Don’t set your 2011 goals like ever before

Posted by Steve Males

Jan 4

It’s that time of year when we reflect back on the year before and decide to make changes in our life and plan what we hope to achieve in the current year. New years resolutions and personal goals are seldom kept by the majority of people. Distractions in life and lack of focus may be part of the reason but one thing is for sure.

The Way You Set The Goals & Objectives Matters!

Telling yourself you are going to “make more money” or “spend more time with the family” are just throw away statements unless you are going to write down not just what you plan to achieve but more importantly HOW you are going to achieve it!

Break Things Down

3 years ago I set myself a massive goal.

“I wanted to quit my day job, replace it with something that paid equally well or better, that I could do from my home, with hours to suit that would allow me more time to spend with my family”

Some said I was living in cloud cuckoo land. Some told me I was, and always have been a dreamer! I’m definitely not cuckoo but yes, I am a dreamer! So too is every successful entrepreneur on the planet. Dreams are healthy and should be encourage. The imagination and vision is what creates drive to succeed. Now my goal wasn’t going to come overnight but with hard work and belief it was going to be achievable!! My high level goal was fantastic, a simple sentence that I could read every morning when I woke up and every night before I went to sleep but behind it I needed a plan! My vivid imagination was called upon once again, this time I wrote down ideas, in a sort of scrawled brain dump, I carried the piece of paper around with me for days and as soon as something entered my head it was written down (as crazy as it sounded) it didn’t matter how crazy it seemed it went down on my paper to be made sense of later!

Now it needed some structure.

I had formed my plan and split out the streams of work required to achieve it. I wrote next to each step if this step was something I could do myself or if it was an area I would need to learn / outsource to someone else to do.

Then the work began

All tasks were down in black and white, I knew what I had to do, what I had to learn and what I was going to get someone else to do! Over the coming days, weeks and months I crossed off more and more tasks.

I also had to change and tweak the task list

While completing the tasks and learning new skills I found I was easily distracted! It’s the Internet after all, information overload is a big problem! My stagey here was simple, if I found something that might be of use or required further investigation I wrote it on another piece of paper, to be looked at later, I forced myself to stay focused on whatever I planned to achieve that day. My days were split by starting the day completing something I knew I was able to complete myself, followed by spending some time acquiring the skills I needed to do others and if there was time, the other list got a look in. This structure was crucial and my focus was very important. Now think about your goals for the year. Are they high level or do you know exactly how you will achieve them?