It’s a new year and for many of you it’s also the start of a new APA session!  This may have you thinking about New Year’s resolutions or improvements to make to your pool game. Setting goals are important in all aspects of your life, but what is even more important is understanding how to reach those goals.

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 There are a few key things to keep in mind when pursuing any pool-related goals.  Some of these may seem completely obvious, but you’d be surprised how often they’re overlooked.

Clearly Define Your Goal

Players often write me asking how to get out of a slump or improve. My most immediate thoughts when this happens are, “What type of slump?” or “Improve how?”  When you say that you want to become a better player what do you really mean? Do you want to be a better shot maker? Have better mechanics? Gain better understanding of strategy? Or do you just want to win more often? When setting a goal, you need to define exactly what you’re trying to achieve and by what date. Otherwise, how will you know if you actually reached that goal? A few years ago I set a goal to qualify for a certain tournament level by a certain time. Perhaps your goal will be different—maybe you want to improve to a certain skill level by a specific time, or qualify for a top gun tournament. Whatever your goal is, it needs to be more specific than, “I want to improve.”

Put it in Writing

This may sound a little silly but research shows that you’re more likely to commit to a goal if it’s written down. Putting it on paper makes it more “real.” You’re less likely to change your mind about the goal or put it off until later. Many people even find it beneficial to keep the written goal visible on a regular basis.  

Have a Plan

This is perhaps the most important part of reaching your goal. Many people know where they want to go but may not have the first clue about how to get there. Or maybe you just never really thought about what it’ll take to reach your goal. Let’s say, for example, your goal is to improve one skill level over the next year. To reach that goal, you may think about what’s keeping you from moving up. Maybe you’re stuck in your skill level because you’re not as consistent as you’d like to be—part of reaching your goal should be to re-evaluate your mechanics. Fixing problems in your stroke and stance can increase your consistency enormously. You can’t just decide to get better and not have a clear plan of what specific things you need to change.

Additionally, once you identify what you need to improve on in order to reach your goal, you must identify how you’ll work on that. Some things are easy to address yourself, and others will require you to obtain knowledge or advice from another person who is better than you in that particular area.

Set Tangible Milestones

This goes hand-in-hand with having a plan. When you develop a plan for your goal, you should set milestones to strive for along the way. This will help you measure how effective you are at reaching your goal. These milestones will also help you not become overwhelmed on your path.  When you have that sense of accomplishment from meeting those milestones, it helps to keep motivated on your overall goal without feeling like it’s completely out of your reach.

Keep it to Yourself

Some people may disagree with this one but I always advise that you keep your goal as something that is just yours. While some might like to share their goal and talk about their goal, I think this only opens you up to change your feelings about your goal. Once you start talking about your goal, you’ll undoubtedly receive feedback from others which could be positive and negative. Obviously the negative feedback can be discouraging, but even the positive feedback may change your feeling about your goal.  A goal should be personal commitment to you. You don’t want to let what others think about your goal influence your own thoughts about it.