Goal Setting Guide to Achieve Goals
You would have come across dozens of Goal setting guides, if not a hundred. But, most of those would just tell you about setting up goals. Setting goals is the important and first step, but what is the use if you can’t achieve them.
Pardon the cliche, but the new year is the time to feel new energies, build new habits, set goals & achieve dreams.
Goal Setting is everywhere — we all set goals but fails to achieve (including me) most of the time. So, I decided to learn about goal setting and to achieve them. I am going to share a full-fledged action plan to set the goals and the plan to achieve them within time.
First of all, before moving to the process of setting goals, let’s discuss the things that cause distraction and failure in achieving goals.
- Too many Goals: we all in excitement, end up setting too many goals. Too many goals bring chaos and distract the focus.
- Lack of commitment: too many highly ambitious goals make us feel overwhelmed, and we lose commitment.
- Clouded Path: This, I feel, is the main hurdle. Since our path is clouded, how we can reach our destination. By clouded, I mean an undefined path to reach the end goal.
It broke our hearts when we failed to achieve our goals. But, in this guide, I’ll tell you how you can set goals to achieve them at the deadline.
So let’s get started on our journey to realize our goals and achieve dreams.
These are the steps that I choose to set goals to achieve:
- Set the Stage
- Identify Main Goals
- Work Backwards
- Establish Process Goals
- Track & Adjust
Let’s discuss these in details now.
Set the Stage
First of all, you need to set the categories for goals. Identify the area of your life you want to change. Like you can set a goal for Health, one for personal traits, one Goal for your Financials and one for your business. I would advise you to keep 3–4 big audacious goals only to achieve them effectively. Once you master the process, then you may increase the goals.
In every category, you can have only:
- One Main Goal
- One — two medium-term goals
- 2–3 daily goal processes
Identify Main Goals
So now you have chosen the categories to set goals. Now put a specific goal in your chosen categories. It should be clear in words.
Let’s take my example. I choose three main categories to set goals into. First is Health, second is finances, and third is business.
In the health category, I choose to be more fit and lean by 10kg by the end of 2022. (you may laugh over it, but, being all ignorant towards Health to reduce 10kg in a year is quite a goal for me)
In Finances, I want to invest 2 lakh in stocks by the end of 2022.
In the Business category, I want to increase the traffic of my online personalized gifts store — surprisegenie.com up to 20,000 per month by the end of the year.
So that’s how you have to set the goals, and their timeline to achieve can be from a quarter to half-yearly to yearly. Just ensure you have allocated proper time to achieve it. You can’t set goals to reduce 10kg in 10days. Some even achieve that but at the cost of damaging your body. So make sure you set the goals with proper time and with clarity.
Now the remaining steps are essential to achieve them. So let’s look at the remaining steps now.
Work Backwards
We mainly set ambitious goals and look forward to them. But, this is the mistake we all are making. Instead of looking forward to achieving them, we have to build a habit of working backwards. We have to set checkpoints backwards to achieve the set goals.
Let’s take the finance category in which I set up a goal to invest 2lac in stocks by the end of the year. So to achieve this, I can have medium-term goal to have 1 lac within six months and 17000 approx per month. I can break down this to even into weekly targets.
This way, I will have a clear goal and a benchmark to track my goal’s progress.
Establish Process goals
Process Goals means mid-term and daily/weekly or monthly goals you need to set to achieve your Big Audacious Goal successfully.
To get fit and into shape, you can set a target to walk 60000 steps every month. Under process goals, you can break this target into taking 15000 steps every week and at least 2000 steps every day. This way, you can work backwards and should set process goals. You’ll get a clear vision and actionable steps towards achieving your major goal.
Track and Adjust
This step is important as well. You’ll have to keep an eye on your progress by measuring your process goals. Depending on your goals timeline, you can track your progress monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly. You can track monthly goals weekly, yearly goals monthly or quarterly, and five-year goals on a half-year basis.
You should be flexible with your goals depending upon the environment and need. You may change the process goals if required or if environment changes demand it.
All the best for your goals and success.
Comment your goals and I’ll ask you about the result at the end of the year. I will also share my result at the end of the year.
Cheers!