Hit Your Goals This Month With This Simple System

Checking Off Your Goals

We have goals that we want to accomplish, but how we go about actually completing them is different among everyone. One thing that is common between people who are successful in achieving their goals is that they write them down.

You are 42% more likely to achieve or accomplish your goals just by writing them down. Here are some stats from a study conducted on the 1979 Harvard MBA program.

Students were asked if they have written down their future goals, 3% did, 13% had goals, but did not have them written down, 84% had no goals at all.

goals-blackboard

Ten years later, the same group of students were interviewed again and the 3% of students with their goals written down were earning ten times more than the other 97% of their classmates. I found myself in the 84% that didn’t write down any goals, until I changed my thinking.

It’s easy to see a finished product and think, ‘Wow I’d love to build something like that.’ The obvious question is ‘Where do I start?’ I decided I was going to start writing down some big, almost insane goals, and work my way back from there. What would it take me monthly, weekly, and daily to achieve them?

I’ll break down my process further:

Tangible things you need to help you achieve your goals:

Pen
Notebook
A wall

goals-notebook

“It’s interesting how 10 years of working your ass off will turn you into an overnight success.” – Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO

I wrote down my yearly goals and stuck them to my wall.

This is the beginning of the process where I put my large-scale goals. These are things like signing 15 new clients in the year or hiring a few new employees. Write them down and post it somewhere you look every day, whether it is the wall beside your bed or the washroom mirror you look at every morning. This will serve as a daily reminder of what you are trying to accomplish and will keep you on track as you head towards them.

I mapped out monthly goals and how I would achieve them.

These are my big picture goals on a smaller scale, and by accomplishing these goals I will be on my way to achieving my yearly goals. If my yearly goal is to acquire 15 new clients in the calendar year, one of my monthly goals should be developing client acquisition strategies that I can implement. By developing these new strategies, I am one step closer to acquiring a new client just by having a new way of acquiring them.

Weekly goals keep me on pace and give me a weekly game plan.

I break down my goals even further by having weekly goals. I write down everything I need to get done for the week and check the items off as the week goes on. This creates a schedule for myself and also keeps me organized. These items are related to my yearly goals, but much smaller, such as meeting someone for the coffee who you can bounce ideas off of or learning about an industry to help in preparation of your client acquisition strategies.

Winning the Day

This is where my goals get down to the micro level. These can be very simple, but eventually, they help lead to my big picture of acquiring 15 new clients. An example of a daily goal that will help me reach my yearly end game is reading for 20 minutes a day on different client acquisition strategies. I won’t pick up a client after 20 minutes of reading, but I am building a new found knowledge that will aid me in achieving what I set out to do at the beginning of the year.

If your goal is to build a pyramid, you need to start with a single stone and build from there. This is how I look at my daily goals. They are building blocks that bring me closer to achieving my larger weekly, monthly and yearly goals. One technique I’ve found to be useful is the SMART formula. Take a look at the image below, and start building your pyramid.