by 3 years ago | 4 Min Read
We all have goals we want to accomplish but most of us will probably end up falling short. Having a vision for your future is a positive thing but if you want to make it a reality, you need to have a plan and then put that plan into action. It’s ok to think big, as long as you’re willing to put in the work. Most people overestimate the amount of goals they can accomplish in a year but they also underestimate the amount of goals they can accomplish in a decade. Trust the process and keep working. You might even end up surprising yourself with the quality of your results.
The first step is to think about all of the things you want to accomplish within the next year. You’ll want to categorize them into different groups, such as personal, career, love/connection, growth/spirituality etc. Think about the way you will feel when you accomplish each of these goals. This will help you visualize your future self accomplishing them.
Next, you’ll want to prioritize your goals. Think about why you want to accomplish each of these goals and what they will do for you, your life and your community. For example, you might have 10 career goals but 3 of them are particularly important to you. Another important thing to consider is how much you will advance yourself by accomplishing each goal. If one of your goals will particularly help you accomplish some of your other goals, you should prioritize accomplishing that goal first.
Finally, you’ll want to set a specific structure for working towards your goals. The bigger your goals are, the less control you have over them. Because of this, you’ll want to set short, medium and long term goals for yourself, as described by Angela Duckworth in her book “Grit”. Figure out what your long term goal is and work your way backwards. What would be a good medium term goal that would help you move closer to accomplishing your long term goal? Once you find your medium term goal, you’ll want to repeat the process and find the short term goal that will help you accomplish your medium term goal.
While you won’t have much control over your long term goal, you should choose a short term goal that you have total or almost total control over accomplishing. For example, your long term goal might be to become an NBA basketball player. You don’t have much control over that goal, so a good medium term goal would be to be a starter on your college’s basketball team, since that will significantly improve your chances of being drafted into the NBA. Even becoming a Division 1 college starter is something you don’t have much control over, though. That means you will want to choose a short term goal that you have a lot of control over. With this particular example, a good short term goal would be to shoot 1,000 free throws, 1,000 3 pointers and 1,000 lay ups each day. You might also want to spend at least an hour practicing dribbling or other fundamental moves. It’s not an easy short term goal to accomplish but it’s one that you have almost full control over being able to accomplish on a daily basis.
Accomplishing goals takes hard work and dedication. Now that you know the process to setting and accomplishing goals, you will have a much better chance at being successful. As long as you think about your goals, categorize them, prioritize them, set a solid plan to accomplish them and stick to that plan, I’m confident you can accomplish almost any goal you set for yourself.
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I hope that you’ve found value in this blog post! Feel free to share it with anyone that you think will benefit from it as well.
If you’d like to hear more of my thoughts on this subject, you can check out my video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odB3NDl5Btw
If you’d like to be even more effective as an entrepreneur, check out my blog post on 3 Important Things To Know About Your Brain.
