How to Set Goals for the Year and Actually Achieve Them
When I was younger, I set new year's resolutions: workout every day, eat healthier, make my bed every day. Like everyone, I started off the year stoked about getting a fresh start. I was finally going to get in perfect shape. I was finally going to eat healthy every day. I was finally going to keep my room tidy consistently. How many of you actually stuck to that? Did any of you honestly workout every day for 365 days? After about two weeks, give or take, you probably started to get side tracked. Life got in the way and you started focusing on other things. You thought "Well I guess there's always next year".
As I grew older I started to realize my new year's resolutions were always based around me not being good enough. They were focused on bettering myself, in what I thought was a healthy way, but ultimately, I set such high goals that the moment I skipped a work out, or had that pastry, I considered myself a failure. I failed my new year's resolution.
For the past few years I honestly didn't make any serious resolutions. I may have thought of things I wanted to do differently, but I never set up an action plan to achieve my goals.
This year, I decided to change my approach completely. I created goals based around topics that would make me more fulfilled and happier. I won't share all of my business related goals, but I will share some with you.
I started by thinking of both business and personal goals:
Business goals:
1. Meet more people / research events weekly
2. Create and utilize content calendars for real estate and my blog
3. Write one blog post per week
Personal goals:
1. Exercise and meditate 5x/week
2. Drink 70 oz of water a day
3. Read a book a month (or 1 large book in 2 months)
4. Get up between 7:15 and 7:30 am on week days
I then broke these goals down into actions that could be accomplished each week and checked off:
B1.
[ ] Join and check local Facebook groups
[ ] Check Meetup
[ ] Check Eventbrite / other event sites
B2.
[ ] Create real estate content calendar
[ ] Real estate FB and Insta post
__ Sunday __ Monday __ Tuesday __ Wednesday __ Thursday __ Friday __ Saturday
[ ] Boost real estate post
[ ] Create blog content calendar
[ ] Blog Insta post
__ Sunday __ Monday __ Tuesday __ Wednesday __ Thursday __ Friday __ Saturday
[ ] Boost blog Insta post
B3.
[ ] Write blog post
P1.
[ ] Exercise 5x
__ Sunday __ Monday __ Tuesday __ Wednesday __ Thursday __ Friday __ Saturday
[ ] Meditate 5x
__ Sunday __ Monday __ Tuesday __ Wednesday __ Thursday __ Friday __ Saturday
P2.
[ ] Drink 490 oz of water (70 oz / day)
__ Sunday __ Monday __ Tuesday __ Wednesday __ Thursday __ Friday __ Saturday
P3.
[ ] Read Ch. 5-7 in Toxic Beauty (for example)
__ Ch. 5 __ Ch. 6 __ Ch. 7
P4.
[ ] Get up between 7:15 and 7:30 am on week days
__ Monday __ Tuesday __ Wednesday __ Thursday __ Friday
I'm a big list maker so checking off these items and tracking my progress each day feels SO good. It has also makes me more aware of how I spend my time. I've been using this method for two weeks now and the results are so interesting! I would have thought that the easiest things to check off would be the most mindless tasks, or the most enjoyable ones. Interestingly, those are the ones I'm struggling with!
In the past two weeks, I've certainly been drinking more water than I was but not as much as my 70 oz goal - more like 16 - 40 oz per day. Also, in case you didn't know, I LOVE reading. You know how many pages I've read? ZERO! How insane is that!? I have this really weird guilt thing with reading. If I have any thoughts of work to-do's still lingering in my head, I can't bring myself to open a book and just chill because I feel like I'm slacking. Please tell me some of you get this? It's definitely something I need to work on - allowing myself to relax. If you guys have any pointers I'm all ears!
I've been way more consistent with my Instagram content, for both real estate, and my blog, and I've signed up for a couple local events/meetups. Overall, I'm feeling pretty good! It's a work in progress and that's exactly what this goal structure is meant for. If you don't check off every box, every week, that's totally OKAY! If you did somehow achieve all your goals in the first week, I'd suggest upping your goal difficulty or adding on new ones. They're goals for a reason. You have to work toward them. Success doesn't happen overnight.
In addition to this goal setting technique and tracking system, I wanted to reflect further on 2018 and come up with improvement points. These are items that aren't necessarily able to be tracked - some are but others aren't. Think of them more as thoughts to keep in your subconscious that will influence your decisions and actions. What the heck do I mean by that? Maybe it's just easier if I tell you what I came up with:
1. Think less, act more - regarding feeling guilty for reading / relaxing; also regarding doing simple daily tasks like tidying up - instead of letting a task consume your thoughts and dreading doing it, just get it done!
Action: set aside an hour or so each day to do something fun - allow myself to relax; also challenge myself to continuously make headway on the seemingly never ending to-do-list
2. Make more memories
Action: spend time wisely; take more photos; be more spontaneous; PLAN THAT TRIP!
3. Learn more - regarding beauty ingredients, nutrition, real estate, investing
Action: read more
4. Focus more on the positives
Action: discuss positive events, big and small; use 52 Lists for Happiness book; acknowledge the bigger picture; discuss things to be grateful for and move on from negative events that happened that day
Writing all my thoughts down on paper helped make me so much more clear headed. I hope these techniques help you figure out and achieve your goals for this year, month, week, etc!
I would love to hear what you're working towards and how I can help. Be sure to comment below! As always, I'd love to hear from you.