I didn't set and maintain quality goals when I was in high school - not for my academics, not for my athletics. In fact, I have now been setting goals for many years but didn't develop my own system for writing and tracking my goals until about 2 years ago...and I needed help creating my goal setting system. I listen to a lot of podcasts and have taken pieces from a few sources in particular while creating this process.  Both of these resources are excellent and worth a listen:
1. Coaching for Leaders: Podcast 180 "Do this for a productive week" hosted by Dave Stachowiak
http://coachingforleaders.com/podcast/180/
2. This is Your Life: Podcasts from Nov. 28th & Dec. 5th, 2016 hosted by Megan & Michael Hyatt
https://michaelhyatt.com/thisisyourlife

After listening to This is Your Life with Michael Hyatt on December 5th, I couldn't help but reflect on the process I have set up for setting and tracking my goals. I took his "Top 10 Mistakes Derailing Your Goals" and applied them to baseball-specific goal setting as well as provided some of the tools that I use with the student-athletes in our National Sport Academy Baseball Program.

Goal Setting Mistake #1 - Setting Only Baseball Goals
Players often set goals because it is a team exercise and that means that all of the goals focus on baseball. What about academics? What about family goals or goals for other relationships? As Michael Hyatt notes on his podcast, all parts of our lives are interrelated and one area of our life will always effect the others. Think of the last time you couldn't go to practice because you had school work to catch up on or when your parents made you skip a game because report cards came out and they were less than impressed.
Before setting goals, try to clarify your priorities so you know what areas are most important in your life right now and set goals in all those areas. In the NSA Baseball Program we use an assignment called "Looking at the Big Rocks" to help student-athletes through this process.

Goal Setting Mistake #2 - Creating too Many Goals
Your list of goals should not be a bucket list of everything you want to accomplish in your baseball career. This can create confusion around what is really important and what your next step should be. Hyatt suggests 7 to 10 goals to address the major areas of your life, but any more and they will start competing for your attention and nothing will get done. In addition, it is best to focus on 2-3 goals during each part of the year. For your baseball goals, this will mean you will focus on 1-2 items during the early off-season. After achieving those goals move on to a new focus for the late off-season and have another focus (or two) for spring training, the summer season, and fall ball.

Goal Setting Mistake #3 - Goal is Not in Writing
Most people who set goals know that they should write their goals down, but it is amazing how many people skip right over this step. Writing your goals in black and white is critical because:
1. Goals need to be reviewed regularly and writing them out makes the review process easier.
2. Your goals should be in a highly visible place as a reminder of where you are going. Visible in your mind's eye doesn't count...they need to be visible to your eyes and this means they need to be on paper. 
3. Writing goals down makes them more real. Everyone has dreams that they think about and talk about, but when you write a dream down it starts to become a goal.
4. There is a process you go through when goals are written. This process requires additional thought and clarity as you take a dream and put it on paper. Your dream becomes more specific in written form, you think about how you will measure it, and the dream becomes a goal.
The bottom line is that if your goals are not written, you will never come back to them. As part of our goal setting process at the start of every school year, our NSA Baseball Student Athletes use this worksheet to take their goals and refine them: GOAL REFINEMENT WORKSHEET

Goal Setting Mistake #4 - Goal is Not Specific
Specificity in goal setting is critical for determining your action steps (see Mistake #9 in part 2 of this post). You need to know exactly what you want to achieve before you can determine how you are going to get there. 
"I want to be a better hitter". What part of your offensive game do you want to improve? Ability to make contact? Power? Hitting with 2-strikes? Hitting off-speed pitches? Plate discipline? Your action steps will be very different if you want to improve your power compared to a player that is trying to improve plate discipline.
"I want to lower my ERA". Think about what area of pitching will most impact the number of runs you give up. Does your change-up need to be better? Do you need to throw your breaking ball more consistently for strikes? Do you need to work on holding runners? There are dozens of areas that could reduce the number of runs you give up and increasing specificity will force you to think about the areas where you are strong and the areas that need work.

Goal Setting Mistake #5 - The Goal is not Measurable
You need to have a way of measuring your progress toward a goal as well as know when you have reached your goal. Be very careful of which metrics you choose for your baseball goals . I warn all of my players to give a lot of thought to how they will measure their goals and steer players away from setting goals based on batting average or opponents' average. There are far too many variables that are outside of a players control when determining batting average. A hitter might do everything right, hit the ball hard 4 times, and go 0-for-4 that day because he hit the ball right at a defender each at bat. It is best to measure a goal with a metric that a player as complete control over.  This concept led me to the development of the Quality AB Tracker which I encourage players to use as a metric in place of batting average.
Players should note that it is normal to feel some anxiety towards putting a metric on your goals.  As Hyatt explains, specificity and measurability scares people because more detailed goals lead people to think they can't achieve them. In addition, when you have a way to measure your goals the goal setter and others will know when you have fallen short of your goal.  Ambiguity provides somewhat of a safety net for people's pride, but the goals are less concrete. Having a specific way to measure your goals will you allow you to see progress and provide you with motivation along the way.  It will also ensure that you know when you get to the finish line so you can pat yourself on the back and move on to your next goal.

An article on GlobalNews.ca cites a recent poll that found less than a third of Canadians will make New Year's resolutions. This was surprising to me because I thought the number would be MUCH higher.  
The article goes on to say that 73% of those who make resolutions will eventually break them.  Unfortunately, this is NOT surprising at all. My hope is that more Canadians are setting strong goals rather than weak resolutions and that is the reason less than 3 in 10 Canadians are on the resolution bandwagon.  

"A goal without a plan is just a wish"

...and it could be said that "A resolution without a plan is just a wish" and hence the reason 2/3 of resolutions are abandoned.  

In December Michael Hyatt discussed the "Top 10 Mistakes Derailing Your Goals" on his podcast. What makes a resolution a goal is the way it is writted and the plan that goes with it.  I took Hyatt's ideas and applied them to baseball-specific goal setting as well as provided some of the tools that I use with the student-athletes in our National Sport Academy Baseball Program.  We started with 5 mistakes last week and if you missed part 1 of this two-part series, start here.

Goal Setting Mistake #6 - There is no Deadline
Hyatt believes that people are scared to set a deadline because it creates a time when they can be judged as successful or not. This can create some anxiety, but deadlines are critical for creating urgency and forcing you to start. Sometimes just getting going proves to be the toughest part! Putting a date stamp on your goals can also allow you to spread the deadlines out so you can focus in certain areas for a defined amount of time.  Our off-season here in Canada can be long and players feel like they have a lot of time to make adjustments through the winter.  Without some deadlines, spring training arrives before they know it!

Goal Setting Mistake #7 - It is too Comfortable
Hyatt describes three zones that goals fall into:
ZONE 1 - comfort zone
Goals are not compelling enough and often you don't need to focus intently to reach these goals. The goals are set at a level where you don't have to be imaginative to achieve them.
ZONE 2 - discomfort zone
This is where awesome stuff happens! You may feel some fear, uncertainty, doubt, but that is a good thing. Hyatt urges people to reframe these emotions as positive indicators telling you that your goal is in the sweet spot that will challenge you. Greater investment usually means greater perserverance.
ZONE 3 - dillusional zone
This is when a goal that is so far away that you don't have a connection to it. It is unrealistic and can become more of a crutch than a motivator.
Goals should be set in the discomfort zone to be most effective.
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Goal Setting Mistake #8 - The Goal Doesn't MOVE You
Your goals need to be compelling and you need to have absolute clarity around why the goal is important.  How will your life change if you achieve this goal?  The goal needs to connect with YOU...not your coach, not your parents.
I love the quote from Michael Hyatt's wife, Gail: "You lose your way when you lose your why".

Goal Setting Mistake #9 - There are no Action Steps
After you have a compelling goal, you need to list the NEXT ACTION that will move you closer to reaching that goal.  The next action should be in the comfort zone. The action should be SO SIMPLE that it is difficult not to get!  When players (usually with the help of their coaches) create huge, complex plans they rarely get to the next most immediate action and the overwhelming complexity becomes a way to procrastinate.
At each of our training sessions we have players write their next action step on a white board.  This serves a couple purposes:
1. Players need to review the practice plan and give some thought to what goal they can attack that day. 
2. Players then look at what their next action step is to get closer to that goal and go through the process of writing it down.
3. All teammates and coaches can see, in a quick glance, what every player is focused on improving that day. This allows each player to have some understanding of what their partner is working on that day as I feed them front toss, play catch with them, or work with them defensively.
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Goal Setting Mistake #10 - There is no Review Process
All too often players set their goals and forget about them. Their list of goals sit in a binder or desk drawer never to be seen again. Players need a system to come back to your goals in regular intervals.  With the NSA Baseball Program we have the following check points for our goal setting:
1st week of September - review the summer, and set goals for the school year
1st week of January - review all goals as we finish term 1 and head into the New Year
2nd week of April - review all goals as we prepare to move outdoors
1st week of July - review all goals as players head into playoffs
We encourage our players to keep their goals visible by hanging them on the wall or taping them to the mirror in their bathroom where they will see them every morning.

What other mistakes have derailed your goals in the past?  What tools do you use to keep yourself on track?

Mark Barden is the author of A Beautiful Constraint which is described as "a practical handbook for everyday inventiveness...that calls for constraint-driven problem-solving."  When you consider that Calgary weather forces us to train indoors for more than 6 months of the year, our off-season programs are constantly working through constraints.  These constraints are often viewed as limitations, but when we are forced to operate within certain restrictions we often struggle through a process that leads us to a better end product.  
The best example of this would be in the area of developing arm strength. There are no areas where we have 200 linear feet to throw our long toss, so we have been forced to adapt and develop throwing programs that work in our space and are sufficiently challenging enough for our players to grow.  Besides giving our pitchers a much needed break from competitive innings on the mound, one of the huge advantages that has come from our space constraint is our consistent throwing into a screen through the off-season. I strongly believe that throwing into a screen, and not to a partner, has led to faster arm speeds.  We still ask players to throw to a spot on the screen in order to repeat their arm action, but because we are not trying to throw to a specific target it allows players to think about 2 things:

1. Maximizing Arm Speed - no fear of missing a target means players can "let it fly"
2. Making Mechanical Adjustments - throws into a screen allow players to detach themselves from the results and focus more on the how the ball feels coming out of their hand. 

There is no denying that to pitch or to play effective defence you need players to be able to throw to a target, but during the off-season our priority is developing healthy, strong arms.  As we move closer to the season we begin to refocus the players newly developed arm strength towards a specific target, but until that point they have an opportunity to throw their long toss without inhibition.  When we are outside I see players dial back their arm speed just so they don't over-throw their partner, but this is never an issue indoors.

Finally, as coaches we have the ability to focus players on improving the strength and efficiency of their throwing footwork in various on-field situations. One part of our throwing program includes a "position-specific" segment where players can choose the game situation they want to throw from.  I encourage players to work on throws they don't normally have the chance to practice.  For example:
Infielders
1. Off a bobbled ball where you pick it up barehanded
2. Flat on the ground after diving for a ball
Outfielders
1. Off a fly ball (OF's typically work throwing off ground balls far more than fly balls)
2. After an outside turn where the ball is fielded on the run on the glove side
Catchers
1. After blocking a ball
2. Back picks to 1st & 3rd

In the end, we are focused on making sure our players don't get stuck in the "victim mentality" ... and coaches shouldn't either.  Get creative and don't attribute limited progress to uncontrollable factors like the weather.

How do you modify your throwing programs to develop arm strength indoors?  What tools do you use?