Setting goals is an opportunity to achieve exciting career or personal milestones, like getting a promotion or saving for a trip to Paris. However, many people struggle with goal setting, often citing difficulties in creating meaningful goals or disliking the process. For those who find traditional goal-setting challenging, AI-powered tools like chatbots and apps can help by making goal setting practical and unique to you.
AI Is An Excellent Active Listener Traditional goal-setting can feel static, often resulting in a sticky note on the bathroom mirror. In contrast, generative AI is interactive. It asks questions, rephrases ideas, and suggests new concepts based on input, mirroring the way humans engage in active listening. AI is also fast, responding in real time, making it an ideal brainstorming partner.
AI is also highly customizable. Because it tailors recommendations to your inputs, it offers personalized plans for your goals based on your habits and preferences (while avoiding sensitive data). AI can also help you set SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound – making tracking progress easier and increasing your chances of success.
How To Write Your Goal-Setting Prompt With AI If you’re ready to try using generative AI tools for your goals, start by crafting a clear, thoughtful prompt. Here are some prompting best practices to get you started:
- Tell AI about yourself: You don’t need to share your life’s story, but tell AI some goals you might like to achieve, your strengths and weaknesses, and what you’d like help with. This context helps AI customize its ideas specifically to you.
- Example Prompt: “Please help me create a goal. Here is information about me that you can use to suggest helpful goals [insert your strengths, challenges, hopes, goals, etc.]…”
- Define your focus areas: After introducing yourself, ask AI to suggest a list of five to ten goals. If you only want ones related to fitness or work, then say that. If you’re open to other ideas, you can ask AI to think outside the box when coming up with suggestions.
- Example Prompt: “With the information I gave you, please suggest a list of goals I may find useful relating to fitness and my career.”
- Review and refine AI suggestions: You can provide more information to AI and get different responses or ask it to change the wording or goal to match your needs.
- Example Prompt: “Can you rewrite X goal to be met within six months?” Or, “Can you adapt this goal to focus on small business owners?”
- Create SMART goals: Once you know your goal(s), ask AI to create SMART goals to help you meet them!
- Example Prompt: “Please suggest SMART goals to help me achieve my goal.”
- Track progress: Once you have your goal, you can even use AI-driven apps or features (like reminders in productivity apps) to stay accountable. Regular tracking helps you stick to your goals and makes progress visible, even with a simple check-in.
If you’ve never had success with goal setting or you want to shake things up, let AI help you create some of your best goals yet!