Setting your goals

Sixth Form Motivations

What’s the why behind everything you do? Professor Steven Reiss conducted studies with over 6000 people to try and define their underlying motivations. He concluded his work by suggesting there are sixteen different motivations that guide all human behaviour.

Slightly simplified to include 15 motivations, these are listed below. Choose 9 of the following motivations that seen as though they might be the most important to you. Then prioritise them using the diamond template. 

At the top of the diamond should be the motivation that beats all others for you. Underneath, you can have two deputies alongside each other. Then come the rest.

Discuss with others and compare notes as much as you like, but remember that there is no right answer, so answer honestly for yourself!

• What are your top three motivations? Do they link in any way? If so, how?
• How do they link to the subjects you have chosen to study? If they don’t, does this make you think differently about what you are going to embark on?
• How can you use these motivations to help you make a success of your sixth form career?

Unlocking your 'vision'

It turns out that asking ‘What is your goal?’ isn’t a very good way of unlocking your vision. The question is abstract and slippery and answering it is often embarrassing and frightening. But there are questions that work. Some questions get an immediate response, ‘Ah, I know the answer to that!’ whereas others don’t. The following questions have been tested over and over again with students and seem to be the ones that are more likely to open up some positive thinking.

We can’t promise that these questions will work for you; all we know is that they’ve worked for others. Answer these questions with reference to study and work. Try your best to practise honest and fearless thinking – that means you answer without feeling stupid or embarrassed, and you say what you think and feel. Try to write all your answers down – it really helps.

• If you could only take one subject what would it be, and why?
• What lessons or elements of study do you find easy?
• What do you do with your spare time?
• Describe an interesting lesson you had recently. Why was it interesting?
• What jobs do you avoid doing, and why?
• When does time fly? What are you doing?
• When does time seem to drag or stop? What are you doing?
• What job would you do for free?
• Who do you look up to?
• What would you try if you knew you couldn’t fail?
• What puts a smile on your face?
• If you had the afternoon off to work at home, which piece of work would you choose to do?
• When you have a lot of homework, which subject do you do first?
• Describe a homework task you have recently left until the last minute or not done at all. Why?
• What do you get obsessed about?
• When you’re with your friends, what do you want to talk about?
• What stresses you out?
• If you had an hour off A level work and a laptop, what would you type into a search engine?
• If you were given a small amount of money to start a question, what would it be?
• List five words you associate with ‘happiness’.

Fix Your Dashboard

Imagine somebody that you admire and respect. Take your time and choose someone you look up to – often, your first thought isn’t your best. Perhaps list five or ten people you admire to begin with and see what they have in common. What qualities do they have that you admire? The characteristics that you admire in others can say a lot about the type of person that you would like to be.

Take a blank piece of paper and write down the qualities of this person in each life domain: career, finance, family, personal relationships, education, qualities, activities, community citizenship and any others that you can think of.

Next, write a paragraph on the type of person that you would like to be in each area of your life. Practice ‘no limit’ thinking. Don’t limit yourself by your fears, lack of money or a lack of time – clarify a vision of your ideal self.

The Dashboard

Millions of people drive to work every day. The dashboard of their car is the first thing they see on the way in and the last thing they see as they arrive home. We use the word ‘dashboard’ to mean what you see first thing in the morning or last thing at night. It might be the wall above your desk or next to your bedside table. It might be wallpaper on your phone or the inside cover of your files.

We each live with a mental dashboard of people and ideas. Our research shows us that people who have even a brief reminder of a positive role model – from looking at their dashboard – have hugely increased levels of motivation.

We have also worked with students who have altered their dashboards. One student put a photograph of the university she wanted to go to inside her file, so she saw it each time she opened it up to work. Another student covered his bedroom wall with inspiring quotes and messages. Another listed all the people who would feel proud and excited if she did really well and stared at those names before each revision session. For further information on this, check out Dan Coyle’s brilliant guide, The Little Book of Talent, which encourages people to study the person you want to become.

SMART goals

In this goal setting activity you are going to develop SMART goals – that is, something concrete and doable which will help you reach your goal. SMART goals are a proven method of maximising goal setting success.

Pick one of your goals. Whether you choose an education goal, a career goal or a personal goal, try to identify how you can make your goal SMART:

• Specific: Be as precise as you can rather than general.
• Measurable: How will you know when you’ve reached your goal? Write: ‘I will know I have achieved my goal because...’
• Action-based: What can you do to get the goal started? How? What’s step on, step two, step three and so on?
• Realistic: Has someone done it before? Could you speak to that person? Is there evidence to suggest that you can do it? What previous personal successes are connected to your goal?
• Time-bound: When do you want to do this by? Avoid, ‘One day I’m going to...’, instead be much more precise.

Use the template below to record your SMART goals.

Short-Term SMARTs

SMART goals take your goal setting to the next level but they need practice. Try setting four or give SMART goals for the next fortnight. Imagine how you would feel if you had every one of those five short-term goals done in the next ten working days! You might want to choose one per transition subject that you are working on. 

The Five Roads

This is another activity to help you check your motivation. All you need to do is imagine yourself at a junction with five possible ways forward: each way forward represents a possible choice for you. The aim of this activity is to make those possible choices clearer. This will enable you to objectively review your options, which is the first step in making a good decision. Don't feel a decision has to be made yet - it doesn't. But knowing what options are in play is always helpful.

Use the diagram below to think about what might lie at the end of each road. You might need to spend some time thinking about these, and you could begin by scribbling 2 or 3 options at the tip of each road before coming to add more or cross others off as your preferences become clearer.

Having done at this note down your thoughts in more detail as follows:

The head. Here, note down the choices at that occur to you when you think rationally. This is the careful and thoughtful road. there will be low risk on this road - it's safe and certain - so it might not be your most exciting road forward.

The heart. This road is about wholeheartedly pursuing your passions; the studying that makes you excited and that you would willingly spend time on for free. This might be a riskier road, with greater levels of uncertainty, but you will be fired up as well as slightly fearful as you travel it.

If I couldn't fail. At the end of this imaginary road is guaranteed success in something. It will be a hard road to travel, and there may be tough times, but it will end in 100% success. In other words, if you knew you couldn't fail at something, what would you choose to do?

Parents, peers. Here, consider what others are expecting of you. You may be surrounded by people with strong opinions all telling you that you have to pursue a certain course or that you're a natural at something. You might or might not agree with them. Make a note of all the things you feel a pressure to pursue.

The 8 year old me. If you'd done this activity at primary school what would you have said you wanted to do in the future? Often, we find that elements of our early passions persist; you might write something down here and suddenly remember a passion that you've forgotten or forced yourself to ignore. Maybe it's time to revisit it, or maybe there are just parts of it that are still relevant today.

Once you've got some ideas scribbled down at the end of each road let these thoughts develop for a few days. Finally, don't feel you need to make a decision yet. Just knowing the possible ways forward puts you in a strong position. and when you travel a road, it doesn't mean you can never return to try another. You can! How does this activity affect or change your thinking?

The Perfect Day

Every primary school child in the country will be able to tell you what they want to be. Why? Because at that age teachers encourage children to express their hopes and dreams in writing activities with titles like, ‘When I grow up...’ Look in your old school books and you will find you’ve done this too.

But no one asks teenagers to write about what they want to be. It’s as if, by this age, we’re embarrassed to have hopes and dreams. We shouldn’t be. Having hopes and dreams is more important at this age than at any other time of life.

So, put your headphones in, get some music on and write without shame. It will be like the old days! Here are some questions to help get you thinking. Your task is to have a go at describing your perfect day at work to help you develop your long-term vision.

• Are you working indoors or outdoors?
• Do you work at home or away from home?
• Who are you with?
• Are you leading a team? Part of a team? Alone?
• When do you start or finish?
• What are you wearing?
• What is your workspace like?

Taken from: The A level Mindset (2016) by Steve Oakes and Martin Griffin, Crown House Publishing