Jan 9, 2019
As the New Year begins, we should all be thinking about setting our annual goals. We dream of achieving milestones for higher sales targets, greater profitability, improved fitness and even checking off items on our personal “bucket list”.
I have FOUR helpful steps you can deploy to set and achieve the goals you seek to accomplish throughout your year.
1 – SLICE YOUR YEAR INTO THIRDS
Start out by dividing your year into thirds and writing down the goals you want to achieve within each 4-month period. This will make achieving your goals more manageable.
2 – PRIORITIZE YOUR GOALS
Odds are you have multiple goals — with ones that take priority over others. Start right out of the gate with the most important goal you want to achieve and focus on tackling that task in the first third of the year. Most importantly, write down what the specific goal is AND the date you want to complete that goal by. For example:
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Hit $450,000 of annual $1MM target by April 30th
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Take family to Africa in August
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Run NYC Marathon in November
3 – SET AGGRESSIVE & MEASURABLE TARGETS
Set an aggressive target for your first four-month period. This will not only give you a chance to get an early start in reaching your goal, it also sets you up to far exceed expectations by the end of the year. Get in the habit of tracking your progress each and every day. I find it helpful to use a success journal and make frequent entries tracking interim tasks and goals.
4 – MAKE POWERFUL CONNECTIONS
While the goals you set for yourself are personal, we all need meaningful connections in our lives to help us reach our dreams. Identify the connections you either need to find or re-establish that will help you achieve your goals. It’s like recruiting “top-draft picks” for your own goal execution team. In fact, a great practice is to set a goal for each triannual period of the year to:
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Create a new professional connection
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Grow an existing one
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Reconnect with a personal relationship
So go ahead and set those Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) for 2019. Slice up the calendar and tackle them in four-month blocks with a game plan. Be measured and accountable to yourself and benefit from making great connections all year long.
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