The Secret to Setting Goals You’ll Actually Achieve
Back in 2018, I finally had the right motivation to make significant changes in my life, but struggled with how to turn those ideas into action. Despite being a high-achiever with a string of past roles at high-performing companies across Finance, Consulting, and Startups, I had never set personal goals for myself. There was always a fear that if I set goals then I’d feel too pressured or overwhelmed to achieve them. Or if I didn’t hit my goals, I would somehow be a failure. The key to overcoming my fears was to adopt a growth mindset and create a goal-setting process that would make it “dummy-proof” for myself to succeed. In the end, I successfully set and executed my first few goals and now I am a "Goal Setting Queen". So here is the secret to setting goals that you will actually achieve. Just follow my ESEA method (pronounced like "easy”) .
(E) Explore Where You Want to Go
Before we jump into goal setting, we first want to take a step back and understand what we are trying to achieve. We’ll set very different goals based on the timeline we set for ourselves. Before we jump in and name a goal, take that step back to set the parameters.
If this is your first time setting major goals for yourself, I’d start with setting an annual goal and then break it down into 90 day goals or just focus on a single 90 day goal. If you are more experienced at setting goals for yourself, a combination of long-term goals and short-term goals is ideal. I set goals on an annual basis as my longer term vision, then break those into quarterly goals, which are further broken down into monthly goals. Then I set and review my goals on a weekly basis. No matter what you decide, it helps to identify the timeline you want to work towards before jumping into the goal setting process.
The last thing we want to do to prepare for our goal setting session is to reflect back on the prior year, quarter, month, or week (whatever timeline you are working towards). We can gain inspiration, confidence, and motivation by first pausing to reflect on what has just happened. What did you like about what you accomplished in the prior period? What do you want more of? What do you want to change? What surprised you? All these questions serve to help us gather our thoughts before settling on our new goals.
(S) Set Your Goals
Now that we have some ideas about where we want to go, we are ready to actually set our goals. There are a few best practices we want to follow when crafting our goals to set ourselves up for success.
First, we want to actually write our goals down. Do not keep your goals in your head. This may sound simple or obvious, but it can make a major difference in your success. The simple act of writing down your goals will help you be more likely to achieve your goals and there is science to back us up here. You don’t have to get fancy, you can simply write them down in a regular notebook, or on index cards. But if you do want to get fancy, I’m a big fan of the MiGoals notebooks as they dummy proof the goal setting process for you using best-in-class practices in their notebook design. Yes, you have to wait for the notebooks to ship from Australia, but it's worth it in my opinion.
Next we want to use the SMART goal method for crafting the language of our goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timebound. Ensure that your goals meet the criteria for SMART goals. I find that the most challenging part is finding the right level of difficulty for your goals. This is a bit of an artform that may take some practice. The idea is that if a goal is too easy, it undermines our motivation and we may not focus on achieving it. On the other hand, if a goal is too difficult or challenging it may undermine our confidence and motivation resulting in us shutting down and abandoning the goal.
If this is your first time engaging in a formal goal setting activity, I am a fan of setting easier goals because it helps build your confidence, shows you how the process works, and encourages you to keep moving forward. But at the end of the day, part of our process is revisiting and revising goals (see later in the article) so just pick a goal so you can get started.
The last step we want to take once we have crafted and written down our goal is to tell someone about it. Sharing your goals increases your chances of accomplishing the goal. Let’s face it, humans are social creatures who hate to embarrass themselves and tend to give in to social pressures. This time we can use this “flaw” to our advantage. When we tell others about our goals we create more accountability and commitment towards our goals. We may even be able to gather feedback or advice that can help us accomplish our goals. Whether you want to text your best friend, post your goals on social media, or share your goals in a networking group, just find some way to communicate your intentions to someone else.
(E) Executing The Goals
Great, so we have our expertly crafted goals written down and we even told others about these goals. Now comes the part where people start to falter, which is the execution of the goals. In order to ensure we stay committed to our goals and they don’t get abandoned by February, there are a few things we can do.
One of the most important steps you can take to be successful in executing your goals is to break down your goals into smaller subgoals or subtasks. Anytime we have to pause and ask ourselves, “Now what?”, we have created an opening for us to bail on ourselves. So we need to fill in the gaps from the start and help lay out the plan to achieve our goals. We do this by taking our goals and breaking them down into smaller tasks or subgoals that make it more obvious what we need to do next.
For example, when I decided on a big audacious goal of going back to get my Masters degree, I went ahead and created smaller 90-day goals to help me make it a reality. In order to complete a Masters degree, I first needed to research different programs and schools. I had been doing that on-and-off for a few years with not much to show for it. By using the SMART method, I had myself narrow down my research to the top 5 program options and gave myself 90 days to complete that task. Next, I created a goal to take the GRE in case I needed it for the program I chose. I broke this up into a subgoal for completing a 90-day study program followed by a subgoal of taking the actual exam. Then there was a goal around completing my applications, then selecting a school, and then finally I would start a program. If I had left my goal at “Get a Masters degree” I might have felt overwhelmed or unclear about how to make that a reality and thus abandoned the goal. Breaking down goals helps us create a visual trail of breadcrumbs so we don’t get lost (and panic) on our journey.
Speaking of visualizing, it also helps if we visualize the potential challenges we may face. If there is one thing we learned in 2020, it is life is full of surprises and setbacks. When setting goals, it helps to think about the potential challenges that could get in the way of us accomplishing our goals. Why? Because once we can visualize a challenge we can then start to think about how we can overcome that challenge or what we will do to avoid that situation. This will help us increase our resilience as we won’t feel as lost if/when a setback occurs. Now we have a headstart on thinking about ways to overcome those challenges.
(A) Acknowledge Your Progress
The most important part about setting goals happens much later in the process. This last stage of the goal setting process is to build in time to acknowledge our progress along the way. We accomplish this by setting “checkpoints”, which are times set aside to revisit and reflect on your goals. Even if we do a poor job with writing our goals, having a set date and cadence to revisit, reflect, and revise our goals will help us accomplish more.
Our goals should not be set in stone. That is the beauty of the revisiting process which is where we reflect on what has occurred since we set our goals. We reflect on what is going well, where we got off track, and whether the goal still makes sense. Based on that reflection we can revise our goals accordingly. Perhaps we were too cautious in our goal setting and now we have seen some early success and feel like we can make our goal even more ambitious. Or perhaps a global pandemic hit and we need to revise our goals completely for them to make sense for the rest of the year. When we have a regular cadence for reviewing our goals, we become smarter at setting and executing goals.
If we want to encourage ourselves to set goals on a regular basis instead of as a one-time New Years resolution, we also need to remember to stop and celebrate our accomplishments. Don’t blow past this part and move directly into setting a new goal. Take a moment to acknowledge your work and your accomplishments. Particularly when we have longer term goals, we need to be open to celebrating the small wins. I wrote an entire article about the importance of celebrating small win. It is one of the best ways to develop a growth mindset and maintain your motivation. It also helps you with the concept of positive inquiry, a method from Positive Psychology that helps us focus on what is working well instead of what is broken. This acknowledgment gives us the motivation we need to keep moving forward. Soon enough, you will realize goal-setting has become a habit for you.
If you follow the ESEA method you’ll learn to not to just set personal goals for yourself, but also to create an ongoing iterative process instead of a one-time exercise. It can take some time to get used to the goal setting process. So remember to be kind to yourself, be patient, and like everything in life, practice makes perfect.
If you want access to my FREE digital daily planner to help you manage your daily goal setting, you can download it here.
