May Busch* encourages those who have still not thought about their goals for the year to do so using her five-step process.
Have you set your goals for the 2023 – or are you just going with the flow?
If you haven’t started yet, don’t worry.
There’s plenty of time.
In fact, I’m about to share with you five steps you can take to set and achieve your goals at any time when you want to begin.
I was inspired by a TEDx talk I watched called How to Achieve Your Most Ambitious Goals, by Stephen Duneier.
These five steps are a combination of my takeaways from his talk and some of the things I found to be useful in setting and achieving goals in the past.
Set big goals
Ones that make you feel you have to rise to the occasion; ones that capture your imagination.
That’s going to be a lot more fun, and interesting, and motivating to work on than something that’s just incremental and unexciting.
In my case, instead of setting a goal of growing my business by 10-to-20 per cent, I’m thinking instead: “Maybe I could double my business this year.”
Just by thinking in such a big, ambitious way about my goals, it’s causing me to make a step change in my thinking and in my actions.
Create a success path
When you create a success path, it simply means chunking down your big goal into smaller manageable steps.
Duneier talks about it as making “tiny tweaks” that nudge you in the right direction.
This is the opposite of what some of us did back in school, which was cram for the exam at the last moment.
Instead, it’s about steady progress and taking regular steps.
Go with your grain, not against it
While you’re making those marginal improvements in the right direction, make sure that you’re doing it in a way that goes with your grain.
Going with your grain will make it so much more fun and easy, and more likely for you to achieve your goals.
For example, if you’re not a morning person, but your goal is to start an exercise habit, don’t make yourself get up at 5am and do your workout before you commute to work.
Choose a different time, one that suits you better, like after work or during lunch.
Leverage your time
We all have downtimes.
Times that are lost, or what I call ‘up for grabs’ times.
Like when you’re standing in line waiting, when you’re commuting to work, or those times you’re listening to music when you could just as easily be listening to an audio tape or podcast where you learn something.
You want to use those times wisely.
Use the buddy system
This means teaming up with someone who’s going to help hold you accountable.
It’ll also make it more fun.
In my case, when I wanted to swim three nights a week as my exercise, I agreed with my friend Wendy that we would meet at the pool at 9pm three nights a week.
It was winter. It was cold. It was dark.
When you leave the building, your hair is wet going into the parking lot.
Not a lot of fun.
However, because I knew my friend was going to be there, I didn’t want to let her down.
I showed up because I didn’t want her to be doing this all by herself.
On the other hand, if you happen to be somebody who’s very competitive, then go and challenge somebody else.
You guys can compete and egg each other on that way.
Whatever you do, get a buddy.
That makes it so much more likely that you’re going to have fun doing this, and therefore achieve your goals.
So, those are five steps you can take to set and achieve your goals in the year.
What is your big ambitious goal going to be for 2023 and what would it mean for you when you achieve it?
*May Busch works with smart entrepreneurs and top managements to build their businesses.
She can be contacted at [email protected].
This article first appeared at maybusch.com
