Certainly achieving a goal is a reward in itself but generally that's not going to be enough to keep you motivated, especially in the case of performance goals. Once you understand the basics of goal setting, and after you've laid out your goal plan with long term goals and short term tasks, it's imperative that you establish a reward system for your plan.
The mistake most people make is to think that the rewards have to be large and only for significant accomplishments. This mistake in thinking and strategy will be the demise of your goal plan. Achieving your goals will happen a spoonful at a time. You move a mountain a rock at a time. You need to establish a reward for each rock moved, regardless the size of the rock.
Your rewards should be small and frequent. The ultimate measure of your success will be determined by small disciplines practiced every day. These disciplines should be rewarded. For instance, if you have a performance goal of running a half hour per day on the treadmill, you should give yourself a reward for every half hour achieved. If you have a sales performance goal to make four phone calls per hour, you should reward yourself each hour that you achieve your goal. The rewards must be commensurate with the goal. If you run a half hour on the treadmill, you don't want to make the reward a banana split at the Dairy Queen but maybe a small cup of your favorite ice cream. If you make your four phone calls in an hour, you don't want to give yourself the rest of the day off but perhaps a 5 minute coffee break.
It's important that your reward system is deliberate. You probably already treat yourself to the ice cream and the coffee break but it's probably random. If you get in the habit of only allowing these small rewards after you've earned them though equally small disciplines, you're on your way to mastering a goal setting strategy that will work wonders for you. Of course, for the larger goals, you create larger rewards.
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If you're serious about goal setting, you're going to need tools to aid in designing, refining, and following your plan. We've developed a tool we call the GoalTender but there are many others available on the web and we encourage you to research several articles and tools before investing your money. What works for one person may not work for you.
Closing Thought
The road to success has many tempting parking places.
