Want to Achieve Your Goals? Here’s the Process That Actually Works
Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash
Do you have big plans, big goals, that somehow, never seem to come to fruition?
They’ve been languishing on your list, or in the back of your brain, for months, maybe even years?
Look, sometimes you have so much to do on the day-to-day, that pulling your head above water to start thinking about life’s bigger ambitions just feels, well, impossible.
But it’s not impossible to make progress on the big stuff, even when you feel entirely bogged down by the little stuff.
It just takes a little bit of intentional (and ruthlessly realistic) planning.
Whether it’s work goals, or personal goals, simply having defined the goal isn’t enough (although it’s a good, and necessary, start!).
You’ve got to make a realistic plan to make it happen.
Let’s take a very straightforward (albeit very ambitious) goal as an example:
Let’s say you want to run a marathon, but you’ve only ever run a 5k.
Are you just going to keep up your normal running schedule and hope for the best?
No, you’re going to come up with a plan that allows you to build strength and stamina over time.
You’re going to break that goal down into milestones, and you’re going to work backward from the race date to determine the pace at which you need to meet these milestones.
Then, you’re going to break it down even further to determine how far and on which days you’re going to run each week until you get to that race date.
That’s a plan, a specific plan, that’s going to greatly increase the likelihood that you’ll achieve your goal (and get those bragging rights!)
And, you can apply this same methodology to any goal.
Most people tend to do goal planning on an annual or quarterly basis.
But it’s not enough to know you have a big looming goal out there 3 months, or even 12 months away.
Once you’ve set your goals, work with them 1 by 1.
Determine the deadline, and then break down the time you have remaining between now and your deadline.
What are the intermittent milestones you need to hit?
Now break that down even further. What do you need to do to reach each of those milestones?
What are the actual actions you’ll need to take, and how much time do you need to set aside for them? Break it down so that there’s no ambiguity and plan for more time than you think you’ll need. Because you’ll probably need it.
And now that you have the outline of a plan, you’ve got to make it real. Add these tasks, along with their next actions, to your task system (and/or your calendar), so that the work can be prioritized in with the rest of your workload.
Pro-tip: If you’re having trouble figuring out when you’d do the work, then you might need to adjust your timeline to make it more realistic, or reduce the number of goals you’re working towards at any one time.
Wanna give it a try?
Take a moment to think of a current goal that you haven’t made as much progress on as you’d like.
Then, work through the steps above.
Tada!
You have a goal, and you have a realistic, specific plan to achieve it.
Now, all you’ve got to do is work the plan. (And be willing to pivot as things change!)
As Saint-Exupery said “A goal without a plan is just a wish”.
