I love setting goals. In fact, I have an entire notebook dedicated to goal setting and planning. I know the milestones I need to achieve to get to where I want to be in the distant future, and I also know what I need to do each day to get closer to achieving these goals.
Having big goals in life and planning my days come with some frustrations though. I’m not always eager to go out and meet people, and simply ‘chilling’ at home makes me feel guilty for wasting my time. I still enjoy all the things that matter to me, but they need to be planned. I mean, I need to schedule my hobbies into my calendar to have any chance of doing them. And while I accept the fact that it sounds rather boring, this is the only way that works for me to avoid procrastination and ensure that I engage only in those things that are interesting actually to me.
The thing is, I believe in my future and my goals so much that working towards achieving them is actually exciting to me. Feeling that my daily efforts move me closer to where I want to be in life and who I want to become is more important to me than hanging out with people or watching TV series. Although I do those things sometimes too — see, not missing anything!
I am a strong believer that goal setting is crucial for everyone. We need to set a direction for ourselves; otherwise, we will struggle to understand the true meaning of our lives. And while most of us try to set some goals (New Year’s resolutions, anyone?), we often approach them the wrong way. We frequently tell ourselves we will achieve something or improve parts of our lives by the end of the year but fail to deliver.
If you feel stuck in this continuous loop of dreaming, hoping, procrastinating, and failing, then you might want to make use of a few critical life skills that will help you achieve almost anything you want. I personally do all these things and see myself moving in the right direction for sure.
1️⃣ Define Your Long-term & Short-term Goals
Unless you know what it is that you want — you cannot achieve it.
Unless you know what you want, you cannot achieve it.
Your long-term goals can range from something as simple as losing or gaining weight to something as complex as having a dream career or becoming more confident in front of people.
To lose or gain weight, for example, you will need to change your lifestyle, diet, and exercise regime. So your short-term goals might be:
- Exercise four days a week,
- Cut out high-calorie foods, and
- Do not drink when you are with friends.
To have your dream career, you’ll need to consider what needs to be done on your part to get there. So your short-term goals may be:
- Go to College/University,
- Volunteer to learn necessary skills,
- Get an Internship,
- Start an entry-level job…
If you want to become more confident in front of people — you need to start by understanding why you lack confidence, what could make you more confident, and how you’ll know when you become more confident. Your short-term goals may be:
- Learn more about yourself and understand why you are the way you are (e.g. read certain books),
- Do something that makes you uncomfortable (e.g. talk face-to-face to people you don’t know, attend a public speaking workshop or sign up for classes outside your comfort zone once a week).
Well, you get the point…
The most important part when creating your goals is to make them SMART — specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.
So take your notebook if you use one and write your long-term SMART goals. Spend some time imagining yourself achieving them — it will make you feel better. Then, add short-term SMART goals below each long-term goal. Take your time when thinking about them as you will need them later.
I don’t recommend pursuing more than two long-term goals at a time unless they are closely related, as you might lose direction, but do what feels right for you!
2️⃣ Think of a Strategy & Tactics To Implement
As someone with a marketing background, I know that strategy is crucial — not only for projects or businesses but for personal life too! If we’re goal-minded then we need to think about such things as the following: how are we going to achieve our goals? What resources will we need? Will we need to gain additional skills or experiences to achieve our ultimate goal? Who could help us to get to where we want to be? etc.
Think of your current situation and where you want to be in the future (your goals) and conduct a SWOT analysis on yourself. This will help you identify how far away you are from your goals and what you need to do or be like to achieve them.
Then, think of the tactics you’ll need to use to move forward. For example, if you want to get into your dream career and you already have what it takes, then your main tactics might simply be applying for available positions, contacting companies you’re interested in, or reaching out to your network for help. But if you’re just starting then your strategy might include studying a specific discipline, networking with relevant people, gaining work experience, learning new skills, etc.
Not to confuse the two: strategy answers the question ‘what needs to be done?’ while tactics answer ‘how will it be done?’. Once you know what you need to do to achieve your goals, you can then think about how you‘ll do these things. You can also keep your tactics flexible and adjust them as you go.
3️⃣ Planning Your Time
Planning is essential and needed almost everywhere, yet few people use it to achieve their personal life goals!
Planning goes hand in hand with a strategy and requires you to work out how exactly you’re going to get from your point A (where you’re now) to your point B (where you want to be).
Start by thinking how long it will take for you to achieve a certain goal. Let’s say… one month. Now, think of all the tasks you need to do in that month to achieve this goal. Again, these tasks have to be specific and have clear deadlines. For example, your short-term goal may be to ‘finish X course by the end of Month 1. Depending on the length of your course, your tasks may include: ‘go through chapter 1 on week 1, chapter 2 on week 2, and chapter 3 on week 3’ and then ‘read my notes on chapters 1, 2 and 3 and complete a course assignment on week 4’. Repeat this process for all your goals.
4️⃣ Make a List of All the Tasks You Need to Do
Once you have an idea of all the tasks you’ll need to do, write them down and include all of your other responsibilities, such as work, time for friends or family, university, etc. This will give you a better understanding of how much time you can actually spend on a daily basis to complete the tasks that move you closer to your goals. This will help you with scheduling tremendously and you’ll understand why working on your tasks is sometimes better than just aimlessly chilling at home. 😅
It’s all about self-respect and self-discipline. I’m not saying you should quit resting and chilling at home, I’m just saying that sometimes you might choose not to as it’ll make it hard for you to achieve your goal on time. But really, make sure to schedule chill and relaxation time too. Overworking has never been good for anybody.
5️⃣ Prioritise!
Those who are good at procrastination might find it hard to prioritise. But there is a way out. You can use the famous Stephen Covey’s time-management matrix and assign each task to one of four quadrants:
Quadrant 1 — Urgent & important: Tasks that require immediate attention. They might be very pressing and right in front of us and can be anything from preparing an important presentation at short notice to going to a booked appointment with a doctor. Such tasks might not be of your own making but they’ll need to be prioritised and dealt with immediately.
Quadrant 2 — Not urgent, but important: Tasks that are important but don’t require your immediate attention. These tasks are usually somehow connected to your short or long-term goals and require your initiative and proactivity to be done. These are the tasks that, if done diligently on a regular basis, will improve your life and make you more successful. You’ll need to plan, schedule them and commit to them. This is the quadrant you should spend most of your time on and prioritise as often as possible. Make sure that this quadrant is filled with tasks that go in harmony with your personal mission and goals.
Quadrant 3 — Urgent, but not important: Tasks that are urgent but not important to you. These include various interruptions, meetings, incoming calls or emails, etc. The majority of people spend most of their time in this quadrant and suffer greatly because of that. They never add up any benefits in the long run and thus should be eliminated where possible. Make an effort to avoid them, delegate to someone else or do them quickly.
Quadrant 4 — Not urgent & not important: Tasks that are neither urgent nor important. These usually are the activities that lead you to procrastination and time wasting, and include such activities as checking your social media or watching Youtube videos, etc. Do your best to avoid them wherever possible or leave them until you have completed everything else.
6️⃣ Schedule & Create Your To-Do Lists
If you spend your precious time thinking about how to achieve your goals, then the next step is to schedule tasks on your calendar and actually do them. The best way to schedule is to account for all the hours you will spend on all other responsibilities (work, university, travelling, sleep, etc.) and work with the hours you have left. Prioritise tasks that fall into urgent and important and not urgent, but important quadrants. You’ll soon see that there is little time left for all other things…:)
Use Excel sheets, notebooks, digital calendars or to-do lists to schedule your tasks for the day. Some people advocate preparing your next day’s to-do list in the evening, while others prefer getting up early in the morning and preparing their to-do list then. Find what works best for you.
And a little tip for scheduling: make sure you give more time for each task than you expect it will take to complete it — tasks usually take longer to complete than originally anticipated.