How to Create and Develop Goals
The year is ending and everyone is ready to start the New Year. Back in 2016, I produced a video on ‘How to set goals successfully‘. In this post, I will be talking about how to look at goals, and what you can do simply to get started on them as soon as possible. Before I get into that I want to express a time where I felt completely overwhelmed and lost with my activities. I was taking on too many projects inside and outside of work, and I felt like I had no time to actually have a real break and rest. It doesn’t help when you feel that you are wired to complete things and do as much as possible in little time. One time, Listening to a public speaker I realised that I was killing myself for business… it didn’t make sense. I needed to be smarter about how I arranged my activities around time, and how I work towards my goals. Here is a breakdown of what I did to overcome my barriers:
1. Write down your Activities
I wrote down a list of activities that I usually do during the week, writing out why I do these specific things. This gave me a perspective really quickly to see whether I was just filling time, or gaining any success from doing these things. As an example this included:
- Gym
- Content Creation
- Email Marketing
- Web development
- Book development
- Reading
- Mastermind
- Strategising
I made sure that I included things that I had to do weekly or monthly, and wasn’t ad-hoc in nature. Understanding why I originally did these things was important for my awareness.
2. Write down what you wanted to achieve
Based on the activities I wrote down, I recorded what I wanted to achieve in detail. If I couldn’t write down the details behind what I wanted to achieve through these activities, then that was a sign that maybe I needed to get rid of them. This created clarity as I began to see what was necessary and what became a habit. As an example, I wanted to go to the gym 4 times a week because I was keen to lose 6 kg and tone up more. This was because my BMI was higher than usual. I also wanted to read more so I could learn new things and teach them to different people.
3. Write down what you want to do achieve
Because I wrote down what I wanted to achieve previously, I needed to be clear as to what I actually want to achieve based on current circumstances and my vision. As an example maybe you want financial freedom, so for you-you want to increase your passive income and may do that via creating a product and marketing that product. This means doing activities that fulfill that want. Maybe before you weren’t doing activities to make this a reality. Think of it as the ultimate benefit you want out of an activity, it helps you to decide what your next steps should be.
4. Write down what you need to do
This can be done in so many different ways, but I kept it super simple. I preceded to write down the activities I needed to do to get closer to those wants. I didn’t actually develop a huge and illustrious plan, it was more predicated on rate-limiting tasks that needed to be done to move forward. If it was a collection of tasks for a specific want, then I wrote down the action-steps in a logical fashion. If you’re unaware of the next steps, check online to see what others have done and collate the information in a way that makes sense for you to act upon.
5. Position into your Calendar
I then drew a week view calendar in my journal and slotted in times dedicated to these different tasks and goals during each day of the week. For example, I knew Fridays would be my day to write my articles, or Sundays to send out emails to my community. I then put this information into my digital calendar and scheduled times and reminders in order for this to happen.
And that was it. Very simple, yet extremely effective! I’ve had so many people who know the detail behind what I do ask me, “How do you manage your time?” or “How much sleep do you get?” and the simple answer is I aggressively manage my time. This process is an example of how I do it. Once I have been through this process, I do not deviate. As an example, I prefer to meet people only on Thursdays and Saturdays unless I say otherwise, and that would mean excusing my plans because of someone else’s plans. Not fair on me and my goals if you ask me! At the end of the day, it is my life and I have goals and aspirations I want to materialise too, therefore I need the time, and energy to execute them to the best of my ability.
Hopefully, this has given you some insights as to how you can create and develop and actually implement them. This is so easy you could actually do it right now! It wasn’t your typical article on goals but nonetheless very effective. If you want a more technical explanation, feel free to watch my earlier videos here.
Take care and God Bless
