Random musings: Breaking down your goals

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Breaking down your goals

More on goal setting, this time from my SendOutCards blog. Please check it out and sign up for my monthly email.

December 18, 2015 by r_tompkins

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” – Benjamin Franklin

The New Year is a time of goal setting – and the months after it are too often full of frustration, disappointment and the eventual desertion of our goals. But it doesn’t have to be like that! The biggest problem people tend to have when they set goals is that they don’t set a way to achieve those goals. They don’t break their high and lofty goals into small, achievable goals.

Breaking down your goals can help you gain perspective for when things get difficult and can give you a feeling of success as you accomplish each small task on your way to achieving your dream. By breaking down your goals, you will learn how to progress, which is an important skill for anyone.

Checking monthly activities and appointments at the office in the laptop

Here’s one plan to break down your goals by time. Begin by writing down your dream goal and why you want to achieve it. Then break it down by day, week and month.

Daily: Each day set a small, achievable task that will help you toward your ultimate goal and that you can turn into a habit. Start small and track how often you complete your daily task.

Weekly: Build on your daily habits to take a larger step toward your goal each week. Focus on increasing the amount of time you devote to each daily task each week so that you are gradually improving week by week. Write down how you improve or where you struggled. If you find you aren’t meeting your weekly goal, keep trying to complete that goal before you move to a new one.

Monthly: Each month set a big goal. Write it down and plan your daily and weekly goals to achieve your monthly goal. Each month as you complete your goal, you will be motivated to try even harder the next month. At the end of each month, review your progress and match it against achieving your overall dream.

As you break your goals down into smaller increments that you can achieve, you will develop a pattern of goal setting that will serve you in all areas of your life.

Another name for your dream goal is "definite chief aim" which was popularized by Napoleon Hill. Thanks to my friend, Michele Reynolds, for talking about this during her conference call on Sunday. Here is the definite chief aim of Bruce Lee: