Everyone wants to know the best system for accomplishing goals. I’ve experimented with many existing systems to create a system that works for me. This system focuses on leveraging every minute and laser focusing on a few goals instead of many. In this blog post, I’ll go deep into my current system for accomplishing goals.
Identify 3-4 Goals For Each Month
I give myself a one month deadline to get my important goals accomplished. I also set quarterly goals and few annual goals, but I focus on monthly goals.
Giving myself less time for goal achievement forces me to take more action and get out of my comfort zone. If I think I can accomplish a goal in four weeks, I’ll give myself three weeks to accomplish the same goal. I’m always pushing the envelop.
Track These Goals
While I write my daily goals on sticky notes, I actively track my monthly goals on a Numbers file. Although this Numbers file doesn’t contain many of my goals (I started in November 2017), this file will increase in size and fill up with more goals.
At the end of each month, I write down how I performed. While it’s easy for me to remember how I performed in the moment, it will be more difficult to remember five months from now.
Journaling my performance and keeping all of the goals in one file allows me to analyze past months to see my strengths and weaknesses. I may have more difficulty accomplishing my goals under a certain context. I may have an easier time accomplishing quantitative goals as opposed to qualitative goals.
This system for accomplishing goals also allows me to acknowledge what I have accomplished. This is something few people give themselves the privilege of doing. We live in a go, go, go atmosphere that prevents us from realizing we’ve accomplished a lot already.
Realizing what you have accomplished will make it easier for you to accomplish the new goals you give yourself.
Set Weekly Milestones For These Goals
New Year’s resolutions don’t work because people think they have so much time to get their goals accomplished. At the time I write this blog post, it was the beginning of December, and I hustled big-time during that month. Not for my New Year’s resolutions, but because the end was near.
If you’re not careful for any deadline you set, you’ll put in no effort until the last week of the month, or worse, the last month of the year. That’s why it is important to set weekly milestones for your goals.
But not only is it important for you to set weekly milestones, but it’s also important for you to set the right milestones.
For December 2017, one of my goals was to land 7 new clients for my coaching services. If everyone else had that goal, here’s how most people would have planned week-by-week.
Week #1: Get 2 clients
Week #2: Get 2 clients
Week #3: Get 2 clients
Week #4: Get 1 clients
2+2+2+1=7, and there are your new clients.
While this looks like it works, it doesn’t. Effective milestones don’t focus on the target. They focus on the actions you take so you can reach that target. Here’s how I approached this goal.
I hypothesized I would get a 50% conversion rate once I got potential clients on the phone. Here’s how the milestones change.
Week #1: Call 4 people
Week #2: Call 4 people
Week #3: Call 4 people
Week #4: Call 2 people
At this point, you’d think we’re done. Just get this many calls per week, and as long as the hypothesis is true, I’ll get 7 clients.
We’re not quite there yet. You still need to get people on the phone. Let’s say that you expect 20% of the people you contact via email to take you up on the call. Here’s what the new structure looks like:
Week #1: Email 20 people about coaching services
Week #2: Email 20 people about coaching services
Week #3: Email 20 people about coaching services
Week #4: Email 10 people about coaching services
Do you see how we went from get 1-2 clients every week to emailing 10-20 people every week. The action oriented goal helps you achieve what you’re after, but if you limit your thinking to just getting 1-2 clients every week, you don’t know what effort you need to apply.
Action with no planning is of little use, and the deeper you look into what kind of effort is necessary for you to accomplish your goal, the more likely you are to accomplish that goal.
My Next Experimentation
After an additional month of monthly goals, I will set bi-weekly goals in a similar fashion. The idea behind bi-weekly goals is to get a month’s worth of goals accomplished in just two weeks. That would result in 24 months’ worth of work getting accomplished in one year.
I’ve already honed in on The 12 Week Year’s approach for goal achievement, but I will experiment with bi-weekly goals. I eventually strive to get more done in two weeks than most people get done in one quarter which is a faster rate than The 12 Week Year. We’ll see if that happens, but my goal is also a fancy title that I’ll solely determine based on how I feel about my effort.
I’ll update everyone after some experimenting. I recommend getting the rest of my system for accomplishing goals first.
In Conclusion
Once you have the system in place, all you need to do is determine when you’ll get the work done. Each person’s schedule is different, so it’s entirely up to you as long as you get into a routine.
When you pick out certain actions from your system and turn them into habits, you’ll know you’ve on the express lane of goal achievement.
What are your thoughts about my system for accomplishing goals? Do you have any tips for accomplishing our goals? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.
Success! You will receive your free eBook shortly.