How to set, organize, monitor and achieve your goals
The beginning of a New Year is the right time for setting goals and New Year's resolutions. For the majority of people, though, they tend to be forgotten before the end of the first month. So, how do you set your goals right and make sure you consistently keep pursuing them along the year? Bellow is my step-by-step tried and trusted process for keeping my goals accountable, relevant and atainable.
Step 1: Start with pen and paper
Step 2: Prioritizing and organizing your goals
Step 4: Keeping track of goals and keeping goals on track
Step 5: Breaking goals into smaller tasks
Step 7: Accountability and evaluation of goals
Step 8: Electing your Top Priority Goals
Step 9 (extra): Dealing with the unexpected
1. Start with pen and paper
The first step is to write down your goals. You can start by dividing a blank piece of paper in four or more sections.
Write down the areas of your life you think need some [improvement]. For instance; relationship goals, health goals, financial goals, etc, and begin writing things you would like to do in each of those fields.
Let's say; organizing, supppose you would like to sort through a messy home to get rid of clutter and donate some old unused itens for charity. Or every year you wish to start eating healthy and exercizing. In relationships, you may want to reach out old acquaintances but never seem to find time. You get the idea, right it down.
2. Prioritizing and organizing your goals
Having in mind that you're only one person to acomplish all those goals, it's better to list them one after another, keeping a classification tag with its category before it.
Can you just keep the paper(s) you've filled on the previous step, with the goals divided by area? Well, you can, but that's not the more efficient approach because you won't divide yourself during a said slot of time, that means you'll need to work on each of them, even if broken in smaller steps, in a linear timeline.
A simple () or [] markup will do. The tag is useful to monitor the acomplishment of goals by area. They should look something like this:
- (relationship)get in touch with old friends
- (health)exercize
- (health)cook healthy meals
- (organizing)donate old stuff
Now, they are ready to be rearranged in priority order.
3. Goal Purgatory List
Once you've done that (arranging goals in priority order), you can start working on them according to your daily schedule.
Most goals depend on oneself's dedication to it, but, eventually, they may be impacted by action (or not) of others. Those goals may be important, thus you won't want to keep them out of your list even you're unable to tell when the ball will be with you again.
So you set them apart in the Purgatory List and now we are going to see how to make sure you don't give them up along the year.
4. Keeping track of goals and keeping goals on track
The title of this section must have reminded you of Martha Stewart's motto*; I'm huge fan of her organization tips.
*"A place for everything and everything on its place."
So, I divided the Purgatory of Goals in 'keep it' (monthly/weekly/daily), 'depend mainly upon me', 'depend on others' and 'maybe' goals.
Then, look for your already stablished routine through the preliminary list and put them under the 'keep it' group in the Purgatory Goal List only as a reminder. Why you need to include them? Well, a good example is exercizing: imagine you already walk 30 minutes everyday after work and you want to break a plateau.
This is already part of your daily routine, but also counts with your disposition and determination for pursuing other goals and therefore must be considered as a improvement in your habits that will require your self-command and energy for being implemented.
Another setback that happens often is one to forget about conquered new habits when working on other improvements. In such case, when reaching a new goal, another area will suffer. Thus, the ongoing habits that are not mandatory are better wrote down in order to prevet that from happening to you.
Classify the remaining goals by separating the ones you could start imediately from the ones that need to wait on someone's else action or will.
5. Breaking goals into smaller tasks
We can analys each goal's feasability in more detail by breaking them into smaller tasks. You will find that 'eating healthy' may become extremely vague if you don't divide it into smaller steps. This could be broken into:
(health)eating heathy:
- planning a menu
- walking to the fresh farmer's shop twice a week after work
- cooking saturday morning
- freezing meals
- taking portions out of the freezer each night and/or moring
- heating the food
- cooking some quick side dish
Eventually, you may find that you'll also need to include buying a few new utensils, planting some fresh herbs or looking for recipes.
For goals that depend upon others, or any other goal that can't be broken into smaller tasks, you can ask: what can I do about it? And come up with ideas to help achieve it. Don't forget to write them down along your goals.
6. Goals month by month
Once you prioritized your goals and started breaking them into smaller tasks, you can distribute them by month.
If you have content planning goals, a calendar with this year's celebration and holiday events may be helpful.
I currently keep my goals in a .doc file in a text editor, but have already used Trello in the past and their drag and drop, horizontal folder display is perfect for this job.
7. Accountability and evaluation of goals
It's a good idea to check periodically if your goals are being met so you don't run the risk of coming to the end of the year without achieving them, and, in case they´re not, you can adjust your schedule.
It's also good to review your goals from time to time, to see if they fit within the big picture of your life plan and inner motivations.
For that, you must be aware of your priorities and motivations, and ask yourself: is this helping me in the path to what's really important for me? if not, maybe you'd better drop this goal or change it for another one.
8. Electing your Top Priority Goals
When you reflect about your life's purpose and motivations while reviewing and evaluating your goals, you may find out that you have too many goals to achieve in the interval of one year.
If that's also the case with you, you must elect your Top Priority Goals. Those are the ones you need to make sure are being acomplished each month.
It's a bit like evaluating each goal, only now you go through your Priority List and also compare it your other goals when you reflect about your your life's true purpose, needs and motivations.
Doing this is useful because, although you've already ordered them by priority once, you may be working on more then one goal according to your free time schedule. By electing your top priority ones, you know where you need to make the cut and reviewing the amount of time you're dedicating to each of them.
9. Dealing with the unexpected
When you start working on your goals, eventually you may need to deal with unforeseen events, such as an acident, illness or any other setback.
If those things happen, also make them part of your goal list. For instance, recovering from an illness may need to take the first place in your Priority List, depending upon the severity of the situation and/or impact on the execution of your goals.
By including the measures needed for dealing with unforeseen events on your goal list, you don't loose sight of your goals, keep motivated and organise yourself better.
Follow those steps and you're on a sure path for achieving your goals. Happy goal setting!
Read it in detail @ Ghost Blogger:
Part I: Setting, prioritizing and organizing your goals
Part II: Keeping track of goals and keeping goals on track
Edited on July 18, 2025
Illustrations by Bianca Van Dijk.
Comments
Post a Comment