Goals Are Your Best Tool For Success

We all want to be successful, right? Setting goals is one of the most important tools to help us navigate the bumpy road to ahead. Tracking our goals is key. Goals are your best tool for success.

As an entrepreneur, it is imperative to have business goals; as a individual, it is important to have life goals; and as a human, it is helpful to have societal goals. These three broad categories encompass so much of our life and how we want to live it.

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Business Goals

Business success is typically quantitative; revenue, growth, reach, return on investment, etc.

When assigning a value to a goal, we need to figure out what steps need to be taken to achieve that goal – it needs to be broken down into bitesize chunks. What steps do I need to increase my revenue? Where am I going to focus my efforts? What happens when I need to pivot? So many questions, such an enormous task.

Life Goals

Life goals are hard to quantify; they are more about feelings and perceptions rather than hard and fast numbers.

What are your life goals? Do you want to create an environment for better personal health? Do you need to balance your work/life ratio? Are you yearning to slay a herculean task? These big aspirations need to be broken down in to manageable chunks.

Societal Goals

Giving back, taking care of our earth, and understanding other cultures are a few societal goals we should all care about. And you ask, what can I do? It’s just me, by myself. Well, one step, one hand, one act of kindness moves us to a better global society.

Breaking Down Your Business Goals

This is a very simple process to break down your goals. Defining the actual chunks is the most difficult process.

One of my business goals for this year was to separate my website into two sites. This was a daunting task and the “to do” list was extensive. This is an excerpt of my goal breakdown. I have broken the major tasks across three months, then in my calendar I broke each month into weekly goals, and subsequently daily breakdowns.

1. Define a goal with a measurable outcome – Start a new website for travel and migrate all the travel related posts and adverts to the new site.
2. Set a time frame to achieve your goal – January through March.
3. Decide how you are going to execute your goal – Set up new webpage, copy over all travel related posts with updated links and SEO optimization.
4. Break down your goal into manageable steps with quantifiable timeframes –
   1. January – Procure new domain, choose and implement a web theme, set up plugins and widgets.
   2. February – Migrate all travel articles to new site. Edit articles to give them a fresh new look. Review and repair all links. SEO optimize all articles.
   3. March – Set up new social accounts for new website. Launch!
5. Evaluate regularly – every goal is different, do they need daily, weekly, or monthly evaluation – I evaluated this goal weekly because of the short timeframe.
6. Celebrate your success – I’m happy to say you are reading this blog post on my new website. I love the way it looks and functions. Success!

Breaking Down Your Personal Goals

I’m going to use a personal example from this past year and it’s a pretty common goal. I had surgery on my foot two years ago and couldn’t exercise – not good for me. I ended up gaining 25 pounds over the course of my recovery. As a result, my blood pressure and A1C went up – not good for me either.

Here is the monthly breakdown of my personal goal. I further broke the goals down by week and ultimately daily. Daily goals included: planning menus, shopping, exercise appointments with myself, etc.

1. Define a goal with a measurable outcome – I need to lose 25 pounds and exercise every day. This is really two goals in one.
2. Set a time frame to achieve your goal – I started in January (who doesn’t?) and gave myself until Thanksgiving.
3. Decide how you are going to execute your goal – I needed to find a healthy eating plan and start easing back into exercising.
4. Break down your goal into manageable steps with quantifiable timeframes –
   1. January – Research and choose a diet plan, exercise for 30 minutes twice a week.
   2. February – Plan menu and execute diet plan, exercise for 30 minutes twice a week and 30 minutes of yoga once a week.
   3. March – You get the idea…..
   4. November – Continue on diet plan, exercise every day.
5. Evaluate regularly – every goal is different, do they need daily, weekly, or monthly evaluation – I evaluated this one monthly to keep me on track.
6. Celebrate your success – I’m happy to say I lost 22 of the 25 pounds – still a work in progress – but I am exercising every day and paying attention to my diet plan, which has now become a habit.

Evaluating your progress

You need to give yourself some love and leeway when you evaluate your goals. These are self-imposed desires and sometimes outside factors beyond our control throw us a curve ball.

Nevertheless, you need to evaluate your goals and your goal breakdown. Try to do this as often as you need to. Each goal and person is different. I need daily reminders, weekly check-ins, and monthly evaluations to keep me on track.

Tools for goal setting

Funny story. I started this post about how important it was to use a planner and it morphed into goal setting. So here is the link to the article How Planners Make Goal Setting Simple.

I am a big fan of self help books. I’ve list some below that can help you change your mind set and help you achieve your goals.

None of these books are crazy expensive, but they all have made a positive impact on my goal setting and achieving personal and professional success.

Crush It

Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk. If you haven’t read any of his books, you need to. He is the king of social media, a master at marketing, and crazy like a fox. This is my favorite self help book ever.

Eat That Frog

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy works you through the process of prioritizing tasks and how to get the most onerous ones out check off your list. I start my days with these techniques. Not always easy, but always productive.

The 5 Second Rule: Transform you Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage

The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins was one of the most impactful books I have read. I am a big fan of her books, she is more psychoanalytical than practical, but you can relate to what she has to say.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey is a classic business management tool. It is also a must read for anyone who wants to succeed in the quest to reach their goals. I do find that I need to absorb this one in small chunks.

Summary

We all have goals we want to achieve. Wishing and hoping they come true won’t cut it. You need to have actionable plans that you can execute in small chunks.

Goals are your best tool for success!