How many times have you written goals at the beginning of the year, popped them in your drawer, and promptly forgotten about them?
If this is you, don’t worry; you’re not alone. We’ve been taught from a young age that the new year is the perfect time to start making massive, life-altering changes. “New year, new me” anyone?
But this doesn’t have to be the case. The new year is a great time to look forward and create a plan for the year, complete with some goals you want to achieve. This is where many people go wrong. They write the goals without figuring out a plan, which makes achieving the goals hard.
Here are our 8 steps for creating goals that actually work.
ANALYSE
Before you start with your goals for this year, it’s important to look back and analyse last year’s progress, whether that was towards your New Year’s Resolutions or just those that popped up throughout the year. Try to do this analysis with compassion. There’s no point beating yourself up about whether or not you managed to achieve your goals. It’s just going to make you feel bad about it.
Which ones did you manage to achieve vs which ones didn’t? Are there any recurring themes across the ones you did or didn’t achieve? Was achievement within your control, or were there external factors that affected it?
You might not achieve your year’s goals for a few reasons:
- You weren’t motivated to achieve them
- They were too big and unachievable
- You didn’t have a plan of how to achieve them
- You didn’t review them regularly
- You changed your mind and went in a different direction
- External factors made them difficult to achieve
- You forgot about them
Once you’ve analysed your progress on last year’s goals, you may find you have a clearer understanding of what goals you want to achieve this year and how you’re going to achieve them.
BRAINSTORM
Once you’ve looked back, we can look forward to your new year’s goals.
Now, it’s time to brainstorm. This exercise works best when you physically write rather than type, so grab yourself a piece (or two) of paper and write down what you might like to achieve throughout the year.
Your goals can be business-related, personal, for your well-being, to do with your family, or anything else – pretty much anything relevant to you and your life. Don’t forget to include any of last year’s goals that are still relevant and that you’d still like to achieve.
Try to write down everything. Even the outrageous ones that are unlikely to happen. Get it all out of your head and written down so that it’s now something concrete.
From here, we want to narrow them down. To do so, you can ask yourself some questions like:
Can any of these be grouped together? Are any of them part of or steps to achieve another goal?
Are any of them too big for this timeframe and need to be changed so they are achievable? Are any too small?
Is achieving these goals fully within your control? Who might you have to rely on to achieve them?
Do you have all the resources/knowledge/experience to achieve these goals right now?
Which ones are the most important?
Try to narrow it down to an achievable number of goals. What number is achievable for you will be a personal choice. It could be one huge goal for the entire year, six medium-sized ones, or if you don’t have anything big you want to achieve, it could be 52 smaller weekly goals.
ALIGN
Once you’ve brainstormed everything you’d like to achieve this year, we want to make sure they’re in alignment. Oftentimes, we create goals for ourselves based on what we think we SHOULD do or achieve rather than what we WANT to do or achieve. Sometimes, we even make them based on what we think other people think we should do or achieve. So, we must take time to ensure that these goals are fully aligned.
The first thing to reflect on is: What is important to you in your life? Is it money? Fame? Power? Spoiler alert: It’s probably not any of those things. We want to look deeper than that. We want to figure out the WHY behind your goals. WHY do you want to achieve them?
This WHY is the driving force that pushes you to achieve your goals. One way to figure this out is to keep asking yourself why you want the result. After each answer, ask yourself why that result is important. Keep asking yourself why until you have nowhere else to go. It might look like this:
“I want to have X clients this year. Why is it important that I get X number of clients? So my business is more profitable. Why is it important that it’s more profitable? So I have more money. Why do I need more money? So that I can pay off my mortgage. Why is that important?” And keep going until you get to the root of your goal.
We recommend doing this because working towards your goals is much easier when you have a convincing reason to achieve them.
CREATE
Now it’s time to write down what you want to focus on for the year. And what would a goal-setting blog be without mentioning SMART Goals?
SMART goals are written in a specific way to ensure that the objectives are clearly defined and can be achieved within a specific timeframe. The SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Writing your goals in this way can help you focus, prioritise, and ensure that it is achievable.
To write a SMART goal, you need to ensure that it follows the acronym letters. The more in-depth it is, the more motivating and achievable it is. Your SMART goal can be broken down like this:
S: Specific.
The more specific, the easier it is to follow through. Some questions you can ask yourself include: What needs to be accomplished? Who is responsible for it? What steps need to be taken to achieve it?
M: Measurable.
This is the KPI part of the goal, it makes it easier for you to track your progress and success. How will you measure whether you’ve succeeded? What measurable indicators will you encounter that will show you your progress?
A: Achievable.
Is this something you can actually achieve? If you don’t know or you’re concerned that you might be biting off more than you can chew, try having a range or a stretch goal that falls between “Piece of cake” and “OMG how on earth am I going to do this?!” This can reduce the pressure you feel, inspire you to push a little harder, and reduce disappointment if you don’t quite get there.
R: Relevant.
This is where the previous step of alignment comes in. Why are you setting this goal? This helps you to stay motivated to the very end.
T: Time-Bound.
This isn’t just the deadline for your goal, it can include anything time-related. These parameters help you to stay on track. When will you start? When will you end? When do certain tasks need to be done?
For each of these points, it’s important to go back and visit the ones before. Once you get to Time-Bound, make sure that that timing is Relevant and Achievable.
PLAN
Now you have your SMART goals, you can start to plan how you’re going to achieve them.
First, it’s important to write down ALL the steps you need to take to achieve them. If you can’t think of any, try working back from the end. Include every small thing you can think of. You might find there are gaps in your knowledge, people you need to lean on, and things that you don’t like to do. And that’s ok. Now that you’ve identified these, you can find solutions.
From here, you need to prioritise the tasks. Identify what order all the tasks need to be done in. Make the important tasks milestones, with realistic deadlines you want them to be done by. Order all the smaller tasks that contribute to the milestones in order of time and importance.
You might find that a project management system like Trello, Monday.com, or ClickUp will help you to organise and plan these things.
REVIEW
Once you’ve got your SMART goals and your plan, it’s time to make them smartER. The E and R in the acronym stand for Evaluate and Review. Evaluating and Reviewing are essential parts of success. You need to keep an eye on your progress and stay on track. It’s also important because sometimes what you think you want at the beginning of the year isn’t what you need. And it’s ok to review and change your goals as you need. So, book some time regularly to review your progress. The more regular, the better, so weekly or fortnightly are good frequencies to start with, although it may depend on your plan.
Having someone to keep you accountable is really useful when reviewing your progress. A business or personal coach, mentor, or friend can all help keep you on track. It’s also helpful to have someone that you can bounce ideas off when you’re struggling. They might be able to help because they have a different perspective, useful experience, or just by being there to listen. This is where your networking group can also be of use – by having a group of people who can keep you accountable, you can learn from, and who have different experiences to help you!
EMBODY
So, now you’ve done all of your planning for this year’s goals, we’re going to try something a little different. We’re going to look to the future, to when you have achieved them. The idea behind an embodiment practice like this is to create a situation in your mind where you’ve already achieved those goals. It prepares your mind for achievement and theoretically makes said achievement easier.
To do an embodiment practice, envisage what it’ll be like to achieve each of your goals. And this doesn’t just mean you’ll feel happy emotionally. Try to also imagine all the sensations you’ll experience within your body. What will it smell like? What will you taste? What sounds will you hear? What will you see? What will you feel? What emotions will you be feeling too? Do this regularly for each of your goals to keep it fresh in your mind.
Another way to do it is to write a letter from your future self. Include all the experiences you want to have, the goals you achieve, and all the feelings you want to have throughout the year. Try to get as many details in there as possible, the more realistic it is, the better. Once you’ve done this, put it somewhere safe and read it occasionally, especially at the end of the year!
REWARD
The last tip we have for you is to reward yourself. As we’ve gotten older and busier it’s easy to achieve one thing and then just move on to the next. But it’s super important to celebrate and reward yourself for your achievements.
A good rule of thumb is to have rewards that are equal in size to the effort you put in. It doesn’t have to be a bottle of champagne every time, even though that would be fun!
For example: Take yourself out for a coffee to celebrate a small daily win, buy yourself some flowers or your favourite treat for a medium-sized goal, wine and dine yourself for a larger goal, or take yourself away for the weekend when you achieve something massive.
The rewards act in a way to motivate you to achieve your goals. The endorphins released when you celebrate your success make all the work you put in to achieve it worthwhile. And to be honest – we need to celebrate more anyway!
So there we have it, bring on 2025. We hope that these eight tips for creating great goals help you to succeed this year!
