Step 1: Decide your goal

A lot of people think that they have goals when all what they really have are hopes and dreams. The goal has to be very clear and specific. Having a specific goal that is quantifiable and measurable is the most important thing to do if you want to set yourself up for success.

Examples of hopes and dreams (Don’t):

• I want to be happy.
• I want to be rich.
• I want to be successful.
• I want to be fit.

Examples of goals (Do):

• I want to earn $10,000 per month.
• I want to lose 10 kg of fats.
• I want to become start my own startup.
• I want to buy a house.

Step 2: Write it down

Write down your goal clearly. Add to your some numbers to make it measurable. Writing down your goal is the first step of taking your goal seriously.

Personally, I write down my most important goals on a picture and make it my phone wallpaper using this website. Sometimes I even print it and stick it to the wall in my home.

Only 3 percent of adults have written goals, and it seems that everyone else works for them. They earn, on average, ten times as much as people without written goals – Brian Tracy.

Step 3: Set a deadline

Decide when exactly and realistically do you want to achieve it by. If it is a long-term goal, try to break it down into smaller goals that you can achieve within weeks or months but not years. When you have a clear goal with a specific deadline that is not so far, you will be more motivated to achieve it and will be able to measure your success.

In case you don’t achieve your goal by that deadline, don’t give up your goal. Instead, you should set a new realistic deadline.

Step 4: Make a list

Make a list of everything that you can think of that can possibly do to achieve this goal. Literally, anything you can think of that can get you closer to your goal.

An example list for speaking English fluently goal within 6-months:

• Learn every day at least one new word and one new phrase.
• Listen to English songs while reading the lyrics.
• Speak every day for 5-min with my colleague John in English.
• Read one new Egnlish article every week and learn all the new words in it.
• Install Duolingo app for learning new languages and practice on it for 10-min every day.
• Change the phone language from the settings to English.
• Watch one new English movie every week without subtitles.

Step 5: Organize your list by priority

Sort down your above list by priority. Make sure that the most impactful item is at the top and the least impactful item is at the bottom. Practice the 80/20 Rule, which says that 80 percent of your success will be determined by 20 percent of things that you do. Once you finish organizing your list of activities by sequence and priority, you will become an ambitious person with a plan.

An example or organized list for speaking English fluently goal within 6-months:

• Change the phone language from the settings to English.
• Install Duolingo app for learning new languages and practice on it for 10-min every day.
• Listen to English songs while reading the lyrics.
• Watch one new English movie every week without subtitles.
• Learn every day at least one new word and one new phrase.
• Speak every day for 5-min with my colleague John in English.
• Read one new Egnlish article every week and learn all the new words in it.

When you have a written goal and a plan, you moved a head of 97% of adults working today – Brian Tracy.

Step 6: Take the first step and break the ice

Action your plan and take your first step. By taking your first step, which is usually the hardest step, you are making the future present and converting the TO-DO to IN-PROGRESS.

Taking your first step will give you:

1. A lot of self-confidence and self-esteem because you will become a person who takes actions not a person who procrastinate.
2. More ideas on how to take additional and better actions to achieve your goal.
3. Immediate feedback that might make you adjust your goal or your deadline.

When you do something every day, you activate the Momentum Principle of Success which is based on Sir Isaac Newton’s low of inertia. The principle says that it takes enormous amount of energy to get a body into motion in the first place, but it takes much less energy to keep that body moving forward.

Step 7: Take a daily action

Do something every day that moves you one step forward towards your goal. No matter how small it is, just do something every day.

Spending half an hour a day might sound like an insignificant improvement. However, half an hour a day means 3.5 hours a week, 14 hours a month, and 168 hours a year. Definitely investing 168 hours in anything will result in a significant improvement. Always remember that anything is better than nothing.

Small daily improvements are the key to great long-term results.

Step 8: Setup reminders

Deciding to take a daily action is easy, but taking a daily action, in reality, might not be that easy. One day you will forget. Another day, you will feel lazy or tired. At this step, you need to try to turn your daily actions into daily habits with commitment and build a momentum. I have added the word “commitment” here because when you commit to something, you feel guilty if you skip it.

To prepare yourself for achieving your goal and overcome any problem, you need to prepare yourself with three things:

1. Making your daily action a habit.
2. Reminding yourself with your daily actions.
3. Create a way for yourself to feel guilty if you didn’t take a daily action towards your goal.

The way I personally managed to achieve the above three points is using the Habit and Goal Tracker apps. Basically, these apps enable you to create a list of daily actions that help you achieve your goal and track your daily progress in a binary way which is either “Yes I took a step towards my goal today” or “No, I didn’t do anything today towards my goal today”. They also allow you to track your overall progress and show you how committed you are using charts. You can also customize a reminder message at any time of the day. Try to be creative in your custom message in a way that makes you feel guilty if you decided to dismiss it.

I do recommend the Android app Loop Habit Tracker and the iOS app Habit-Bull due to their simplicity.

Motivation gets you going and habit gets you there – Zig Ziglar.

Best of luck in achieving your goal!

This article is inspired by the highly recommended book Master Your Time Master Your Life – Brian Tracy.