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Goal

3 Things to do to Make Sure You Achieve Your Goals This Year

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Achieve Your Goals

Have you been following the goals you set out for yourself this year? Have you taken a glance lately at where you are in the process?  
It is still not too late to have a think through and make changes, if necessary, so at the end of the year you may see more positive outcomes and you will achieve your goals.  

 

Break down your goals into small steps 

First and foremost, you can break down the goals into steps. This way, you can move steadily, step by step, towards accomplishing your goal. Every time you achieve a milestone, you have a chance to stop and review whether or not you go in the right direction.  
At such times you may also reach out for help, or re-arrange your priorities and implement changes in light of your goals. I highly recommend you to download an app to your phone to help you keep track of your goals wherever you are. Set notifications, so you won’t even have an excuse to avoid working towards your goals. 

 

Make a note of your goals 

Another way to maintain your perseverance is by writing down your goals on a daily basis. I will be the first to admit that for many years I thought this was a pointless activity. I thought it was simply a waste of my time.  

Then results didn’t come as expected and  I wasn’t even sure what my original goals were months ago…. I was way over my head. And that is when I decided to change and take a note of my goals.  

Since then, I write down my goals every single day with the steps needed to implement them. Every word I put on the paper, I thoroughly think through and envision the results I want to see. I know and can see, based on the results, that devoted and consistent efforts are key. Self-discipline is also essential.  

We need to be consistent in our endeveours every single day to achieve our goals. 

 

Maintain your dedication 

How are your eagerness and dedication?  
Hmm, yes, I know, people often look past these traits at this time of year. In the beginning of the year, we are full of enthusiasm. New year new goals.  

Then the dull weekdays creep in and as months go by your keenness to make efforts decreases significantly, unless you consciously pay attention to it.  
The decision is in your hands. You can still change the curve of your progress, or keep things as they were before. Are YOU the driver of your car or are you a passenger allowing someone else to drive your car? You have got to decide.  

It is vital that you take your life in your hands. If you do not take responsibility, someone else will do it for you.           

                                                                                                                                      

And what is the benefit?  

You take control of your goals. You become unstoppable and achieve your goals and everything you set your mind to. Your confidence and self-esteem keep growing day by day. You become more perseverant when facing difficulties. You focus better, become more result-oriented and move forward faster; like a river. You effortlessly overcome obstacles in your way and create the life you have always wanted for yourself.

Bonus Tip: We have an article dedicated to How to track your goals. Have a look at it.

Photo by Julian Santa Ana on Unsplash

Tips How to Track Your Goals

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Tips How to Track Your Goals

Why isn’t the title say: Tips How to Track Your Progress? Because making progress doesn’t necessarily mean you are going in the right direction.

We all make progress in our lives and knowing what progress we make definitely helps. Although without knowing how such progress adds to the success, the progress is no more than a step forward. We don’t know how big the step is or if we, in fact, walk on the yellow brick road.

But by tracking your progress, you do more than most people do. The question is whether it is enough to achieve high performance and the level of success you are happy with. And there is another question. If tracking your progress itself is not sufficient, then what is?

 

Tracking a goal, assuming the tracking method is fit-for-purpose, will give you sufficient information on both your progress and the added value of your efforts to your success.

 

But what method can you use to track your goals?

You are not tracking the goal itself; you are tracking your progress toward the goal, you are tracking how close you are achieving the goal in time and quality. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

Naturally, you can choose methods to track your progress against a goal if you sufficiently specified the goal. Which means your goal needs to be specific enough for you to be able to measure your progress against it. What then means, your goal has to include specific details about it. E.g., a deadline, or a certain % of the progress you would like to achieve.

E.g. My goal could be: ‘I would like to read two books every month this year.’

  • The goal in this example specifies what I would like to achieve and in what time frame. What I would like to achieve is to learn from two books and I do that in a month.
  • It also tells me how I will achieve it. I achieve the learning by reading.
  • Moreover, it tells me that unless I read two books (100% of the book) a month, I am going to stay behind my goal.

You can define for yourself the progress you have to make each month, or a week, or even a day to achieve your goal. In the example before I did just that.
And sometimes achieving such progress is not going to be linear; or you have to do different things each time to get where you want to be.

 

All in all, if you have a long-term goal, breaking it down to smaller pieces will help you better understand how you meet it and will reduce the risk of not achieving it, too.
Additionally, it will also help you revise your strategy, if needed, along the way.

 

But some people say that setting goals is meaningless anyway, so why do I bother tracking them?

This is a question I received many times this year. I realised there were articles out there with titles suggesting goal setting had no added value, even though the articles mostly included the benefits of goal-setting in various ways. So, here is my answer.

  • Setting goals just for the sake of it is meaningless.
  • Setting a goal that does not resonate with your life strategy and plan, doesn’t matter how SMART your goal is, is also meaningless.
  • Without setting goals though, even if you have a clear view of your life strategy or your priorities for the next three to five years, you will struggle.

Because goals are basically milestones. At least they should be. They are the lights at both sides of the path you walk on in the park. And I am not suggesting life is a walk in the park. I am suggesting life is a journey.

Imagine you are travelling by ship. A beautiful large ship with all the facilities and programmes to make your journey exciting and joyful.

  • How would this ship make a long and successful journey without knowing where the harbours are and where it needs to stop for supplies?
  • What is the way to enjoy the journey without knowing you are safe, and the staff knows exactly what to do and when to make your journey pleasant?
  • How would the staff know what to do and when without planning?
  • And how would the staff be able to plan without goals?

But tracking your progress against a goal is not just about knowing what you want to achieve. The goal or in that case the milestone is an outcome; and what takes you to the result is action. During your journey, you want to know what you need to do to get the desired result.
Once you know what you want to do, your goal essentially

  • you need to know how success looks like, and
  • how you can measure the success, and
  • what is the shortest time period which is reasonable to measure for progress.

And that answers an important question. Should you track your progress daily, or weekly or monthly, maybe quarterly? It all depends on your goals and on your discipline.

 

And what tools can you use to measure your progress?

This is an interesting question, because there are many good tools out there.

Nowadays there is an app for everything.

  • If you want a few clicks and nothing more a day because you are extremely busy, you can do that.
  • If you trust detailed information, you can use a spreadsheet or a project or task management app.
  • You are not good with written words, just use a voice recorder or a transcriber app.

I suggest you don’t waste time on finding the perfect tracking tool first. Find one that is good enough and perfect your tracking method. Once you are satisfied with the way how you track your goals and performance, you will find the perfect tracking tool, too.

If there are useful tools that you can utilize why some people never reach their goals? You can find the answer in the article we published Why don’t people reach their goals?

Why don’t people reach their goals?

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wachieving our dreams_ cover image for why don't people reach their goals

One of the strongest desire we, human beings have is achieving our goals and dreams.  Well, sometimes we make all the efforts to achieve our parents’ or partners’ dreams, but if we want to be conscious about our life, we work on achieving our own dreams.

And what is a better way of achieving a dream than seeing it clearly in the mind and articulating it as a goal? Once we have our goals set, we are done, aren’t we?

Perhaps it is surprising but even though goal setting is a popular topic, various studies show that achieving goals is not a success story for all. Naturally, the number of people who achieve their goals is different in each study, but a recurring theme is that many of us abandon the goals within four weeks.

In the meantime, we hear stories of success almost every day and examples of high performers fill the pages of online and offline magazines. We all love to hear the success stories.

And we all would like to live the dream, the success story. But few of us do. What could be the reason?

As a starting point, we can talk about goal-setting. I know it is May already; we have almost reached the end of Q2. We shouldn’t talk about setting goals, right? Setting goals is part of the new year’s resolution.

Just stay with me. The way how you set your goals has a high impact on your success of achieving them.

Many like to set same or similar goals others set for themselves just to follow the “good” example. But will the same thing work well for everyone?
Others like to go for super ambitious goals just to lose the steam after hitting a barrier once or twice.
Not to mention those, who think about the first couple of steps but don’t take the time to see the challenges, the required change in context.

These are just a few examples. What we can learn from these is if we would like to see the results, we need to see where we are going and what path is going to take us there will help achieving our goals.

Think about it. It is May already. If we still didn’t achieve our goals or made visible progress, we’ll lose nothing by reviewing your goals.

Regardless of the progress they make, high performers take a look at their goals multiple times a year. This is part of their success formula.

What is the advice here?

  • Plan your six months or the year or two years with the end in mind. Think about the most important things that must happen for you to achieve your goal.
  • Think about your life and see what fits in there. You can go for ambitious goals and achieve them, if you can allocate the time and resources needed. If you cannot do that, you will struggle and eventually abandon the goal.

That links to a tricky part of goal achievement and success. Maintaining motivation so you stick with your goals.

We often use the expression losing motivation. Truth to be told, one cannot lose motivation. Although we can lose focus; or just to link back to the first aspect, goal setting, we can set unrealistic or uninteresting goals.

Let’s talk a bit more about motivation. What is motivation? What is the source of motivation? Is it within us or does it come from the environment?

Motivation is a combination of reasons why we act or behave in a certain way and a certain level of energy directed toward achieving our goals.
We may feel motivated because of an internal desire or because of external influences. Such external influence may be a reward. A reward can be material, or a recognition of our results voiced to us or shared in front of others.

When we abandon a goal, we no longer believe that achieving our goals is worth the effort. Either because we believe something else will bring about better results, or we experience problems in putting in the required effort.

So, you see. One cannot lose motivation. The motivation is there, but it is most likely redirected.

What can we learn from this?

  • Listen to the signs of your body and mind to recognise when you are about to re-prioritise. You may revise your goals intentionally, but sometimes our instant desires are stronger than us. High performers understand delayed gratification and to maintain high performance and repeated results, you need to be patient.
  • Be conscious of how you allocate your time and energy.
  • You may have more goals on your list all the time but that doesn’t mean you have to multitask. Be clear on what you need to do within a specified time period and maintain your focus. Once you are done and progressed with one topic or task as desired move to another task.
  • If you are stuck with a specific task, park it. Get on another task, so you don’t waste time. This practice will help you not only with improving your efficiency but your creativity and problem-solving, too.

Of course, success and high-performance are more complex and both depend on more than just goal-setting and motivation; and both goal-setting and motivation can be improved in many ways.

Photo from Unsplash