Once you’ve created a big vision for your life and your business, the next step is to create an action plan to make your dreams a reality. Now is the time for you to start mapping out the tasks and potential obstacles that you’ll need to check off your to-do list in order to get from Point A to Point Z.
If you haven’t yet taken the time to define your Point Z, your end goal, or your big vision, take a pause and create your vision plan before writing down a single action step. After all, how can you know what steps to take if you don’t know where you want to go?
Why One-Year Goals Matter
Remember in high school when there were the jocks, the nerds, the theater geeks, and the courtyard people? Well, enter a new category: The anti-goal crowd. Sometimes I get on a consult call, and I hear women say things like:
- “I don’t love goals.”
- “I don’t set goals.”
- “I never reach my goals, so why set them?”
If you’re interested but not committed to your goals, you may be interested in reducing your stress, being more productive, finding more time in your day, making more money, and hiring a team, but so far, you haven’t taken any action to make that happen.
If you’re setting goals, but not the kind of goals that will really and truly move the needle in your business or at home, you may have goals for accomplishing things today, but they are things you always accomplish, not a target farther out in the future that requires you to change what you’re doing.
Here’s the hard truth: Setting goals is what leads to achievement.
The good news is that when you learn to shift your thinking to focus on your big plan for your life and your business, you’ll discover that having goals is really the key to happiness, and you’ll become confident not just in setting goals but in achieving them.
Flip the Script: Priorities vs. Goals
What if you thought about your list of goals as a list of priorities that you act on? Here’s why thinking about them as priorities changes everything:
- You can’t fail on a list of priorities.
- You don’t feel a need to wait for the right time with a list of priorities.
- You create your own list of priorities using your own agency.
- You take your constraints into account when establishing your priorities.
- You can’t get stuck on the how before you accept a list of priorities.
- You’re the only one in charge of your priorities.
- Your priorities are continuous focus areas, and they aren’t right or wrong.
Priorities, goals, potato, potato — it doesn’t matter what you call them as long as they motivate you to move forward and provide a constant reminder of what you want to achieve!
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Using SMART(ER) goals to create your action plan
One of the most well-known goal-setting techniques is SMART goals. The acronym encourages you to make goals specific, measurable, agreed-upon (some people use achievable or attainable), realistic, and time-bound.
Over time, different people have used different words to specify what each of the letters stands for, and some have expanded the acronym, too. Michael Hyatt’s SMARTER goals framework is the one I use when I am working with my clients.
Here’s the version of SMARTER goals that I use:
- Specific: When your goal is targeted toward something specific, it’s more motivating. You know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish.
- Measurable: You must have some sort of way to measure your progress or whether you’ve met the goal. Can you break it into smaller chunks so you can see how far along you are?
- Actionable: What are the actions you’ll take to achieve the goal? Determining actions can help you realize when you’re setting unrealistic goals based on your desired timeframe.
- Risky: Create goals that feel challenging and create new opportunities in ways that involve some risk. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone will be much more rewarding and motivating than doing the status quo.
- Time-bound: The best goals create urgency, either through establishing deadlines or specific periodic checkpoints or milestones.
- Exciting: This goes back to the need to involve your feelings. If you aren’t excited about your goal, it will become one that lingers on your list, sucking away your energy till it falls off the list, never to be seen again.
- Relevant: Does this goal take you where you want to be? How does it relate to your values? Is it YOUR goal…or someone else’s you feel you should do? Will it really move things forward for you, or is it a shiny object that will just distract you from what you need to do?
Write down your SMARTER goals and keep copies of this document everywhere. Remember that it is a living document and something you should refer to regularly (just like checking your GPS on a road trip or a map when you’re out on a hike). No keeping it in the back of the drawer! Seeing your goals on a daily basis will help you stay motivated to achieve your personal and business action plans.
Create your roadmap for success today!
Now that you’ve defined your long-term vision and have tools in place to use SMARTER goals to plot out the specific tasks you need to accomplish to achieve your short-term goals, you’re well on your way to seeing big results in your personal life and in your business!
Want to get an inside look at some specific examples of SMARTER goals, how to create quarterly focus areas, and how you can work in your Zone of Extraordinary Achievement?
She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman’s Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and into the Extraordinary, is for you. The best part? I’ll show you exactly how to identify what’s holding you back so you can elevate your entire life to the next level.
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