christina’s story: My experience of goal setting

Thursday, 17 December 2020

Christina, 24, a Jigsaw volunteer from Dublin shares her experience of goal setting.

With the year we’ve all had, having to put a lot of our daily lives on pause for a little while, it’s been difficult to keep focused at times. I find that setting goals for myself always helps me get back on track.

Looking after your mental health at all times is also really important, so I make sure to plan something self-care related for each evening.

Weekly planning

For college, I like to have any class times or deadlines for assignments written in the same place.

I use a weekly planner as my visual. It helps me to see how busy each day and week might be, which helps a lot coming up to busy periods and midterm assessments.

Setting self-care goals

Looking after your mental health at all times is also really important, so I make sure to plan something self-care related for each evening. I make sure to write a self-care activity in my to-do list along with all my college and work-related things.

It’s nice to see that at the end of a long list of things I have to do, there’s something at the end of the day to look forward to and make time for, like a video call with my friends, or watching some random series for an hour or so.

Setting long and short-term goals

College and work are just part of my long-term goal-setting though. Like everyone else, I have days where I’m not feeling productive or the motivation to get big things done. But, I remind myself that that’s OK! On days like these, the goals that I set are much smaller, but they are just what I need. I might set myself the goal of going for a 20-minute walk or making myself my favourite lunch.

These smaller goals help me stay on track and remind that goals don’t always have to be ones that take months or years to achieve. The small ones are just as much of an accomplishment!