If you were to talk to most successful sports handicappers you would find that, in one form or another, they set goals, and those goals help drive them to success. They might not formally do so, but they have an idea of where they are and where they want to be. If you are looking to be a successful bettor then setting effective goals – and finding ways to reach those goals – is a driving force for your success. The beginning of a new year is the most common time for goal setting, but other times could work as well – the start of the season for your favorite sport, for example. It doesn’t matter when you do it as long as you do it. Here are eight tips to help you set the best goals you can as a sports bettor to give yourself the best chance of not only reaching them but exceeding them:
Evaluate where you were last year – Goals are like a road map to where you want to be down the road. It isn’t a very good map if you don’t know where you are starting from, though. That means that you need to start by looking backwards. Where were you are the beginning of last year as a sports bettor? Where are you now? Did you make money in the last year? What sports did you make it on? Did you have sports that went poorly? Are there types of bets that you are particularly good at? Do you have types of bets that are a big drain on your wallet? The more complete and honest this picture of your position is, the more effective your goals are going to be.
Make goals that are meaningful – The more concrete your betting goals are, the more effective they will be to motivate you. If your goal has little real meaning – like if you said that your goal is to be the world’s best hockey bettor, for example – then it won’t drive you forward. You can’t measure what that means so you can’t tell if you are getting there. Instead, your goals need to be concrete and fully defined. The more concise and clear your goals are as a sports bettor, the more likely you are to reach them.
Make ambitious goals, but reasonable ones – Your goals as a bettor need to force you to stretch and strive in order to reach them, but they are unreasonably ambitious then they won’t be motivating. If you made $10,000 profit last year then it might be reasonably to say that you want to make $15,000 this year, or that you want to increase your bet size from $100 to $200 this year. It wouldn’t be reasonable to say that you want to make $1 million this year. You probably aren’t going to do that unless you are dramatically changing everything you will do, so the goal will either frustrate and discourage you or you will just ignore it.
Write them down – If you only make goals in your mind then you might as well not make them. It is crucial that you write down your sports betting goals – or type them if you are a techie type. If they aren’t written down then you can’t look at them again, and you can easily ignore them. I like to write my goals down and put them somewhere where I can’t avoid them – like write beside my computer monitor.
Factor in some accountability – If you keep your goals entirely to yourself then it is easy to ignore them if things get tough. If you involve other people in them, though, then it is far harder to let them slide. Tell your family, your friends, or your betting buddies what you want to do with your sports betting. Start a blog and post your goals. Make a bet with a friend about who can achieve more of their gaols. Anything you can do to involve more people in your success will help you achieve them.
Revisit your goals during the year – There is no point in just making your goals at the start of the year and then forget about them until the end of the year. Revisit those stats every month or every couple of months. If you have already exceeded a goal or are about to then maybe you’ll want to set a new goal that is more ambitious for that area. If you are nowhere close to reaching a betting goal then you’ll be reminded of that and you can figure out what you need to do to get there.
Think of process, not outcomes – You will have a much better chance of success if you look at process instead of outcomes. That sounds fancy, but it is really simple. An outcome driven goal would be something like – I want to make $50,000 this year betting on football. A process driven goal would be that I want to make 200 good, well reasoned bets this year. The process driven goal is much more in your control, so it is much easier to reach, and much more likely to motivate you.
Break goals down into manageable pieces – If you have a sports betting goal of making 200 bets in a year that can seem intimidating at the beginning of the year when you have made none. It can feel so overwhelming that you will get discouraged. Once you have set that goal, though, by breaking it down into smaller pieces you can make it much easier to achieve your goals. For example, 200 bets in a year is about 4 bets per week. That’s just over one bet every other day. When you break it down like that it doesn’t seem like a big deal at all – you have two days to do your homework to find one good bet. That’s easy, and that’s a sports betting goal you can achieve as a result.
