Goal Types

Within Goalify Professional you have four different goal types that you can use to create a goal. What type fits best does depend on the actual goal to be created. We'll give you plenty of examples so you'll be familiar with the different types in no time.

The Target Amount Type

The target amount goal type is our most flexible goal type, and it's perfect for a wide range of applications. It is best to use a target amount goal whenever you need to have a specific numerical target, or if you want to record what you get done in partials steps. With this goal type, you can even provide a detailed training plan with specific targets.

Enough theory - here are some examples of when to use the target amount goal type:

Business Goal

Assume you want to see your sales manager make ten cold calls to possible leads. You would create a weekly goal like calling 10 leads. Whenever the sales manager makes a call, he or she records it. By the end of each week, he or she must have recorded ten calls to have reached the goal.

Since each call is recorded as progress, you will have a very good and up-to-date understanding of how and when your sales manager is working on the call target. Using the activity distribution chart you can quickly identify when the work is usually done. Does the sales manager distribute calls evenly throughout the week, or does he or she usually wait until Friday afternoon?

Since the individual target of a target amount goal can change over time, you can adjust the number of calls according to your individual assessment of each sales manager. A new sales manager might start out with fewer calls, while gradually seeing the target increase according to his or her growing experience.

Health Goal

We think the flexibility of target amount goals is awesome, and there's just so much you can do with it that will help you to help your clients or patients. Imagine you are a physical therapist and you have a set of daily exercises you want to assign to your client to practice at home.

You create a target amount goal for each individual exercise with individual targets, and you set the repetitions your client should complete each day. With a target amount goal, the following setup can be achieved within moments:

• Monday - 5 repetitions
• Tuesday - 10 repetitions
• Wednesday - rest day - no repetitions
• Thursday - 10 repetitions
• Friday - 10 repetitions
• Saturday - 5 repetitions
• Sunday - rest day - no repetitions

This specific setup will repeat for three consecutive weeks, and beginning week four you will change the targets according to feedback from the person you're working with. As for the instructions, you link an already existing document sequence describing the correct execution in detail along with a few pictures showing the key positions of the exercise.

The Task Type

Our task goal is best compared to a regular to-do list entry that automatically repeats on a daily, weekly or monthly basis (i.e. depending on the period you set). Each task goal is marked incomplete until your client marks it complete. Since the task goal needs the least amount of interaction, you should use it whenever possible. Task goals are perfect in these situations:

• You can't put a specific number on an objective
• You would only create a target amount goal with a target of one
• You don't need to record sub-steps

While you can't set individual targets, you can still define when your client should be working on this specific goal. It is very easy to set up a target goal that is only active on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but not on the other days of the week.

Here are some practical task goal examples:

Health Goal

As a health professional, you are well aware that many patients do not take their medications as prescribed, or maybe they only do it for a little while. With Goalify Professional, you can help your patients to stick to your recommendations. Our automated Goalify coaching will help your clients remember without having to set up any reminders themselves.

Business Goal

As the team leader, you want to set up specific prompts to move the people on your team in the desired direction. This might include simple to-dos like keeping time sheets up to date on a daily basis, writing a weekly report, taking an online class of their choosing, having key customers be contacted on a regular basis or fostering team communication with monthly one-on-ones.

The Avoid Type

Whenever you want your clients to avoid a bad habit altogether, this is the right type of goal. It works in a similar way to a task goal, though in this case you can set an objective that your clients are instructed to NOT do. Clients can thus either succeed with an avoid goal or fail. Your clients can record both a failure and a success, allowing our automated coaching to help overcome hard times even better and come out successful in the end. Here's when to use the avoid goal:

• You want your client to avoid something altogether
• You can't put a specific number on an objective

While you can't set individual targets, you can still define when your client should be working on this specific goal. It is very easy to set up an avoid goal that is only active on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but not on the other days of the week.

Health Goal

Bad dietary habits are the cause of many modern diseases. As a health professional, you can achieve tremendous results when you get your clients to start shifting away from those negative habits. With the help of avoid goals, you can help your patients to stick to a nutritional plan more easily.

Setting up a goal to help avoid eating sweets on weekdays with some specific cheat days on weekends is very easy and can be done in a minute or so. Moreover, because our Goalify mobile app features a streak analysis, it is even easier for your clients to become more self-aware and establish a sense of success and pride.

Business Goal

Companies that are already successfully implementing Goalify to foster positive change in their workforce use the avoid goal to improve not only specific business-related changes but also more general changes, for example to improve fitness and health.

We have seen the avoid goal being used to implement a weekly avoid the elevator goal, a monthly smoke-free day or vegetarian eating day. Some of these goals have been combined with our challenge feature to further improve team awareness.

The Limit Type

By now you have probably read all about the target amount and the avoid goal types. That's perfect, because the limit goal is like a combination of the two. It is best used whenever you want your clients to moderate or phase out a bad habit, without having to avoid it all together. With the limit goal you can set an upper limit, but in contrast to the target amount goal, the limit goal is about making as few entries as possible within a set timeframe (e.g. eating something unhealthy). When your client stays within the set limit, he or she moves closer to reaching 100% by the end of the day, week or month.

It might sound a little complicated, but it's really not.

Imagine that you would like your client to give up smoking. In the first step, you would aim for getting by with fewer cigarettes. You could set an upper limit of five cigarettes a day. Every cigarette smoked is recorded in Goalify. As long as your client does not smoke more than five cigarettes during the day, everything is good and he or she will have reached the goal by the end of the day. If the client were to have already smoked their sixth cigarette by noon, then they would only have a 50% rate of success.

Just as with target amount goals, you can set specific limits for each day/week/month. You can even set a limit of zero for certain periods, making this a very effective tool to help clients to phase out or avoid a bad habit altogether.