Failing to plan is planning to fail.

If you don’t want 2020 to be just another year gone by, but rather make this year (or this new decade) life-changing, you need to steer it in the right direction. And the way to do it is to set the right goals. 

If you don’t have much experience with it or you’ve not done too well with this in the previous years, it may be quite an overwhelming and daunting task.

If you don’t set your goals right, you will:
⁃ Not accomplish as much as you could
⁃ Feel confused, overwhelmed or unmotivated.
⁃ Fail achieving them and get demoralised. 

In this article, I want to share with you my process of setting my yearly goals, but frankly, you can apply it to any kind of goals. I’ve been using this method with great success for years now. If you want a proof of it and see it in action, check out my yearly goals page. 

It’s really quite simple, but there is power in simplicity. 
Why making things complicated? Life is complicated enough as it is. 

Decide on your Marco groups

When you’re setting your yearly goals, I recommend that you start with identifying the big categories of your life you’d like to improve and work on. I all them macro groups. It’s better to start there than diving straight into setting individual goals. You’ll understand why soon.  These macro groups could be: Health, fitness, relationship, career, business, personal development etc. 

Set your S.M.A.R.T. goals

Once you’ve identified your macro groups, think about what specific improvements and accomplishments you want to achieve in each area. These will be your actual goals.  I recommend you follow the good old SMART goal principle. 

S – Specific Goal

Make sure your goal is clear and specific. Vague goals will get you vague results. Saving £10,000 is a specific saving goal. “Save up a bit more” is not. 

M – Measurable Goal

Find a way to track or measure your goal. You need to be able to clearly determine whether the goal has been achieved or not. As with the above example, you can tell exactly when you’ve saved up 10K. With “Save up a bit more” you cannot. Or that reason, goals based on feelings (such as “I want to be happier”) are not good as feelings are hard to measure. 

A – Actionable Goal

Make sure the goals you set are actually within your control, and you can take action towards them. If you set a goal that you have no control over, first of all, it’s not really a goal, certainly not your own. Secondly, all you can do is just sit and wait. Then, that’s really just a wish. 

R – Realistic Goal

You may be tempted to set a really audacious goal. That’s all great. However, it should be realistic for you to accomplish it in the time frame you’ve given yourself. If it’s not then you’re just setting yourself up for failure, and secondly, as soon as you start seeing that it’s not possible you will just feel demotivated and possibly give up too early. 

T – Timely Goal

Your goal must have a deadline. Define it clearly by a specific date. A goal without a deadline is a wish. We don’t wish here. Period.  Now it’s a good time to tell you about the two kinds of goals you can set. 

1. Result goal – which is the actual outcome at the end. This may be something like: weigh 83kg. 
2. Process goal – which is usually some kind of activity you want to sustain: go to the gym 3 x per week. 

A result goal should have a process goal assigned to it.  I think of result goals as the WHAT I want to accomplish, and the process goals are the HOW I’m going to achieve it. 

Find your WHY

When you set your goal(s) for your life macro groups, it’s time to set some fire under them (to make them fly or to burn them). 

Take each goal and think WHY you set it.
WHY do you want to achieve it?
WHY is it important enough to pursue it for months?
What kind of impact will it have on your life when you achieve it?
What kind of impact would it have on your life if you won’t achieve it?

Write a few sentences or paragraphs on your WHY.

The more you feel it, the more emotional your WHY is, the better.

When you start thinking and writing about your why you may find out that the goal is actually not that important. If so, scrap it.

Unimportant goals are not worth pursuing and wasting energy on. Find a better and more exciting goal.

Think about the WHAT IFs

If you want to make your goal bulletproof, think about the most likely challenges and obstacles to come up, particularly when it comes to you and your commitment, consistency, self-discipline, but also logistical challenges etc.

Brainstorm the top 3-5 most likely to come up (looking back on your previous attempts and failures is a good idea) and think of either what you’d do to prevent it or if the roadblock is about to creep up again.

An example would be: Your goal is to go to the gym regularly, but you know that you usually get bored of the same exercises after some time and quit.

In that case, it would be a good idea to mix it up a bit and throw in different classes every now and then as well as changing your routine regularly.

Vaccinate against challenges and roadblocks.

Well, there you go.

This is my goal-setting process. Simple and straight forward. It will help you be more strategic with your goals and increases your chances of achieving your goals, and that’s why you’re here. Hope it helps. Leave me a comment.

If you’d like to work with me in 2020 and make sure you reach your goals, contact me and let’s schedule the initial discovery session and find out if we’d be the right match. Check out my YouTube channel