Goals aren’t enough, you also need a plan!
You’ve reflected on the past year and where you’d like to be a year from now. You’ve set goals that will likely take you from here to there. (See the previous 2 posts)
This is where most people loose their way. They neglect to plan.
It’s so easy to loose sight of our goals and let them fall through the cracks unless we plan the implementation of our goals.
Back to our dream vacation: you can decide to take your dream vacation but you need to plan the budget, itinerary, travel, accommodations, activities, etc. Many of these items need to be accomplished at certain times and often long before the actual vacation. Fail to do any one or two of these tasks and the whole vacation could come crashing down. Goals are only as good as the plans to implement them.
Don't tackle everything at once
A reasonable change to my schedule, my diet, my exercise, my work habits, my hobbies, my budget, relationships with kids, spouse, and friends all at once adds up to a radical change that's hard to manage and maintain.
2 or 3 goals at a time
From your list of about 10 goals, select 2 or 3 that you'd like to get started on right away. If you used the goal suggestion I provided in the previous post (study good goal writing and rewrite all my goals) make that goal your first priority. Maybe even the only priority for January.
Once these first goals are accomplished, revisit your goals list and pick up the next goal you'd like to accomplish. You can do this after each individual goal is accomplished or after all 3 of your initial goals are accomplished. Whatever works well for you.
However, waiting until all 3 goals are accomplished may provide some motivation to complete the stubborn goals that you're struggling to finish.
Keep your goals in front of you
Too many people set goals and forget to work on them. The days and weeks go by without thinking about them and before you know it, its June and you remember that you set goals at the beginning of the year.
Schedule a time each week (Sunday evening and Monday morning often work well) to look at the goals you're currently working on and decide what step(s) need to be taken next in order to move each goal forward. Plan those steps into your week. As you start your week, your priorities will already be locked into your calendar. You're guaranteed to accomplish your goals if you stick to your weekly plan.
You can also use this weekly time to assess how well you did on last week's steps and make necessary adjustments.
A great tool for keeping goals in front of you is the Full Focus Planner.
Support
It's super easy to compromise with yourself and let yourself off the hook. We rationalize and justify why we didn't accomplish what we set out to do. It's a lot harder to explain to someone else why we failed to do what we said we would do.
Therefore, recruit 1 or more people to check in with and keep you focused and accountable to your goals. Ideally, this would be someone or a few people that provide this service to each other for the mutual benefit of reaching goals together.
Often, it takes a professional coach or a counselor that is paid to keep you focused on your goals. The benefit of a professional is that they are paid to focus on your needs and they are trained to help you set up your goals for maximum success. Friends and colleagues can be great but tend to be hit or miss on their planning and accountability chops. The progress you see from hiring a good coach or counselor will be well worth the investment!