Purple Haze
Planning for success
By Lauren Bagian

May 6, 2010

While attending a leadership conference, I realized that there was one idea that kept popping up after each speaker gave their talk: goal setting leads to success. No matter if it was a big accomplishment or a small change, planning ahead and setting a goal made achieving that success more attainable.

This idea can be applied to countless areas in life. For an example, let’s say that Mrs. Jones wants to plant a garden. Lots of things go into a garden: preparing the plots and boundaries, choosing the seeds, planting, maintenance, pest control and the list goes on and on. This list of responsibilities and steps can seem like a daunting task for Mrs. Jones. However, with a little planning, she can have a sprouting garden in no time. What she needs is a plan. By sitting down and first making a list of things she must do and items she must buy, Mrs. Jones can create a plan or schedule and set attainable goals.

Now, there are many more applications for setting goals, especially in the high school world. When huge tests and group projects loom from your calendar, it can seem like getting an A is impossible, or when the performance of the play is only a month away and you have 50 lines to memorize, visions of tomatoes splatting from a disappointed audience seem all too real. However, by breaking the work up into small portions, such as memorizing two pages of lines each day, you’ll be headed towards a star performance.

It’s a good thing that high school provides so many challenges, opportunities and activities that require planning ahead because important skills such as goal setting are required throughout all areas of life, especially college life. So the next time you take a look at your schedule to discover that you have two papers to write, a concert to practice for and a report on the Wisconsin cheese industry all due in the same week, remember that proper planning is your key tool for survival.