Goal setting has an enviable record as a method for achieving beneficial behavioural change. All too often, however, goal setting ends up in tatters, just like those other inspirational targets - New Year's Resolutions. Of course, our inability to achieve our objectives is rarely caused by a lack of good intentions. No, more commonly the failure to achieve desired objectives results from a failure in execution.

The research and evidence supporting the use of goal setting, and action planning, as a method of achieving our objectives is well established. Assuming motivation is present, it is rarely a lack of desire that prevents us from achieving our goals. The biggest single factor in the failure to achieve our goals is human nature. Put another way, as times goes by, our focus shifts and changes, our goals become less important than they were and we become distracted. Quite simply, goal setting does not work when we put them into a drawer and forget about them. To ensure effective execution, we must plan for our own nature.

We must anticipate the barriers and hurdles to our own success and mediate these concurrent with our other required actions. One of the principle hurdles to our success, as I have previously indicated, is our propensity to file away our goals somewhere and conveniently forget them. Therefore our action planning must anticipate and plan for our tendency to put off and delay required actions and behavioural change. Our actions should provide for the means of regularly reminding us of what we are required to do and why. If we can ensure our goals and action plans remain visible and we continue to hold ourselves accountable, then we can counteract our own excuses and delays to achieve our objectives.