#1 — Plan, Plan, and Plan Some More
There is absolutely zero chance of achieving your goals without planning. Goal achievement requires ample planning so that you know what direction you’re traveling in. But this doesn’t mean you need to know every single step you’ll take.Think about an airplane for a moment. An airplane has a goal of taking off and landing in a specific city, on a specific date, and at a specific time. In order to achieve that goal, the plane needs to make a plan — also known as its flight plan.
But that flight plan can change. At the outset, it only accounts for some averages, such as average speed, average altitude, and general course of travel. But things can and do change along the way due to air traffic congestion, turbulence, and other factors. So the plane needs to adjust its plan accordingly.
Similarly, you need to create a plan that you can stick to, but then adjust along the way towards achieving your goals. Don’t change the goal, but you can and should change the plan as often as needed to get closer to your goals.
#2 — Create Discipline
No goal can be achieved without discipline. Even if you write out your goals and set them the right way, without discipline, following through becomes next to impossible.To achieve discipline, you need order and organization in your life. When things are chaotic, and you’re losing your grip on things, it’s far harder to stay focused on achieving your goals. But order and organization leads to discipline, which in turn leads to goal achievement
#3 — Lessen Distractions
It’s easy to get distracted in life. We have things that pull us in multiple directions. We veer off course, moving in one tangent after another. But distractions lessen the likelihood of achieving our goals. We need to lessen the distractions in our lives so that we remained focused.Take a good look at where distractions are originating from in your life, and work to eliminate the ones that suck up all of your time. This includes excessive socializing, channel surfing, social media, and any other time-wasters.
By removing the distractions, we lend more free time to pursue our goals rather than focusing on the things that don’t matter as much. You likely know where much of your free time is going already, and what distractions are eating away at your schedule. Do your best to eliminate those.
#4 — Create Milestones
Milestones are helpful markers that you can create en-route to your goals. Simply take your long-term goal of one or more years, and break that goal up into milestones. Create monthly and weekly milestones that will help you stay on track.If you actually created a measurable goal, then creating milestones is easy. Just break up the long-term goal into equal parts. For example, to lose 60 pounds within 1 year, you need to lose 5 pounds per month or 1.25 pounds per week.
Milestones are far more manageable because it helps us see the short-term results that will lead us to our long-term outcomes. It’s more finite and manageable on a day-to-day basis, since the long-term goals can oftentimes overwhelm us.
#5 — Overcome Procrastination
It affects everyone near and far. But letting procrastination overcome you, can result in a slow and steady goal-achievement death. It’s easy to allow our natural tendencies to put things off for later to become habitual, so we have to do what it takes to rid procrastination from our lives.
We can’t achieve lofty goals by procrastinating. If you have a tendency to procrastinate, then you need to implement some strategies for taking back control of your life. Start with the 15-minute rule. Set a timer on your phone and dedicate yourself to doing something for 15 minutes that you’ve been putting off.Why 15 minutes? It helps build momentum. It moves you in the direction that you’re after by only promising a small commitment to yourself. But, what you’ll find is that after those 15 minutes are up, you’ll keep going. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. Give it a try.
#6 — Effectively Manage Your Time
Time management is a strategy that anyone can use to achieve their goals. In fact, this single strategy, if implemented well enough, can help anyone achieve even the most loftiest of goals.Time management helps us to avoid distractions while also utilizing the one resource that we all have in common: time. No one person in the world has more time than the other. Time is the great equalizer across the planet.
How do you use your time? Do you spend it the right way, ensuring that you’re allocating a good amount of time towards achieving your goals? Or do you squander it away? Be open and honest with yourself while implementing a system that works for you.
#7 — Tackle Your MITs First Thing in the A.M.
Your MITs, or your Most Important task of day, are those things that you can do right now, today, to move you closer to your long-term goals. In time management, these are also called your quadrant 2 activities, or the important but not urgent tasks.Mark Twain called these our “frogs,” and is famous for saying that “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
Twain was referring to the MITs that we all have in a given day. Focus your morning ritual on tackling your MITs every single day and watch as your progress towards your goals takes enormous leaps forward over time.
#8 – Leverage the 80/20-Rule
The 80/20-Rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts. In sales, this also means that 80% of the sales comes from 20% of the clients. It’s your job to identify the 20% of your efforts that are producing 80% of your results, then amplify those efforts.To identify your 80/20, you need to audit your activities related to your goals. What efforts are you putting in and what outcomes are you receiving from those efforts? Of course, the only way to ensure you determine this properly is by constantly measuring your results on a daily basis.
This isn’t a simple procedure since we’re such creatures of habit, but when you can find your 80/20, you can really take your results to the next level.
#9 – Anticipate Failure
Failure is common when trying to achieve goals. The biggest part about failure is that we often don’t anticipate it. So, when we do fail, it’s far harder to deal with. But, when you anticipate failure, you can better cope with it, and adjust your plans accordingly.The most successful people in the world have failed the most times. Even famous one. And when you can anticipate failure, you can expect it and use them as stepping-stones, not allowing them to deaden your spirit as you work to achieve your goals.
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