9 Practical Tips to Achieve Your Goals

Here are the steps to follow to break down your goals:

1. Divide your goal into high-level Sub Goals and then into smaller achievable tasks.  You can create tasks with a high success rate by researching, reading, enquiring, training, etc.    

2. Remember to write down the tasks and estimated timeline to complete the tasks. 

I had a goal to change my area of work within three months. Here is how I achieved it within my planned timeline.

Step 1. Divided my goal into subgoals:

When you block the time, you are committing to work on your goal with fewer disruptions. In addition, you will force yourself to work on the goal during the scheduled time. A few ways you can plan for dedicated time are by scheduling on your calendar or by establishing a routine. 

Let me share my experience on how this tip helped me:

Siaglo is one of my dream projects. Once I decided that I would work on Siaglo for 4 hours a week, I set aside 2 hours a day, twice a week for it. Then, it became much more achievable. Since I set time aside to work on my goal, I was able to co-found Siaglo. 

When you are consistent, the action turns into a habit, and you will perform the task automatically without having to think about it.  As you remain consistent and make progress, you will grow more confident.  As the saying goes, ‘Practice makes it perfect’, you will be more efficient because you are practicing regularly.

To help you be consistent: 

• stick to the same time to perform the task   
• anchor it to a routine to avoid forgetting

 Let me share my experience on how this tip helped me. I had a goal to read non-fiction books. I would read when I remembered. It was taking 2-3 months to complete one book and I could only read 3-4 books per year.  I wanted to read more. I changed my tactic to read 20 pages daily after dinner. With this plan, I was able to finish a book within a month and I didn’t forget to read as it became a post-dinner habit. I was able to complete at least 10 books per year by being consistent and anchoring my reading to a daily routine.

Share your goal with the people who you care about and are your allies. Research has proved that sharing strengthens your commitment. It makes you more accountable as you don’t want to disappoint your loved ones. The energy and encouragement  from your buddy system will motivate you to strive forward.

When my kids were toddlers, I shared with two of my friends that I wanted to start saving for my kids’ college tuition. I got busy and put this goal on the back burner for a while. My friends kept enquiring and reminding me which motivated me to start the college savings fund. The energy and support I received was a great help to achieve my goal.  

A few ways you can track your progress are by simply jotting it down or by using technology such as a smartphone, smartwatch, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, etc.

• Tracking helps you stay committed to the work that matters most
• Visible progress creates excitement and motivation and even increases the chances of achieving more
• Over the time, you’ll notice how far you’ve come which makes you proud, confident, and self-motivated  
• By tracking, it is easier to monitor whether everything is going according to the schedule

I will share how this tip helps my team: 

At work, we use a project management tool to create a Team Board and track each phase of a project. A Team Board provides a visualization of our workflow. This helps the team track our progress and monitor if everything is going as planned. Besides, looking at our progress on the board creates excitement and motivation for the team. 

Seeing is believing. When we read a text or listen to an audio version of it, we are only likely to recall 10% of the information three days later. By making the goal visible, you will remember it. Besides, seeing it reinforces your belief when you are in doubt.

You will also think about progress and next steps each time you see your goals and this keeps you focused on your goals.

To see your goal frequently,  print it and pin it to a wall, store it as wallpaper or save it as a reminder on your device.   Another way is to convert your vision to a picture if you can. 

Let me share a story about how keeping my goal visible helped me. 

I wanted to call my parents at least twice a week. I was unable to follow through because I’d remember it at odd times. I felt awful for disappointing my parents. Because of other priorities like work, kids, etc., when my goal was not visible, it was out of my mind as well.  

I made a digital sticky note and pinned it to my laptop home screen. The sticker was a reminder whenever I logged in.  Because of this, I was able to stay in touch with my family.

If you strongly believe in your goal, every failure means a learning opportunity. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Did the failure happen due to things that were in your control?

• Could you apply the lesson learned forward to avoid the same mistake? 
• Is the goal still beneficial?

Change the action plan if the answer is “yes” to the above questions.  If you quit, it creates self-doubt about your abilities and you’ll become more risk averse. However, you need to know when to quit so that you are not pursuing an unrealistic goal.

When there is a failure and your goal is still valuable,  change the timeline, or the tactic, or get help.   

I learned this insight when we started looking for our first home. Our savings weren’t enough to buy the one with our specific requirements.  We were very disappointed but we didn’t compromise to buy what we could afford. Instead, we changed our timeline to save more money.  Finally, we bought our dream home. The end result was satisfactory even though we waited longer.

Positivity  

• provides energy, self-confidence, and hope to you and the people around you
• makes you resilient to persevere and bounce back 
• releases the serotonin in the brain and helps you look at the goal with a fresh perspective 

To stay positive, use stress relieving techniques such as:

• move away from the situation for a brief period 
• exercise 
• consult with like-minded people 
• engage in some fun activity 
• focus on what went right and celebrate your effort 

Celebration gives you encouragement, motivation, and confidence to complete the goal. This also provides opportunities to strengthen bonds with family, friends, or team members. 

Do not forget to reward yourself, since we often tend to overlook ourselves.

When I was working on a big project at work, I recognized the team members’ efforts along the way, regardless if we met our targets or not. After each milestone, we would discuss lessons learned along the journey. We celebrated by going out for lunch or playing team games. These activities gave us the opportunity to get to know each other better and to strengthen our bond among us. This camaraderie helped us reach out to each other easily for any help. In the end, we had a successful project!