In this week’s video, I’m sharing three things you need to set focused, effective goals for 2021.
By the end of this month, 80% of us will have given up on our resolutions. That’s if we made them at all.
I’ve been there – setting goals in January that I don’t remember in February, much less for a whole 12 months. I’ve also done the “word of the year” thing and liked it mostly, except that it was so vague there was no real way of knowing if I achieved it or not.
Over the years I’ve developed a system to set and track my goals that works wonders for me. This year I made another tweak to it: replacing life categories with a life pie – which I’ll share in part 2 of this series!
I’ve developed this method over several years, refining and adjusting the process along the way. I started with classic resolutions I’d make in January, and forget about until the end of the year. Then I feel guilty that I hadn’t accomplished what I set out to do, and amazed at how different what I thought I wanted at the beginning of the year was from what I wanted at the end. This method of setting goals certainly wasn’t having much of a positive impact on my life. But I couldn’t give up on the idea.
We only have “one wild and precious life,” and I didn’t want to waste it. I knew there were things I wanted to change about myself, my environment, and my life. Changes weren’t going to just happen if I kept living every day the same as the day before. More than anything, I wanted to be an active participant in life, not a passive receiver of whatever happened to me.
I truly believe we are never stuck in life. We always have options. Maybe those options aren’t always things we want to do, but they’ll get us to a better place in the end. For example, quitting a job to take one making less money, but that brings more joy.
As much as I liked the “Word of the Year” approach, I couldn’t find one word that encapsulated everything for all year. In three months it felt outdated. And without specific benchmarks, it was hard to know if I was living “brave” or with “focus.”
Combining all of these elements makes a system that in 15 minutes once a week, has helped me accomplish astronomically more in a year than I ever have before.
I’ve learned the hard way that there are three things your goals need to be successful, especially long term. Watch the video below:
3 Things You Need for Effective Goals:
- Focus on what you can control
- Chose something specific and measurable
- Focus on a system you can improve instead of a one-time event
What’s one goal you have for this year? Let me know in the comments!
