DO: WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO? Now that you’ve identified where you want to be in one year, you can chart a course to get there. Step 1: Monthly Milestones. The next step is to break down each major goal into smaller sub-goals. This is called “chunking”. Think of your goals as the “big picture” and your subgoals or milestones as the bit-sized achievements that make your goal approachable and keep you motivated. • Brainstorm again. For each goal, considering where you want to be in 12 months, brainstorm all of the things you need to do or have in order to reach that goal. Start by thinking about what would you need to accomplish in nine months in order to be close to completion in 12 months? Then continue to work backwards to six months, and then to three. Write down everything you can think of. • Then, group items together, with the goal of creating 12 “milestones” or bigger steps, each of which will contain smaller tasks. • Lastly, put the milestones in order of when they would need to be completed. These 12 milestones will represent the 12 months of the year. Of course, you don’t know exactly how and when everything will unfold—you are making your best guess.
2) Will take about a year to implement (This cannot be something you can bang out in three days or a month.)
DRIVE: WHY DO YOU WANT IT? When making changes in our lives and working toward larger goals, there are two common things that lead us to stop. 1) First, we get distracted with life. We get busy and encounter roadblocks. 2) Second, we feel uncomfortable with the new change and go back to what we know . Why do these things happen? Because we didn’t have a big enough WHY. We didn’t have a strong enough drive or motive. Our ability to follow through on implementing lasting change depends on having strong enough reasons to keep us focused and committed through the hard times. By identifying the true outcomes you’re looking for, which are usually how accomplishing the goal will impact your life or make you feel, you will have a stronger motivation because you’ll understand why you want the goal. Look at the goals you’ve chosen for the year and ask yourself the following questions (for each goal): • Why do you want to achieve this goal? • What is the outcome you believe you will receive by achieving this goal? • What does this mean to you? • How will it feel? • How will it impact your life? • What will happen if you don’t achieve this goal?
8
Creating a roadmap for your goal and putting it down on paper helps your brain to hold the vision of the big picture and the real-life action steps at the same time. This is vital! Step 2: 60-Day Plan. Now it’s time to create your shortterm goals. Research shows that anything that is planned more than 60 days in advanced is most likely going to change. So, take the goals you determined in the first two months of your milestones and break them down further into sub-goals. • BRAINSTORM: What tasks you will need to accomplish in the next 60 days in order to accomplish your milestones? Write down EVERYTHING you can think of. • PRIORITIZE: Then, arrange them in order of priority and what NEEDS to be done first before moving on to the other things. Step 3: One-Month Plan: Take those priority items and put them in a list for month one and put the rest in a list for month two, and save it for later. • For each project goal, brainstorm ALL of the TASKS you will need to accomplish in order to reach your goals in 30 days. Write down everything you can think of. • Prioritize each item on a scale of 1 to 4, 1 being most important OR needs to be done before you can begin on other tasks and 4 being least important or time-sensitive. You now have the next 4 weeks’ tasks (1 through 4).
