Forging A Path To Your Goals

After reading the title you're probably already thinking, here we go again, another write up on goal setting. The reality is setting goals and setting them properly will increase your chances of success drastically. The problem is most people aren't setting their goals properly and putting in the level of detail required. 

If you are serious about wanting to achieve goals then read on, if not thanks for coming and go back to what you were doing. 

For those of you are serious, let's get into it.

The first thing you need to clearly define is what your actual goal is. Don't make it small either, make it something that will get you excited, something that will propel you out of bed in the morning. Yes it must be realistic, yes it must be measurable and it must be achievable in the time frame, but do not make it boring or small or your goal will die a quick death.

Now you have your goal you have a point to work back from, a vision that you are working towards. Before you define the steps and tasks required to get here we need to take a look at why it is important to you. What is the method to all of this madness, what is it about this goal that makes you want to chase it, why does it mean so much to you, what are the impacts it is going to have on your life, what is your why? 

In the past, when creating my why I have only written out the positives of achieving my goals. I see it as something to pull me forward, something to fight towards. Now I want to add in a push from behind for you, what happens if you don't achieve this goal? What are negative impacts on you, your legacy or your family? 

You now have your goal, you can see it so clearly. You now have you why, your pull from the front and push from behind. This is as far as most will usually go, but you don't want what most have so don't stop here, you need to go deeper.

If you want what others don't have, you have to do what others won't do to get it.

We now need to set a timeline for you goal and what must be achieved daily, weekly, monthly, yearly to get there. Starting at the micro and working towards the macro make a list of what you need to do today to achieve your goals, if an action step is required stop right now and go and do it, don't think about it, just do it. 

Work through what you need to do daily, weekly, monthly and yearly to achieve this goal you have set. What are some key tasks you have to complete? By what date MUST they be done? Using a calendar, what is the exact date it must be done by? This is how accurate you have to be. Yes of course things change, but when you are this accurate you put yourself in a position to make the adjustments needed to stay on track.

To track my goals I use Evernote on my laptop, because I am indoctrinated I like all of my notes co-located, easily referenced and also because you can put sweet little tick boxes next to tasks, when you complete them ticking that box feels good! I recommend you use something similar to track your tasks. 

You have now come a long way. Your goal is crystal clear, you completely understand your reasons why and you have a clear path of how to get there. This is more than most will ever do, your chances of success have just got that much higher.

All the work you have just done should be a living document, you should be checking it daily to make sure you are doing all of things required to get there. If anything chances, no doubt it will, you need to update this document to reflect the deviation in your plan. 

Most people will either not set goals or they will wait until 1st January 2019 to make a mediocre attempt at setting some goals for the year. You are no longer one of them, you are one of us. 

Forward.