What do you want to achieve? Before you decide what, you want to achieve with your life. Review where you are going, are you clear about this? Take time out to think about and write down your goals for your life?

Write it down

Research shows that only 3% of people write down their goals, and on average these people earn 10 times those who don’t have goals. Plus, research shows that people with up-to-date written goals are as much as 3100% more successful than people who do not have up to date written goals.

And make sure your goals don’t conflict with things you want to do in other areas of your life like relationships and work.

SMART goals

Make sure that the goals you write are SMART. What does this mean? It stands for:

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timed

What does it mean to you in reality?

Once you have written down your goal as a SMART goal, think about what the effects would be if you didn’t achieve it. What is the pain that you and those you love will experience if you don’t achieve your goal, i.e. ill health, poverty, unhappiness etc. (Why do this? Because recognising this pain is an enormous motivating force that will help you to work even harder to make sure you don’t fail!)

Then decide what you will gain when you succeed – i.e. wealth, health, happiness, a prosperous retirement etc. What will you see, hear, and feel? And what else will your success allow you to achieve/do? And finally write down the key things you will need to achieve your goal. For example, it could be new learnings, health, timing, actions etc.

Repeat this process using a new sheet for every single goal you would like to achieve.

Prioritise

Next try and prioritise the goals you have written. Lay out all your goals in front of you and decide which are the most important to you, which are less important, and which (if any) are, on reflection, not important after all. For each goal that is still important, work out how you will achieve it, break it down into smaller steps to make it easier to manage. Plan in timescales to do each step, write them into your diary or planner. That way you make reaching your goals part of your daily activities.

Look at your where your time goes

It’s worth having a look at how you spend your time now, and comparing this to the way you would like your life to happen. Then you can fit your goals into this as well.

To do this, list out the broad areas of your life that are important to you e.g. family, friends, business, health, fitness, money etc. Make a note of the percentage of your waking time that you would like to spend in each of these areas in an ideal world (make sure that the column adds up to 100%). Estimate approximately the percentage of your waking time you think you are spending in each area at the moment. Then calculate the gap between the two. Looking at the gaps does it suggest that you need to make changes to achieve your goals? If it does what changes are you going to make?

Next steps

Think carefully about everything you have just done and thought about. What are the implications for what you are doing in your business and your life – and what you should be doing? Transfer the things you should be doing to an action planner. Keep this somewhere where you won’t lose sight of it, so that you are reminded daily about what you want to achieve.

Often talking to a counsellor or coach to discuss what else you can do to achieve your goals as they can be more objective and help you to focus on the right things.