Last month I launched one of my all-time favorite freebies, Your Ultimate 2020 Action Plan, to help you set goals for the new year. It was so much fun seeing people share their photos and work through it on Instagram. If you haven’t grabbed it yet, you can still do so right here!
But what do you do with all of those goals once you’ve set them? How do you make sure that you’ll actually follow through and work on them? How can you accomplish those big goals you just set for yourself.
I’ve tried a few different things over the past few years to help organize and work toward my goals, and today I wanted to share with you the steps I take to help follow through every single month.
Break your goals down into monthly plans
One of my favorite things to do to help make sure I’m working on my goals is to simply break them down. Instead of setting one goal in each area of your life and focusing on how big it is (and maybe even how hard it’ll be to accomplish), you can take those things you want to accomplish and break them down into things you can focus on each month.
Doing this makes your big “scary” goals seem a lot more doable, which makes us more likely to want to work on them and feel comfortable shooting for something that takes us a little outside of our comfort zone. Just think about it like this: if you set a goal to make 50% more income this year, you may feel stuck at the idea of how exactly you’re going to accomplish that.
Doing this is literally as easy as it sounds. All you have to do is break down your goals into reasonable benchmarks for each month. For example, if you want to gain 1000 email subscribers by the end of the year, all you have to shoot for is about 84 per month. Sounds a lot more doable, right?
Do one small task each week
Now, once you get a little bit motivated to work toward your goals after you have them broken down, it’s not necessarily about doing all the things!!, but instead it’s okay to focus on doing one thing at a time.
Focusing on just one thing is way easier because it doesn’t leave you so overwhelmed at the major goal you’re trying to accomplish, and of course, just like breaking your goals down into monthly benchmarks, focusing on one task a week makes things seem even easier!
So, how do you figure out what you should focus on? Well, you’ll take those goals you have set for the rest of the year and break them down into your monthly plan. Then you can take it a step further and break them down into weekly tasks.
A great example would be if you want to launch a course. You can focus each week on working on content and planning your launch. Then you can spend 1-2 hours per day working on that task to help knock it out and move you closer to your goal of launching.
Find accountability
The last and probably most beneficial in actually accomplishing your goals would definitely be to find one or a few people to hold you accountable. You can find group programs to join based on the things you’re working on or create your own mastermind of people with similar business experience and goals.
I did this back in the Fall of 2015 by launching a small mastermind group of three other ladies who were also working on creating and launching a course. Simply reaching out to someone to have weekly or bi-weekly accountability meetings will help you stay on track with your goals.
Lastly, you can always join a paid mastermind group. I know I’ve said it probably a million times before, but starting that mastermind was one of my best ideas of 2015. To this day I can still turn to those group of ladies and ask for advice on things in my business, and they know they can get the same from me in return.
Reward yourself for progress
Okay, I’m not saying to go eat a piece of cake every time you check a task off of your to do list or to take an afternoon off just because you’ve accomplished one thing, but think about how you can reward yourself for little milestones while you’re working on your big yearly goals.
I love doing this by grabbing a new notebook, some fun pens, or simply treating myself to a sweet treat every now and then when I’m making progress on something big that I’ve been working toward.
For example, let’s go back to the 1000 new email subscribers this year. If you have a similar goal and you know you have a quarterly or monthly benchmark you need to hit to be on track for your goal, how can you reward yourself once per month for the hard work you’ve done to hit that goal? Maybe you grab a new business book you’ve been wanting to read or buy a fancy notebook you’ve been wanting.
What helps you follow through with your goals?
I know that everyone does something a little different, so I’d love to hear from you! What keeps you working toward your big goals even when you don’t feel like it? Be sure to send me a DM on Instagram to share your secrets on accomplishing your goals!
