Just starting is the best thing you can do to move yourself towards accomplishing a goal. But if you struggle on knowing how or where to start, this is for you.
Do you have an idea of where you want to be in life a year from now? Do you have a plan of action to get there? Do you know what you want to accomplish by the end of this day to help you reach your goal?
It’s easy to lack focus, direction, and motivation without setting goals. By setting goals we provide ourselves with benchmarks to measure our productivity toward an objective, which can also provide a great amount of direction in our lives and give us a sense of purpose.
Having and achieving goals is super important, as it’s related to our happiness and self-esteem which effects our well-being, how we see the world, and how we present ourselves in it.
Some of us might be a little lost, haven’t accomplished much, or lack a certain amount of direction in our lives. But the process of striving for our goals can help us grow into better, more productive people.
Contrary to what many people think, you can’t just manifest success by telling yourself “I want this” or “I deserve that” everyday. Not without actually taking the necessary steps to help you progress toward the success you crave.
Setting goals starts with deliberate reflection of what you want to achieve, and ends in all of your effort to see it through. In between are well-defined steps that go beyond the surface of what it is that you want, which can help you work out a plan for success.
Here are some steps you can take to help you set, and absolutely dominate your goals.
1. Decide What You Want
This is almost obvious, but it’s an important first step. You must first determine what you want to achieve.
No matter how big or small of a change you hope to make, you have to know for certain what it is that you want.
Do not be vague here.
- Do you want to lose weight? To be healthier? Do you want to be your own boss? Do you want to be proficient in some sort of sport or self defense discipline?
2. Ask Yourself Why
Equally as important as the what; you have to know why you want to achieve any given goal.
Why does this matter? Why is it so important? You need be honest with yourself here.
While I’d love to sit here and say that any reason to chase a goal is a good one, there can always be reasons that are misguided that might leave you falling short on accomplishing said goal, or feeling unsatisfied when it’s accomplished.
Do you want to own a business so you can see the look on your boss’s face when you finally tell him to ‘shove it’?
Do you want to be wealthy to buy meaningless things to peacock with?
Do you want to learn martial arts to put the guy who keeps taking your parking spot in his place?
I hate to say it, but those probably aren’t the best reasons to chase those dreams.
- “I want to lose weight to be healthier”. “I want to be healthier so I can live a longer life without pain”. “I want to be my own boss to have financial freedom and more time for my family”. “I want to learn self defense to protect my family and myself if the need were ever to arise”.
Those are some good whys if I’ve ever seen some!
Having these first two steps locked down helps ensure that the goal you’ve set is important to yourself.
This means that you’re invested in the outcome, you’ll be more easily motivated to continue working on it, and you’ll find value in achieving the goal you’ve set.
3. Make Your Goals SMART
Making SMART goals is a great way refine, set, and ultimately crush goals.
You can make your goal SMART by giving it these five qualities:
- Make your goal SPECIFIC.
- The goal must be well defined.
- Goals lacking in specificity will leave you without direction.
- Make it easy to get where you want to go by defining exactly where you want to be.
- “I want to lose twenty pounds of body fat”. “I want to totally replace my current source of income.” “I want to reduce my spending in order to save ‘x’ amount”.
- Make your goal MEASURABLE.
- This can include whatever units of measurement necessary to accurately assess progress.
- Set progress benchmarks for your goal throughout time.
- “I can lose twenty pounds in five months by losing just 1 pound a week”. “I can reduce my hours at work by half if I can sell ‘x’ amount of product per month”. “I can reduce spending by 5% a week and save $200 a month”.
- Make your goal ATTAINABLE.
- This is more so about setting realistic goals than applying a framework of sorts. However, you can have a larger, more lofty goal in mind while setting a more reasonable, achievable goal as a milestone.
- You don’t want to set something so outrageous that you have no hope in achieving it, but also not so easy that you don’t gain any satisfaction or value when you do achieve it.
- It’s all about knowing or finding that balance to find something that’s challenging yet realistic.
- “In the five months that I lose twenty pounds, I want to gain twenty pounds of muscle!” (Not gonna happen) “I want to double my current income in the first month of working for myself!” (Yeah, okay chief) “I want to save $2000 every four weeks!” (Have fun not eating).
- “I want to try to retain as much lean mass as possible, maybe even gain a little during this diet!” (Not impossible) “I want to be able to quit my current job for good and replace my income in two years!” (Can do, with the right know-how) “I might be able to save an extra $100 every other week by not eating out, and overshoot my $200/month goal!” (Homemade meals taste better anyways).
- Make your goal RELEVANT.
- This is about setting goals that are consistent with your values and align with what you want out of life.
- You might not set a goal of climbing the corporate ladder for promotions if what you really wanted to do was be your own boss, make a comfortable living, and be able to spend more time with your family while doing so.
- This part is pretty much taken care of in our first two steps (what you want and why), but it’s always a good idea to come back and reassess to make sure your goal is still relevant and keeping you on the path to your desired outcome.
- Make your goal TIME-BOUND.
- This ties in with being measurable (time being a unit of measurement, whodathunk), but you need to set a deadline for your goal.
- This creates a sense of urgency, especially as the deadline approaches.
- This does not mean you can treat it like a high school essay and procrastinate until the last minute (I don’t know anything about that…).
- You can set multiple deadlines for various benchmarks of your goal, helping you achieve your goal in smaller chunks until it’s totally accomplished.
- You’ll know when you can celebrate your success by cementing a goalpost in time, even if you end up moving it later after revising your goal and assessing progress.
4. Write Your Goals Out On Paper
Writing your goals out makes them more real. There’s no reason to forget at that point, so if you don’t accomplish a goal by way of not taking action, you can’t use it as an excuse with yourself. You own it.
More than that, writing your goals down can be a powerful exercise in expressing positivity and determination. When writing your goals down, use assertive, absolute words and avoid vague statements.
Keep your goals written out and posted in places around your household like your workspace, mirror, refrigerator, etc. to give yourself a constant reminder of what you want to accomplish.
- “I will consistently diet to lose a pound a week for twenty weeks”. “I will work to be 100% self employed two years from now”. “I will save at least $2500 a year by reducing my monthly spending by 5%”.
5. Create A Plan of Action
Often overlooked in the course of goal setting, creating an action plan is integral to accomplishing any goal.
Don’t be so focused on the outcome that you fail to plan the steps needed to get you there.
This is especially important if your goal is long-term, or generally demands a lot of your time and attention.
What is an action plan?
It’s a straightforward list of the steps you need to take in order to achieve your goal. A road map to your success.
This can help you think about ways to more efficiently complete a goal, make sure that you don’t miss any key steps, and help you complete those steps in a sensible order.
Think to yourself, what is the very first thing you’ll need to do? Once that’s done, what’s next?
Identify the tasks required to complete your goal, then prioritize them by importance and/or deadlines.
Once you can see you’re plan from beginning to end, you’re ready to get to work – but always remember you may need to reflect and adjust along the way.
6. Stay Consistent
Consistency builds momentum which can build more motivation to tackle your goal every day.
This can help generate a positive feedback loop of more consistency, more momentum, more motivation.
Carve out a specific time to work on this goal.
Write it out in a planner, a digital calendar, whatever you use to schedule your time.
Whether it’s everyday, every other day, or just on the weekends, make it known to yourself and to others that you’ve booked time to get shit done.
But what do you have to do to to generate consistency in the first place?
It’s almost painfully obvious…
7. Just Start
Reading this article isn’t enough.
Telling yourself what you want and why isn’t enough either.
Make your goal SMART, write it out, and start building that action plan – that’s a good start.
By doing this you devote enough time and energy to the goal to make it more real, and you’ll be able evaluate whether or not it’s something you really want to pursue.
If you don’t have time to do the action plan right now, make an appointment with yourself to do it in the near future.
Hell, if you can easily think of the very first thing you’ll have to do to get closer to your goal, and it’s undeniably within your capabilities to complete it – do it.
But always know what the next step is.
Improving yourself or your life doesn’t need to be difficult.
And know that I’m not saying this as the arbiter of life improvement.
I’ve accomplished plenty of personal goals, but there’s plenty more I’ve hoped to accomplish in life at this point.
The fact of the matter is that it’s on me that I’m not where I want to be, and that if I’d apply steps like these to the things that matter I might be a lot better off.
I wrote this article for myself just as much as I wrote it for anyone else that needs it.
So please use these steps as a way to figure out what you want out of life and chip away at becoming the person you want to be.
