Now is a perfect time to write down your goals!

So you didn’t manage to write down your goals at the end of last year or the beginning of this year? Or maybe you wrote down all these great goals that you are willing to commit yourself to and by now most of these seem too far away to achieve? Or maybe you didn’t write down any? I think you should. I think you should write down your goals, re-write them if necessary and make sure to write them down correctly so that you can achieve all of these goals. No matter if its January, February, November or a random Thursday afternoon – now is a perfect time to write down your goals!

First of all, let’s start with what goals you may want to write down:

– a lifetime goal?
– a long-term goal (5 year or 10 year goal)?
– a short term goal (a month, 6 months, 1 year)?
– a stepping stone goal?
– a career goal?
– a financial goal?
– a personal development goal?
– a relationship goal?
– a health goal?
– an educational goal?

Defining your goal:

Writing down different types of goals is important to make them easier to achieve. If your goal is to be happy in life that may be a lifetime goal and probably nothing you can re-assess and check on every week. You may have better and worse days – however, it is a goal you can (and should) write down. I mean, we should all be happy, right? Now, being happy doesn’t come from nothing, it takes actions from us to feel a certain way. How can we make sure to be happy? Set smaller goals that fit your definition of being happy: that may be helping others – so perhaps charity may be something for you. Even better, maybe helping out at a shelter will bring you joy? A service you are offering to your customers may be your way to saying thank you to society and seeing happy customers may make you happy. Being happy is great, but being happy should be defined by you.

If your goal is to be healthy, you need to define what healthy means to you. Does it mean loosing weight? Does it mean finding and having a great work-life-balance? Make sure to define your goal and write it down as precisely as possible. This way, you can always read it to remember what you are working towards. It will also help with the next steps.

Writing down steps to achieve your goals:

Now that you have defined your goals you have done the hardest part of the job; honestly. Say your goal is a financial goal, such as saving up for a new car or a house downpayment (one of my goals, for example). If your goal is to save up for the downpayment of a new car, for example, you need to write down how this can be achieved. You could save a certain sum every day. For example USD 10 dollars – that would amount to USD 3’650. If you would save for two years, or save USD 20, that would amount to USD 7’300 already. Maybe that coffee to go everyday is not as important and you can instead save the money? Maybe it’s that lunch to-go that can be prepared from home instead of going out every day? Perhaps you got a bonus this year and can save a certain amount, say 80% of it, towards your new (car) goal? You can also set up a weekly or monthly standing order with your bank account to transfer the money directly to your savings account (one of the things I do).

Say your goal is a healthier work-life-balance – some steps you may want to write down are as follows:
– no screen time (work-related) after 6pm
– no social media the first hour of waking up
– taking 15 minutes every day to meditate
– stretching first thing when you wake up and before you go to bed
– being active for at least 30 minutes every day
– etc.

Try to make every goal a SMART goal:

You’ve probably heard of SMART goals already, but if not, here is the short of it.
S – Specific; make sure your goal is specific and not too general
M – Measurable; how can you measure your goal?
A – Achievable; your goal should be achievable and not something out of this world like loosing 10kg over night
R – Relevant; the goal you are writing down should be relevant to you – not to the world or your neighbour, but you!
T – Time-bound; make sure you write down a time-line. By what time do you want to achieve your goal?

SMART goals are the best way to making it clear enough for yourself and for them to be achievable (hence the A in it).

Short-Term vs. Long-Term:

You want to make sure that you have goals that can be achieved short term and long term. Long-term goals may even be broken down to short-term goals.

For example: One of my long-term goals is the downpayment for a house in 5 years. To achieve this, I have defined how much money I am looking to put away on a monthly basis and how much percent I will put away from any bonus payment or additional income I will set aside. I have likewise broken down this 5 year goal in smaller goals that I am checking on a quarterly basis to see whether this is still achievable.

Another long-term goal may be setting up a business. A business, however, does not come over night so you may want to break it down to smaller, more achievable goals. If you want to start a blog, you may think about the following:
– finding a blog name and checking if the website URL is still fee – planning goal: one 2 weeks
– setting up your blog, finding and implementing a theme
– working on the overall template, creating a logo
– defining the categories
– defining your audience
– planning your first blog posts
– shooting appropriate content
– writing the first blog posts
– writing down the most important tags
– etc.

As much as planning and writing down goals is important to achieving them, you may not want to overdo it. Remember that if it becomes a long to-do list over 5 pages it may as well overwhelm you. Finding the right balance between is key. In addition, two or three large goals may overwhelm you because they are not defined enough.