Are you thinking about your New Year 2021 resolutions? How can you plan realistic and achievable goals that are set up for success?
2020 has not been the most ideal year, but it has definitely taught us all some important valuable life lessons. For me, it was the realization of savouring and celebrating all small moments in life and my biggest struggle this last year has been time management.
As we all embark on this new year, let's start it on the right foot with setting up goals that are realistic as well as achievable. New Year is a great time to form new goals and habits. These goals can help motivate us as well as help us improve our life in a better and thoughtful way!
But achieving a goal is not that simple. It requires some background work like forming a realistic timeline and habits that can help you achieve your goal.
Less than 25% of people actually stay committed to their goals after just 30 days, and only 8% accomplish them. It’s a general trend for people to fall out of their goals soon after a week or two of setting them.
Why do people drop out of their goals? Do they lose motivation? Do they set too many goals to achieve? Although there is no strong reason as to why people drop out from their goals, there have been proven successful strategies that when applied towards a goal-setting process, then there is a highly likely chance of being able to achieve the goals.
The goals must be planned in a ‘SMART’ way so that there is a set action plan, an easy method to monitor them and ultimately be able to achieve them.
Does this process seem confusing? Don’t worry in this blog post, I am going to exactly show you a step-by-step process on how you can achieve your 2021 goals successfully!
Related. You are worried about having too many things to juggle on your plate. Find helpful tips and resources that can help you simplify your new year and also help you accomplish more this year.
Below is a detailed step by step process on how you can set a GOAL for 2021 for success by planning the steps you must take to realize your goal and crossing off each one as you work through them!
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THINK ABOUT 2020 AND THE AREAS YOU WOULD LIKE TO IMPROVE
Instead of directly jumping into a new goal for the New Year, it is more effective to ponder on the current year by thinking about what your goals initially at the start of the year were? Starting here will help you reflect and think about what are the things that really matter to you and in what areas of your life would you like to see a change or an improvement.
Some worthwhile questions to ask yourself while working on this step are:
- What were my 2020 goals?
- Did I achieve them?
- What makes me happy?
- What areas in my life I would like to see an improvement?
- What are some good habits that I would like to develop?
- What is most important to me in my life?
Asking yourselves these questions will help you gain clarity as to what are the things that actually matter to you. Help you prioritize your goals and mostly help you form realistic goals that will impact your life in a positive way!
SET SMALLER GOALS FOR 2021 AND PRIORITIZE THEM
After you have spent time analyzing your last year and have a ‘big picture’ in mind on what areas of your life would you need to make improvement in. The next step is to ‘SET SMALLER GOALS’.
It is great to distribute all your goals and put them into categories. Writing the smaller goals under their own categories can help you have a visual of the areas in your life that you are trying to improve on and this can help you prioritize these smaller goals.
Some of the broad categories that you can look into are:
- Career – Where do you see yourself in your career in 2021?
- Financial – What are your financial goals for 2021? Do you want to be debt-free this year? Do you want to pay off your student loan?
- Family – Do you look forward to becoming a parent this year? Would you want to get married?
- Health – Are you trying to lose weight? Do you have a surgery planned?
- Blogging – Do you want to start a blog?
After you have created smaller goals from your bigger picture and put them in their respective categories. The next step is to prioritize them and look for the goals that matter to you the most.
It is usually recommended to start with 2-3 smaller goals at one time (instead of trying to achieve too many goals), as they are easy to monitor and chances of being successful are huge without you getting too overwhelmed in the entire process.
Recommendation: If you are working towards a financial goal for the New Year then you can look into Personal Capital. It is a great tool that focuses primarily on investing and can be used for planning for future financial goals such as retirement, savings toward college, buying a house, etc. Personal Capital has the tools to analyze your investments and tell if you’re on track and it's absolutely FREE!
Related: How to create a monthly grocery budget for your family
SET SMART GOALS
After you have a list of 2-3 smaller goals for 2021, the next step is to make them SMART.
What are SMART goals? A SMART goal is used to help guide a powerful goal-setting process. It is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.
- Specific – Is your goal specific, clear and well defined or is it too broad? What needs to be done to achieve it?
- Measurable – Does your goal have a timeline? What tools and resources are you using to track them? How will you monitor your habit to achieve your goal?
- Achievable – What is the timeline for your goal? Does it require an entire year to achieve it or six months?
- Relevant – Is the goal of moving in the direction to improve your life? Are your goals realistic and in line with where you would like to see yourself at the end of the year 2021?
- Time – What’s your time frame for reaching your goal?
Using SMART goals is a powerful tool for looking into your goals at a deeper level. The goals that are planned in a detailed way have a higher chance of reaching success.
Related: Evernote is a powerful tool, great for writing notes on your phone and creating a to-do list. It is like a pocket notebook that syncs automatically across all your devices, and across all your operating systems and is absolutely FREE!
Related: Top 18-time management and organization tips
SET A ‘PRACTICAL’ ACTION PLAN FOR EACH SMALL GOAL
This step is one of the most important steps in goal setting. Once you have the smaller goals organized as per your priorities, it is time to set a timeline in place so that you can make sure to achieve this goal.
Many times, people are always focused on the outcome of their goals and not on the process that will lead to achieving their goal. Writing out the individual steps that will ultimately lead to your goal success, and then crossing each step as you complete it will give you the direction you need to move towards achieving your goals.
For example: If your goal is to be financially debt-free by the end of the year 2021, then your action plan will look something like this:
- January: Write down your financial picture on a paper with the loans, debt, and utilities that need to be paid. Sort them into priorities with the debts with the highest interest rate to be cleared first
- February: Pay credit card 1 (highest interest rate), save $x in your saving account
- March: Pay credit card 1 (aim to minimize the interest rate of the maximum debt), save $x in your saving account
- April: Pay credit card 2 (after credit card 1 has reached 20% utilization rate for the lower interest rate to be charged), save $x in your saving account, analyze all your loans/debt and the money you owe
- May: Investigate loan refinancing with the lower interest rate for student/home loan, save $x in your saving account
- And the plan goes on. Customize this according to your financial situation.
Basically, an action plan is nothing but a ‘realistic’ step-by-step process of achieving your goal.
Tools that you use to create action plans: Vision boards (a great tool to help clarify, concentrate and maintain focus on a specific life goal) and physical planners.
MONITOR YOUR GOALS REGULARLY
The most important step is to monitor your goals or more like a check-in weekly, biweekly or monthly to see if you are on track and are making progress towards your goals.
Keep re-visiting your action plan, tweaking it as you go along. Periodically review the longer-term plans and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.
For example: If your goal is to lose 20 pounds in 2021. Then your weekly goal should be to lose 1 pound a week or two. Make sure to track your progress by having a weigh-in every weekend and keeping a track of your weight by noting it in the diary.
Related: Google Keep is another great tool to create a to-do list that can help you monitor your goals regularly (get 20% off on the basic plan using my code: J46C6TTH9KQ4M67; 20% off on the Business Plan using my code: L4AKGKG4FG7TUWX for Gsuite – Google’s combination of Gmail, Calendar and Drive)
REWARD YOUR SUCCESS
Lastly, it is most important to reward your small wins as you make progress towards your big goal. They can act as a big motivation boost and help you stay on track.
Your reward does not have to be anything too fancy. It could be simple things like buying yourself a sweater or going out for dinner.
Achieving a goal is a huge reward in itself but it is a long process and can take time. Hence treating yourself on your small wins can always help you keep motivated towards your big goal.
Related: If you are interested in learning more about goal setting and improving your productivity. Then, the ultimate productivity planner is a very intense goal-oriented planner that teaches you how to plan, get more done, accomplish your to-do list and help you reach your goals.
I hope these steps will be helpful to you all in planning your goals for 2021.
Remember ‘Slow and Steady Wins the race’. If you are unable to complete your action items a few times due to any reason, ‘Do not quit your goal’. The key is to keep working towards your goal slowly by completing small tasks daily.
What are your 2021 goals? Have you started planning them?
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