New Year’s Resolutions: How to Make Plans Work
Alright, we’ve talked about why we need goals and how to make sure we stick to them. The next step is to make sure we work on them everyday.
Here’s what you need to do to take your plan (whether it’s opening a new business, losing more weight whatever it is) to successful implementation.
Progressive Goals (like a business, new project etc.)
1. Take a look at your plans and break them down into specific milestone goals.
Let’s give an example, how about starting a new business? Some goals for this would be marketing research, finding prospective clients or looking for a good location etc.
2. Now take your goals and break them down into specific actions.
Let’s take our business goal and look at the market research part of it. Here’s how you can further break it down:
- Go to the library and look at Market Research Analysis.
- Talk to contacts in the same niche.
- Research new start ups in the past 5 years.
3. Here’s the easiest part. All you need to do now is to think about the actions you need to take for each of the bullets mentioned above and assign a date for completion.
Just mark those dates on your calendar, plan the action on your agenda and you’re done!
Recurring Goals (like habits)
Recurring goals are a little easier as they involve less paperwork and complexity. To get started with a recurring goal, you want to break it down again and put them on your calendar with specific review dates where you plan to asses how you are doing.
Take having an exercise as an example:
Break that down into what type of exercises you need to do. Maybe that involves stretching in the morning, running in the afternoon or going swimming on Saturdays. Whatever your form of exercise is…schedule it in your agenda.
You make schedules for important business meetings…don’t you? Your health is just as significant. Put that into your schedule as well.
Remember to set reminders!
