How to Set and Accomplish Goals for This New Year…and Beyond

Goals should light a fire under you! If your goals don't bring you joy, it can make you keep putting them off, or if you do start working on them, you’ll soon abandon them. Goal achievement requires commitment, and commitment is hard enough in itself. It becomes overwhelming when the task feels onerous to you.

If your goals bring a smile to your face, you have the best possible chance of meeting them. So, how do you make sure they do?

1. Define the purpose and importance of the goal. Ask yourself: Why do I want to do this? or What do I want it for; what purpose does it serve? How will my life, business, relationship, etc., change when I achieve this goal? Write down the answers and determine how significant an impact the goal will have. Understanding the weight of it will give you a sense of purpose, and this will keep you motivated during the tough times.
2. Break it down into small tasks. Short-term goals help you achieve immediate things, and the feeling of wrapping something up builds your sense of accomplishment. That way, the goal gains impetus as time goes by instead of your enthusiasm for it dwindling. Some of these interim goals will take only hours or days (these are mini-goals), and others will take weeks or months to realize, depending on the scope of the main goal. If it’s far-reaching, some of its lesser components may take years. A good friend of mine set a career goal that spanned decades. She shares how that turned out:

"I fell in love with Spanish from the first class in it I ever took. After nine years of study, I could read it OK, writing was adequate though laborious, and carrying on a conversation was beyond me. I decided that what I lacked was a goal, and I determined that it should be something that seemed out of reach so I would have to really strive for it. I decided I didn’t just want to become fluent in Spanish; I would not stop short of being bilingual. I broke this down into a list of ideas that could move me forward, like researching the best-rated workbooks, listening only to Spanish music while driving, watching Spanish TV and movies, and reading favorite books translated into Spanish. These tasks had to be things I would enjoy so I would stick with them…well, not so much the workbooks. Interim goals included hiring a tutor and later going to a foreign country for immersion. When the opportunity to move to a Spanish-speaking country came along, I went for it. After living here for five years, I reached professional working proficiency – cause for celebration! The experience of working with Spanish has led to full professional proficiency, and today anyone would say I’m bilingual. Now if I could just get rid of this slight accent..."

No matter the timeline of your overarching goal, reaching shorter-term goals will keep you walking toward your main objective.

3. Make an action plan. You’ll need a clear strategy: Write it all down and keep it where you will see it often.
• Brainstorming: Include your team on the strategy build, so you get new ideas and perspectives that can improve your line of attack.
• Do a SWOT analysis. You can apply this to your business or personal goals to create a strong approach that takes advantage of your strengths and improves your areas of weakness. Look for opportunities that could arise and create strategies to avoid the threats.
4. Track performance and adjust the plan as needed. Organizations must review their strategies regularly to compete satisfactorily and avoid the threats that time brings with it, responding to them in innovative ways.  "We cannot solve problems by thinking in the same way as when we created them."– attributed to Albert Einstein
5. Stick with it by celebrating your achievements. Recognizing the goals successfully achieved is paramount, as it inspires you to keep working and overcoming obstacles to achieve everything you set out to do. Putting yourself under heavy pressure and punishing yourself for missing a goal can be destructive. Remember that there is always an opportunity to start doing things right and achieve the goals you set.

Follow the Golden Rule of Goal-Setting

Set SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time Bound.

Indeed.com demonstrates how to turn the goal “I want to be in leadership” into a SMART goal.

S Specific—narrow it down: "I want to earn a position managing a development team for a startup tech company."

M = Measurable: "I will apply to three open positions for the manager of a development team at a tech startup."

A = Attainable: "I will update my resume with relevant qualifications, so I can apply to three open positions for the manager of a development team at a tech startup."

R = Relevant: "To achieve my goal of being in leadership, I will update my resume with relevant qualifications so I can apply to three open positions for the manager of a development team at a tech startup.”

T = Time-Bound: "To achieve my goal of being in leadership, I will update my resume with relevant qualifications so I can apply to three open positions for the manager of a development team at a tech startup this week."

There's No Knowing Where Your Goals May Lead

Reaching your goals is one of the most fulfilling things in life, and it often brings unexpected rewards along the way. My friend got to live in a tropical paradise. A coworker of mine says that he built great relationships with people he met as he pursued his career goal with one company, and these relationships have continued even after moving on to another job.

My child has autism, and we started seeing that in our country all courses on autism had a cost. So we set a goal to start teaching about this topic to the community and teachers around us without charging them anything. We started a project with the help of our best friends. We contacted some professionals and asked if they were willing to come to our area and do a workshop about autism for interested teachers and families. We published those activities on a Facebook page, and many professionals (psychologists, therapists, doctors, teachers) from different areas called us because they liked the idea. And at the end of that year, we were getting calls from all over the country to support them with speeches about the topic. Speakers and other people volunteered their time and knowledge to help organize the event. This ended up spreading the courses around our country and helping other families and teachers that need some guidance about the spectrum. After some years, we can see how many other people started teaching about autism at no cost.

Goals sometimes surprise us. Just be open-minded and ready to embrace change.