Setting goals is very useful if you need to improve your performance and motivation when it comes to your coding hobby or career. Before I was an experienced coder, I would take a design, and do my best to finish it from top to bottom. As you can imagine, this process became quite inefficient. I would spend more time coding a layout, and as a result, lose time finding more clients and spending more free time at the same time being a very unmotivated individual. Every job seemed the same, job after job. Soon enough I realized my coding regime had to change, and I had to look at completing tasks in a different manner.
This is when I learnt about assigning myself goals. What is a goal? Simple. A goal is a desirable objective, something you want to get done. I started assigning myself goals for every job, and I was then able to start to work towards them in a managable fashion. The more goals I set, the more my performance and motivation began to improve. You might think “Okay, I set goals, am I a better, more motivated coder now?”. Not quite. When it comes to setting goals, there are a few things that you need to take into account. For these goals, let’s look at some characteristics from Edwin Locke’s “Goal-Setting Theory” with Goal Difficulty and Goal Specificity.
Goal Difficulty and Specificity are rather self explanatory, and two very important goal characteristics that you must take into account. When it comes to setting a goal, you need to take into account how difficult and specific the goal being set is. If you are working to complete a goal, it is safe to assume that you will be working to achieve harder goals. However, you must be sure to set goals that are attainable and reasonable. If you were to say “I’m going to complete this CMS in one hour”, chances of you completing that are rather slim. Set goals that are accomplish-able, and you will see your motivation and performance step up a considerable notch. Goal Specificity is the idea of setting clear and precise goals. Setting the goal of “finishing this design” is not very specific, compared to the goal of “finishing the header in the next 40 minutes” which is rather specific.
If you have ever set a goal, and completed it, surely you’ve felt that sense of accomplishment inside. It is this rewarding sense that you are looking to get whenever you set a goal. The more you want to complete a task, the more your motivation and performance will improve. This, in turn, can result into getting more clients and more revenue. So if you are in a position where you are lacking performance and motivation, start setting the right goals and turn your motivation and performance up!
Tags: coding, motivation, performance, programming
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awesome comment about achieving your goals