Who’s your Goal Buddy?

Motivating ourselves by ourselves can be tough. Having someone to be accountable to may be your key to goal-setting success.

Susan Ward, proprietor of About.com’s Small Business: Canada site, offers a solution: Get a goal buddy: someone to share your objectives with who will also hold your feeet to the fire.

Ward offers three reasons why goal buddies work:
* They provide motivation;
* They force accountability;
* They increase our determination.

“If you don’t have a goal buddy,” writes Ward, “it’s too easy to shelve the goal, saying, ‘I’ll work on this later.’ Having a goal buddy that we talk to regularly encourages us to make regular and steady progress.”

How do you find a Goal Buddy? Ward suggests searching your own social circle first for friends or contacts whose goals and interests are similar to yours. Online special-interest groups such as business forums may also yield helpful partners. They don’t even need to be in the same city!

To get the most from your Goal-Buddy relationship, determine how you will work together.

“Decide on how and when you’re going to regularly communicate,” says Ward. “Will you call or email each other every day? Meet for coffee somewhere once a week? By setting appointments to communicate on a regular basis, you force yourselves to work consistently towards your goals and increase your chances of achieving them.”

Rule 1, of course: Set specific goals and share them.

For more on goal buddies, click here.