3 Powerful Steps You Need to Set Goals You Will Achieve

Key Takeaways

• Writing goals in the wrong way can cause regret, lack of motivation, and inertia.
• To set goals you’ll actually achieve and won’t regret later, use this 3-part framework: align your dreams, set high level goals, and set tactical goals. Get your goal setting one pager here.
• To align your dreams, define success, prioritize your main life areas, and define your personal 10-year vision.
• To set high level goals, define your 1 year goals, clarify your most important goal, and find out what you can lessen.
• To set tactical goals, define sub-goals, habits, and a tracking system.

Why written goals matter

Do you forget your goals by February each year?

Those who have goals are 10 times more successful at realizing those goals than those without goals, according to Harvard Business Study. And those with written goals are 3 times more successful at realizing those goals than those with unwritten goals, according to Harvard Business study. Therefore, if you have written goals you are 30 times more likely to succeed in them than those without goals!

And having SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based) isn’t enough!

Risks of writing goals in wrong way

Writing goals in the wrong way can cause several risks:

• Forgetting your goals
• Losing motivation to pursue your goals
• Not even starting to work on your goals
• Not feeling like you are making any progress
• Achieving goals that don’t matter much to your life and career plan
• Achieving goals that you later realize you didn’t really want

3 key parts to setting goals

Here’s a 3-part framework to help you set goals that will stick around all year.

Dream alignment

To avoid setting goals that you’ll regret later.

• Define success
• Prioritize your life areas
• Define your 10-year vision

High-level goals

To get your priorities right.

• Define your 1-year goals
• Define your #1 goal
• Clarify what you want less of

Tactical goals

To set yourself up for success and to keep motivated.

a. Define sub-goals

b. Define habits

c. Track your goals

Let’s break it down.

✅ Dream Alignment

Get clear on your values and dreams. Understand what matters the most to you. That way you won’t get to the end of a year, decade, or life feeling regrets because you pursued someone else’s dream, not yours.

✔️First, define success to you. Think about what makes you happy. What would a perfect day look like? Success is usually vague and often associated with money, status, power, and material possessions. However, for you it may mean more time with loved ones, health, freedom as you define it, financial independence, using your talents, service, spiritual development, or others.

✔️Second, prioritize the areas of your life. Strategy is about prioritizing amongst many options. You have finite time and energy. Rank each area of your life in terms of what you want to prioritize in the next year: career, income, savings, fun, health, faith, love, family, friends, self-development, spirituality, etc. Prioritize based on how far you are from ideal and how important it is for you.

✔️Third, define your 10-year vision. Most people underestimate what they can achieve in 10 years but overestimate what they can achieve in 1 year. Go big on your 10-year vision. You can change career, income, and country. You can build an empire.

✅ High-level Goals

Get clear on your priorities for the year and on where you want to put most of your time. That way, if you have major setbacks during the year, you’ll know where to put your energy.

✔️First, define your 1-year SMART goals in your priority areas of life and aligned with your 10-year vision you set up earlier.

✔️Second, clarify what is the top goal from your 1-year goals that would make you feel successful even if it was the only thing you achieved. Ideally this one goal would help you with other goals. For example, it could be to manage your time better by waking up at 5am. That way you’ll have more time for your exercise and reading goals.

✔️Third, find out what are the time stealers from the previous year that you could eliminate to create more space for new and more important goals. Is it Netflix, spending time with people who you don’t like, mindless social media?

✅ Tactical Goals

Goals feel like big unattainable things if we don’t break them down and think about how we’ll incorporate them into our daily lives. That is why you need some tactical planning.

✔️First, write down sub-goals for each of your main goals for the year. That will increase your focus and motivation.

✔️Second, outline the habits that will move you towards your goals. You can control habits, but you can’t always control goal outcomes. If you choose the right habits, like working out 30 min a day, eating one salad a day, reading for 30 min a day, working on an important project every Saturday morning, and so on, you’ll definitely move the needle towards your goal and feel motivated along the way.

✔️Third, make sure you have a tracking process for your goals, sub-goals, and habits. Tracking keeps you motivated and allows you to course correct along the way. Consider enlisting an accountability partner to keep you committed and schedule your tasks and habits in a calendar.

If goal setting hasn’t worked out for you in the past, you probably missed one of these 3 core elements. To start, set at least one hour to do your goal setting exercise.

🔖Get a free one pager on goal setting here.

📚Check out all of our free resources here.