Set a learning goal - LinkedIn Learning Tutorial

- [Narrator] So you're motivated to start learning something new, great, but now what? In order to be more effective and efficient at learning, I suggest setting learning goals. One way to do this is by setting SMART goals. Now I don't think that SMART goals work in every situation, but they can be a great way to create objective learning goals. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Sensitive. Let's go ahead and walk through a couple of examples, and then I suggest you take some time to create your own goals. For our first example, let's say that I wanted to take better photographs on our family vacation that was coming up. I could simply state that my learning goal was to take good photos. That goal, however, doesn't provide me with much guidance. For example, what is good? Or how will you know when you've succeeded? Instead, I could change my goal to be a SMART goal. I want to learn to take landscape photography photos before my family vacation to the Cascades. Okay let's go ahead and run this through the SMART goal format. It is specific, because I've been able to identify the learning goal, take landscape photographs. It's measurable, because I'll either know how to take landscape photographs that I'm happy with, or I won't. Depending on when my vacation is, it should be attainable. There are a lot of resources out there to learn things like this. And it's definitely relevant, because the Cascade mountains will provide great scenery that will be nice to capture with photography. Finally, it's time-sensitive, I need to know how to do this before the vacation. For another example, maybe I'm looking at becoming better at Microsoft Excel. I already know the program, but I want to be more of an expert. Well, easy now, that's a big goal, and very vague, what does it even mean? And what will you need to do in order to reach that goal? Here I have an overarching goal of becoming great at Excel, but instead I could break this up into several SMART goals, something that's often needed to accomplish a larger task. My first goal could be to learn PivotTables by the end of the month, by watching the Excel PivotTables In Depth course on LinkedIn Learning. Here I might have the expectation that I complete the course, answer all assessment questions, and to demonstrate my knowledge by utilizing PivotTables to analyze company data. Next I could set another goal regarding another aspect of Excel, and so on. Now if you're using this method, it's important to make sure that all of your smaller goals, if completed, allow you to accomplish the bigger, overall goal. That's important to stay on task and not start wandering off on tangents. With these SMART goals, I'm creating steps that are going to help me focus my learning, and allow me to quickly find the courses and content that will help me to accomplish my goals. After this video, I suggest that you pause the course, and take some time to write a few learning goals of your own, using the SMART goal format. Are they specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-specific? Once you've created some goals, own them, and get busy achieving them.