5 easy steps to setting your next goal

At the time of writing this, there’s only a couple more months left in the year. That means we’re near the time when people start thinking about their goals and resolutions for next year.

As New Year’s Day continues to creep closer and closer on the calendar, you’ll likely start to hear people say things like “I wanna lose weight” or “I wanna eat better” or “I wanna start a business” or “I wanna (insert something you usually hear)”.

Those are all great things to strive for. However, people who set these goals or resolutions are notorious for starting strong with working towards what they want, then losing motivation and falling off within the first few months.

It would be easy to say that the people who fall off on working towards their goals(all of us to some extent) lack discipline or focus or something like that. And that may be true(again, for all of us to some extent). But I don’t think that’s the problem.

More so, I think the problem is that often times we set the wrong goal, and this sets us up for failure from the beginning instead of success.

So to get around this problem, here’s 5 steps to setting your next goal in a way that gives you the best chances to succeed.

Step 1 - Write down whatever your goal or desired result is.

On a piece of paper or a notes page on your phone, write down whatever it is that you want or the end result you’re looking for.

For this article, let’s use the example that you want to get a new job.

Step 2 - Don’t make your goal the end result you want. Instead, make the goal whatever it would take for you to get that result.

In the example of wanting to get a new job,

• the end result that you’d be looking for is a job.

It would be easy to stop there and just say that “my goal is to get a new job”. However, I don’t think that would be a good idea because whether or not someone decides to hire you isn’t in your control.

Instead, I would ask myself “in terms of getting a new job…”

• What’s not in my control? and
• What’s in my control?

In this case,

• Again, what’s not in your control is whether or not someone hires you.
• But what is in your control is applying to places and the number of places you apply to.

Seeing this, I would make the goal something like “submit 100 job applications” rather than making it just to “get a new job”.

The reason this is important is that it’s easy to get discouraged when you’re focused on things that you can’t control. Lets say I went on to apply for jobs and 30 applications into it I still didn’t have a response. If my only focus was “to get a new job”, I’d be discouraged because I put in a lot of effort but didn’t see any results yet.

On the other hand, if I applied to 30 places and got no response but my focus was on “applying to 100 places” instead of just “getting a job”, I’d be a lot more likely to still feel motivated because I completed almost a third of my goal. Even though I didn’t see the job yet, I’d know that I was making a lot of progress.

That said, in terms of the end result you wrote down in step 1, answer the questions below.

• What’s not in your control? and
• What’s in your control?

Once you have a good idea of the things that are in your control, pick the one thing that would have the most impact towards you reaching the result you want. In other words, pick your version of “submit applications to places”.

Step 3 - Whatever your answer was from the end of step 2, figure out how much of it you should aim to get done.

You should also ask yourself “how much of (insert your answer from step 2) would I need to do to reach my goal?”

In the example of getting a new job, I chose to go with submitting 100 applications because in that case you’d only need to land 1 job out of 100 applications to have met the desired result. That’s just a 1% conversion, and that seems doable.

In your case, what number do you feel would work for you?

Step 4 - When are you trying to complete the goal by?

The next question to ask yourself is “when do I want to have reached my goal by?” Then write it down.

The point of the finish date isn’t to make you stress out and feel like a failure if you don’t reach your goal in time. The point is more so just to prevent you from stopping on your progress because you have no sense of urgency to keep working at it.

Step 5 - Write it all down in one sentence.

At this point, you should know:

• what you’re focusing on that’s within your control to reach your desired result
• how much of it you think you’ll need to do(a number)
• and when you want to get this done by

Now, to make it officially a goal, you’ll just have to write those things down into one sentence.

To do this, fill in the blanks below:

• My goal is to (insert your answer from Step 2 and how much of it you’re choosing to do) by (insert the date you chose at Step 4).

For the example of getting a new job, the sentence would look something like:

• My goal is to (submit 100 job applications) by (January 1st, 2024).

Have a business or personal goal you’re currently going for but struggling to reach? I’ll help you put together a game plan to get it done. You can sign up for one for free at goaldoctors.com. We’ll be happy to help! — from Nick