We make 3 lists of goals and a step-by-step plan for achieving them

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“You should definitely write down your goals”—that’s what personal effectiveness coaches, books, and even neighbors who like to surf the Internet tell us. Yes, goals need to be written down. But how to do that? After all, goals are different.

I have tried many goal setting techniques throughout my life. I wrote down 100 goals for life, set them for 3 years, and described the goals in detail in the form of affirmations. All this did not catch on. And if you also haven’t found a suitable way to set and achieve goals, then read this article to the end.

Statement of purpose

Goals are a force that requires you to focus on what you want to achieve in life. Without a clear plan for the outcome, it will not be possible to achieve not only quick execution, but no execution at all.

You need to understand what you want to achieve in your life, both in the short term and for the longer term. To do this, you can create a vision of an ideal day in 10 years and decide to realize it. This will be your big goal .

Everyone knows how to formulate goals in words. But, in addition to scoring, you also need to know how to record them and how to achieve them . For many, this is a completely different challenge. To which special techniques can be applied.

Read useful tips on how to formulate goals that will change your life. Step-by-step instructions on how to set a goal in life.

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Conclusions and experience

For the technique to be as effective as possible, it is necessary to use the principle of feedback. In practice it looks like this:

• upon achieving a certain result, evaluate how the technique contributed or hindered the achievement of the result;
• draw appropriate conclusions;
• next time you can make a plan based on your experience.

Now you know how to achieve your goal in life, the next step is to try the technique in practice and make sure of its effectiveness. Do you want to live in such a way “that you won’t experience excruciating pain later on for the years spent aimlessly”?

Write down your goal

You have identified a goal, you need to write it down. Although the main argument of the 1979 Harvard study in favor of goal writing is bogus, writing down goals is half of achieving a goal .

Writing on paper is a way to think and not lie to yourself . In our heads, we are capable of being #1 in Forbes in a few years. And practice - a sheet of paper and writing down the goals for achieving such a result, will not allow us to lie about our flourishing exaggeration of our abilities.

Building a hierarchy of complementary goals in your mind is like playing chess while keeping in mind the placement of the pieces on the board. Few people are able to mentally agree on 30 goals, eliminate conflicts in the required resources, and agree on periods of achievement.

So have some paper and pen ready. Writing down a goal will help you achieve more than anything else combined.

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How to achieve your goal in life? Non-standard methods

Non-standard 1. Change the environment

This could be a change of apartment, city or even country. For example, in your hometown you are tired of routine and dullness, but some small European town or island is just right. Nobody says that you need to change your place of residence forever. It is quite enough to take a time-out for the period that you have determined to achieve the goal.

Of course, this method is suitable only for the most determined and easy-going. For others, we can recommend the following option.

Break big goals into small ones

If you set a very large goal for yourself in the annual plan, then its implementation may take from 50% to 80% of all your resources. Such a goal can be formed as a global line of behavior - a strategic goal or a lifelong goal.

But you shouldn’t set such huge goals to achieve in the short term for the following reasons:

1. You can already understand at the beginning of execution that in this form the task will not be completed .
2. Having looked at the deadlines, abandon its regular review . Why re-read the plan once a week if there are only 2-3 goals and it is clear that they have not been achieved.
3. You are depriving yourself of frequent victories . Instead of feeling progress from achieving 10 goals, you wait and languish when you close at least one.

Divide the huge task into parts, set a target time for completion. Break your big goal down into smaller, simpler mini-goals. This will allow the monstrous goal to be presented as a plan for achieving the goal, broken down into steps.

In addition, each short-term goal achieved guarantees progress in steps towards the completion of the grand plan. Divide and group your plan: by week, month, semi-annually and yearly respectively.

Make sure that each next step builds on the implementation of the previous one and brings you closer to the final achievement.

To make your plan a reality, create a to-do list every week and sort it according to the Eisenhower Matrix. A weekly list will help you understand whether you are making progress towards your goal or not.

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Drawing up a step-by-step plan to achieve your goal

It is absolutely not necessary that the dream meets all of the listed criteria. You can get by with a brief formulation and subsequently detail the plan if the strategy for achieving the goal requires adjustment. Read about how to decide on your life goals here.

When you have decided on your aspirations and are sure that you will not experience mental discomfort, start drawing up a plan.

To achieve the goal, it is necessary to assess what tasks need to be solved and how much time each of them will require. There are many methods and techniques, but the most popular and effective is to create a task tree. You can simply write down each task and try to determine its complexity.

When making a plan, there are a number of factors to consider.

• Correct definition of each task. It is necessary to understand that a task is a subgoal, therefore, it must comply with SMART.
• Answer whether the assigned tasks are sufficient to achieve the specified goal. An effective plan does not have to contain hundreds of points. Friends or other competent people will help you evaluate its effectiveness.
• Does the dream justify the means? If achieving your goal requires resources that you do not have, there is no point in wasting effort.
• Correct timing. Realistically assess your capabilities and time frames. The scale of the task must correspond to the deadline. Remember that the strategy for achieving a goal can be thought out to the smallest detail, but there is always the possibility of emergency situations.

It is important! Making a plan to achieve this goal is an important step. You can begin to implement it only after checking each task, assessing its necessity and effectiveness.

It often happens that a person is completely immersed in a new idea and strives to move on to specific actions. Psychologists recommend not to succumb to provocation and to show consistency and perseverance in achieving your goal. It is useful to think about what qualities a person needs to achieve a goal and whether you have the means to realize your plans. If you don't make a good plan, all your efforts will be wasted, you may be able to achieve what you want, but you will spend a lot more effort, resources and time on it.

Setting SMART goals

It is not always possible to set the right goal. When tasks are vague, it leaves us confused : how to complete them, how to measure progress.

Your goals must be precise and specific . Setting SMART goals involves being specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

By being able to set goals using a smart framework, you immediately get the details and context you need. Setting smart goals is not difficult. You just need to go through each letter of the abbreviation and adjust the wording of the goal.

Specificity means that the goal should not be achieved in general, but only at a specific point.

For example, you want to read a lot of books by 2030.

But setting a goal as “Read 26 books a year” will become specific and ensure that every book read is aimed at achieving that goal.

We get a ready-made action plan to achieve the goal: read two books a month.

Achievability refers to your abilities. To set realistic goals for yourself, you need to study your capabilities well.

Let's return to the example of books.

To read 2 books a month, you need to read about 25 pages a day. It takes 30 minutes.

But in reality, you only have the time and energy to read 15 pages. Question: can you achieve your goal? Not quite, unless you adjust the goal itself or the required resources.

Measurability refers to the quantification of progress. If your goal is to write 1000 posts on Instagram in 5 years to get a huge audience, then you need to calculate how many posts you need to publish per day (every 2 days).

And you definitely need to monitor the progress and the result - new subscribers. The only way you will see results is if you keep up with your plan.

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Factors that hinder goal setting

Let's look at the main internal obstacles that prevent us from effectively setting goals.

Negative experience

If you have previously set goals and failed to achieve them, you may develop a subconscious fear of new goals. It seems that the negative experience will be repeated again and will hurt your self-esteem.

In this case, you need to seriously analyze the reasons for the failures and work on the mistakes. Think back to one of your unachieved goals and think about what went wrong with it. Maybe she was too unrealistic? Or have you allocated little time to complete it? Try to take these nuances into account in the future and not repeat mistakes.

Every time you feel resistance when trying to formulate a goal, overcome it with an effort of will. Take a particularly responsible approach to your first goals after the break. They should not be too complex and not too distant in time. So that you get results and a supply of motivation for the following goals as quickly as possible.

Lack of self-confidence

Many people deliberately do not set goals because they do not believe in the possibility of their implementation. This avoidance is called a loser complex and is quite common in anxious, infantile people. They can easily be recognized by their habit of whining and complaining about life, throwing ashes on their heads, and becoming poor.

If you notice such tendencies in yourself, the first thing you need to do is to realize responsibility for your life. No one will live it for you. And you too will experience the bitterness of broken hopes and aimlessly lived years. While you are trying to hide from life and sit in the rear, all the most beautiful things are passing by.

Remember: failure is not as bad as inaction. Every failure ultimately brings success closer, and inaction only brings emptiness and death closer.

Frustration

Frustration is the absence of desires, aspirations, and ambitions. Surely you have met people who look down on the dreams and goals prevailing in society. World fame? No thanks! Marry? It's better to be alone! Have a beautiful figure? Here’s another thing: let them love me for who I am!

These people consider themselves special, not like everyone else, almost chosen. In fact, they simply became victims of a common and very harmful psychological defense - devaluation. And now everything that for some reason is inaccessible to them is perceived as unnecessary, alien and unworthy. In order not to experience the stress of falling self-esteem, the brain blocks desires and plunges a person into frustration.

This has happened to me more than once. After I attended driving school and received my license, I was very scared to drive on my own. In order not to be tormented by the thought that I was a coward, and not to experience the stress of overcoming fear, I decided that I didn’t really need it. 10 years have passed, I still don’t drive a car and I reproach myself for my cowardice and short-sightedness.

To avoid falling into this trap, you need to realize that the lack of opportunities is primary, and your reluctance is secondary. That is, first you realize the impossibility of getting something, and only then the brain turns on devaluation. Learn to be honest with yourself - this is one of the most important skills. Mentally give up only what is available to you. This is especially true for generally accepted values: a high standard of living, relationships and family, beauty, power, universal recognition, etc.

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General disorganization

If total chaos reigns in life, then there is no time for goal setting. I would like to sort out routine everyday tasks. It's hard to plan anything when your left leg doesn't know what your right arm is doing. So before you start setting goals, get your life in order. Time management can help you!

Taking action to implement

It's never too late to start doing what you dream of. Once the plan is written down on paper, immediately begin achieving your goal. Any path begins with the first step [1].

Your first step determines the outcome you will get in both your career and life. Most people do not even take the first step , remaining at the level of “keeping the goal in mind.” Provide the situation so that your first step will definitely happen.

Remember that even a small action brings you closer to something bigger. If after a while there is a feeling that you are going in the wrong direction, the plan can be changed. But at any moment there must be a plan and work on it should not fade away.

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Popular SMART goal setting technology

Achieving a goal begins with planning. First of all, you need a high-quality, good aspiration that meets the SMART criteria.

• Specific. First of all, specificity is important. You need to clearly understand why this particular dream is important to you. When the true reasons for desires are identified, you can move on to planning.
• Measurable. The end result of efforts must have a specific criterion by which it can be determined that the desired has been achieved.
• Agreed. It is necessary to understand that to achieve this goal you will need to involve other people. To simplify the task, it is necessary to improve the strategy in such a way as to eliminate or minimize the participation of outsiders.
• Realistic. Undoubtedly, ambitions must be great, but at the same time it is important to balance them and correlate them with one’s own capabilities.
• Timed (time limit). Set a clear deadline for the implementation of your plan. This will mobilize efforts and allow for the most efficient use of resources and energy.

Stick to the plan

Setting goals and creating a plan to achieve them is not easy for a beginner. For an experienced person, this is pure pleasure, maybe difficult, but joyful.

The real challenge for a newbie comes when it comes to sticking to the plan. When implementation problems arise, one must not lose hope and give up.

Stay focused on the goal, find motivation and work day in and day out.

If the initial goal “didn’t work”, replace it with another one that will lead you to the planned result, albeit in a different way.

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Let's go to battle!

After creating a step-by-step plan, you simply choose a priority goal and start moving towards it. It is advisable that you have strong motivation all the way to your goal. So find like-minded people. This could be a significant other, children, friends, partners.

If you don’t have like-minded people or they don’t charge you, then use the SmartProgress service . There they will definitely provide you with motivation and help you reach your cherished goal.

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Set up regular checks

When you set out to do something new, you get a rush of adrenaline and a feeling of excitement.

But, it is enough to move a couple of steps forward and this feeling begins to disappear. This is the reason why so many New Year's resolutions are never implemented or are pushed back to February.

Any goal worth achieving is not realized in an instant. It takes time. To achieve results, it is important to regularly check progress , each time to make sure that you or your team are on track.

The possibility of feedback from the world, the presence of repeated reminders, will allow you to be motivated to achieve your goal. This is very important for large tasks that take months or years to complete.

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What to do if you fail to create goals

Perhaps some of you have reached the fifth step and discovered that you have nothing further to work with. Don’t worry, one day you will just sit on your butt, waiting for a miracle, until suddenly you are overwhelmed with such an endless desire to achieve something that you, with your pants full of joy, will again rush to look for recommendations on the topic “how to achieve your goal.” No, we all understand perfectly well that such a day never comes . What then to do with goals?

Let's go from the opposite. If any activity is boring for you and nothing warms you up at all, then sitting on your butt is not the solution. Therefore, you take any idea from your head, anything: laying tiles, cooking, counting, writing books. Then continue working on this idea from the second step of the instructions.

What does this give? Even if you made a huge mistake with your choice, you can only get this information by going through everything from your own experience. Over time, you will form a holistic opinion about what you do not like at all, and in contrast, ideas will appear about things that may be very cool and interesting to you.

Celebrate victories, even the smallest ones

A good idea for self-management to achieve a goal is to reward yourself. Reward yourself every time you complete even the smallest of steps .

Even the simple act of crossing out a task from a notepad can bring pleasure as good as a cup of delicious coffee. As a result, you will be charged with a small dose of joy in life, and fulfilling your dreams will seem like an unusually large source of high.

Do not think that until the goal has been achieved, you need to wait to celebrate small victories. Get rid of such thoughts, this is a very stupid idea. Of course, you shouldn’t set off fireworks, but you definitely need to learn to just be happy.

Small victories are the main source of energy to move on and stick to the right direction.

Here's what's going on in your head: A brain chemical called dopamine spikes when you're anticipating something important (like doing something you're intending to do) and gets a boost. This is motivation for the brain.

And by setting ourselves smaller tasks and then thanking ourselves for completing them, we increase the number of dopamine surges. These surges encourage us to stay in the resource.

What is planning?

Planning brings the future into the present and allows you to do something about it now.

Alan Lakein

In the practice of self-management, planning is setting goals and creating ways to achieve them. This stage is key. If you were able to ask yourself what to do next, then you have started a change.

Planning helps not only to develop a procedure for changing ourselves, but also to better understand what we really want to achieve. Too often it turns out that behind the simple desire to overcome a bad habit lies a hidden need for recognition or understanding. If you identify it, you can simplify your work on yourself.

In self-management, planning includes four stages:

1. Mission.
2. Target.
3. Tasks.
4. Plan.

Once you get acquainted with this simple scheme, you will begin moving towards your goals today.

Method one. Create a plan for the day

Sit down with a piece of paper

This could be a notepad, notebook, or a blank document on your computer. Choose what is convenient for you. Make a list of what you need to accomplish in a day. List every meeting and agreement you have. What are your goals for the day? Do you want to go in for sports, or, on the contrary, is this a day of relaxation? What tasks do you absolutely need to finish?

Make yourself a schedule

What time should you finish your first task or project? Write down every little thing, starting with the one that needs to be done first, then the next, and so write a schedule for the whole day. Make sure you don't forget anything. Of course, every day is different, so every day the plan will be different. A basic plan might look like this, for example:

• 09:00–10:00 — get to the office, check email, answer letters.
• 10:00–11:30 — meeting with Max and Katya.
• 11:30–12:30 – project No. 1.
• 12:30–13:15 – lunch (healthy food!).
• 13:15–14:30 - analysis of project No. 1, meet with Sergey and discuss project No. 1.
• 14:30–16:00 - project No. 2.
• 16:00–17:00 - start project No. 3, prepare things for tomorrow.
• 17:00–18:30 - leave the office, go to the gym.
• 18:30–19:00 - go grocery shopping.
• 19:00–20:30 - prepare dinner, rest.
• 20:30– ... - to the cinema with Masha.

Refocus yourself every hour

It's important to take a moment after a certain time to analyze how productive you were during that time. Did you do everything you needed to do? Then give yourself a moment to reset, close your eyes and relax. This way, you can efficiently move on to the next task you need to complete.

Analyze your day

When you're done with most of your day, take a moment to see if you're sticking to your plan. Did you finish everything that was planned? Where did you go wrong? What worked and what didn't? What distracts you, and how can you combat distractions in the future?

Hasloo Group Production Studio/Shutterstock.com

Do people need a long-term personal plan?

You can see the answers to the first question in the diagram. They show that the topic of personal planning is quite relevant for most people. Many people set quite ambitious goals for themselves, but achieving them right away is quite problematic.

In many cases, to achieve goals, so-called “multi-steps” are required, i.e. combinations of various actions and achieving secondary and intermediate goals in order to ultimately achieve the main one. In this case, you cannot do without a clear plan, as the results of our survey show.

What exactly are we seeing?

1. The vast majority are in favor of creating a long-term plan to achieve your goals without any reservations. Great!
2. A number of people still agree with the need to develop a personal strategy, with some reservations.
3. A long-term plan is definitely not needed, only 9% (red sector in the diagram).

If you are part of the 9% and believe that achieving a goal requires no planning, then most likely your goal falls into one or more of the following:

1. Too general.
2. Not very specific.
3. Not ambitious.
4. The goal is short-term and to achieve it you only need to focus your efforts for a short time.

If you have any objections, you can indicate them in the comments to the article, and for now we will move on to analyzing another part of the survey.

How a Personal Plan Improves the Sophistication of Thinking Across a Time Horizon

The time horizon of thinking is not some kind of clairvoyance, but the ability to operate with a specific time perspective when analyzing and making decisions. In practice, this means that if you are able to plan 5 years ahead, then the time horizon of your thinking is also 5 years.

As for the level of complexity of thinking, it is not so easy to measure it. As far as I understand, the level of complexity of thinking can be indirectly shown by special tests, for example, a combination of tests for mental, emotional and social intelligence. We necessarily test these and other types of intelligence in a workshop on developing a personal strategy and take into account the results of this testing in personal strategic planning.

But I have not seen separate tests to assess the level of complexity of thinking. The only thing you can be sure of, I would formulate this way:

When developing a personal long-term plan, the level of complexity in your thinking will increase significantly..

Why? And you try to create a personal strategy.

You will realize that the number of planning objects and their changing trends that you will have to operate with when developing a personal strategy is so large that it trains your strategic thinking better than any puzzle.

Moreover, you solve a puzzle in order to take time, and a personal strategy is an extremely useful result of investing in yourself and your future.

Objectives and plans. When to start working?

- If you perform an action, you will definitely get the result, whether you want it or not.

- Some kind of mysticism.

— Mysticism is to perform an action and think that nothing will happen.

Vladimir Serkin

Tasks are a direct continuation of your goals, but they are limited by a deadline. It should be one to two months. Such fragmentation is necessary so that you can always see the intermediate result of working on yourself.

For example, if your goal was to quit smoking in a year, then your goal for the current month would be to reduce your cigarette consumption by four cigarettes per day. That doesn't sound so scary, right?

Then you can get to work creating a plan, which is key to achieving success. It is the plan that helps determine the first step that will bring you closer to your goal right now. It will be a checklist of what you will do today.

Most of us set ambitious goals, but, intimidated by their scale and not knowing how to approach them, we quit before even starting. The only way to achieve what you want is to write a plan right now for what you will do today to get closer to your mission.

The plan may include just one action. For example, today you will count how many cigarettes you smoke per day and smoke one less. The plan will be the same for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, until the first task for the week is completed. Agree, it is easier for a person who smokes a pack a day to give up one cigarette today than to shout, throwing the entire pack in the trash: “Never again!” And the next day, buy a new one and return to your addiction.

Your first action is not just a one-day victory. This is the realization of your mission. This is the whole secret. This is how those who seem to us to be successful and happy people live. They don't see their sacrifice today as part of a larger goal. Their daily work on themselves is that very goal.

Step 3. Right now, take a piece of paper and write down a plan for today, what you must do to get closer to solving your first short-term tasks (just don’t forget about your ambitious mission).

Express test of human development in 20 areas of life

You will get the most benefit from reading this article if you take a quick assessment of your development.
This way, you can immediately apply your new knowledge to your situation. The test will calculate the following indicators:

1. Strategium Personal Score – development in 20 areas.
2. Gain factor – the state and dynamics of your situation.
3. Development mode is the recommended level of effort when implementing plans.
4. Planning horizon – recommended planning period in years.
5. Metric of the need for a personal plan.

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