Since the very purpose of goal setting is to be achievable, your goals should be challenging enough to stimulate you but realistic enough so as not to discourage you in the end. For instance, you want to set a goal for your personal growth, as a person and as a professional. These two can be easily confused into one thing but they are different. Life goals Life goals are goals or target outcomes that you want to achieve in your life. Life goals are commonly referred to as goals that help one person choose what path to take or help one define what he really wants to achieve in his life time. That sets life goals from the common and simple short-term goals you set everyday in your life. In fact, this type of goal setting is not only limited to private institutions that are more inclined to do this stuff such as educational and religious institutions, but other as well. Corporations, huge and small, are now racing against time to incorporate into their calendar of activities, schedules of goal setting for their executives and other staffs. Performance goal in the company If you re an executive or officer of a company, part of your responsibilities will include setting performance goals. This work can be trickier than you might think because this would entail setting a performance for the company that the employees will accept as their own. If, for example, a person is entrusted to carry out a particular job for the whole company, that person should be named, not only the department she or he represents. The letter M in smart goal setting can mean MEASURABLE. If you re specific with your objectives, it follows then that you need to be concrete. Be it a personal goal, career or professional goal, and even business planning, bringing this down into a paper will the practitioner to see the planned goal factually. But some important aspect of this "writing" process is omitted. In writing, just like in thinking, there are many steps. And if it is the first step of thinking, usually the "warm-up" period that is committed into writing, then the problem is in the making.