Nuno Barreto · Follow
11 min read · Feb 9, 2020
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It’s the beginning of a new year and an excellent time to reflect upon what we’ve accomplished in the previous year, what we would have liked to have accomplished but were unable to, and what we want to achieve in the new year, or years to come.
We draft goals, make grand plans, feel energized by the new year but, after a couple of weeks into the year, life distracts us and we forget about those plans. We’re then surprised, and sometimes frustrated because another year has passed and we’re not any closer to where we wanted to be just a few months before.
I’ve found that this seems to be a combination of the following reasons:
- Unclear goals — more often than not our goals are not entirely clear in our heads so we send out mixed signals to ourselves and others on what we want to accomplish and end-up not getting anywhere.
- Unsustainable motivation — our motivation for the goal might not be sustainable in the long run. For example, am I doing it just for the money, recognition, etc.. Or, do I have fun going through the process, regardless of the outcome? This is important because if your sole motivation is the actual outcome, you might quickly get demotivated if you don’t immediately see the results.
- Lack of discipline and focus — we might not have systems in place to ensure we stay focused and committed to taking the necessary steps each day to achieve our goals.
- Self-sabotaging — we might be sabotaging our own goals with conscious, and unconscious fears, beliefs and insecurities that keep us from taking action. We come up with all sorts of excuses and reasons not to take action. Example: “I don’t have the time”, “I’m don’t have the energy today”, etc., etc.
Let’s look at these in more detail.
If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there — Lewis Carroll
Envisioning your future self (i.e. What do you want ??)
Being clear about your goals, dreams or aspirations starts with knowing yourself and looking inward to understand what it is that you want to achieve. This is a difficult exercise. It forces you to be honest with yourself and to reflect upon where you are, what is going well, and not so well, in your life and, mostly, what it is that you truly want to achieve.
The first step towards clarity of goals is for you to start with envisioning what you wish your future to look like. At this stage, don’t worry about HOW you’re going to get there, just envision what you want to achieve.
I find that answering some of the questions below helps bring clarity about where you are and where you want to go:
- What can I be the best in the world in 5 years?
- What would you do tomorrow if you know you couldn’t fail?
- If money was no object, what would you like to do tomorrow?
- What opportunities are in my inbox or calendar right now?
- 3 years from now where will I have to be satisfied with my progress?
- What advice would my 80 yr old self give me?
- Is there anything I want to do, but feel unqualified to do?
- What do I value, what are my principles?
- What would need to change in my life for these things to become reality?
Invest some time going through these. Don’t rush through the process and take your time to reflect upon these questions and your answers to them. Think in terms of a 3–5 year horizon. If your goals are really meaningful some of those will likely take some time to achieve.
Use this set of printable templates to start capturing answers to these questions.
Once you complete this exercise and you feel comfortable you’ve found some key themes, or areas of focus, move on to the next step.
Identifying your long-term goals
The next step in this process is to translate the insights of your vision for yourself, into actionable goals.
Find your WHAT, WHY and HOW
I find that starting with writing WHAT it is that you want to achieve, in multiple areas of your life, helps identify more specific goals and actions to translate your vision into reality.
Next, I find that being very clear about WHY you want to achieve a specific goal or set of goals, is very important. If your motivation for achieving the goal is based on an extrinsic factor it is likely that, if you don’t get the outcome you’re expecting fairly quickly, that you’ll feel discouraged and will abandon efforts to pursue your goal. On the flip side, if you have an intrinsic motivation associated with the goal, it is likely that you’ll have fun going through the process, the actions required to achieve the goal, and will be in a better position to stay motivated, even though the results may take longer to become real.
Finally, once you’re clear about WHAT you want to achieve and WHY, identify HOW you might go about achieving your long-term goals. Spend some time brainstorming about potential ways of achieving the goal, but don’t get caught up with specifics at this stage, the goal is to think at a high-level and to identify some possible ways to get there.
The printable template (shown above) is a good starting point for articulating your WHAT, WHY and HOW. Download it, print it and invest some time going through this exercise.
Guess where you want to go. Let go of the false sense of precision. Take a micro-action. The smallest possible action in the direction of your guess. Repeat. — Carl Richards
Once you’re clear about what it is that you want to achieve in different areas of your life it’s time to start outlining how you’ll plan to get there.
I find that drafting a medium-term plan is more effective than trying to envision a full year. Life is complex, and you might have new insights throughout the year that can make you shift direction as you make progress, so it’s not worth projecting that far into the future. I tend to think about what I can accomplish in the next 1–3 months to get closer to my goals and, at the end of that period, I revisit my plans again and plan another 3 months. Start your plan with that time frame in mind. What is important is that you take small, iterative steps, towards your goals. Success is not a result of a breakthrough achievement, it is a result of the compounded result of small wins along the journey.
Taking action on your long-term goals
I typically start with a table like the one below to think through the plan for the next 90 days. You can download a printable version here.
From your long-term goals list pick 1 to 3 high-level strategies (your “HOWs”) where you feel you can make progress in the next 1–3 months. Success is not a result of a breakthrough achievement, it is a result of the compounded result of small wins along the journey, so break your strategies into manageable actions, spend some time brainstorming on the first small step you can take towards achieving the goal.
Identifying factors that might be limiting you from taking action
As you do this, you might find yourself having negative self-talk. Take note of those objections. Example: “Who am I to think that I can achieve X ?”, or “I wish that I could have Y, but in reality, I’m never going to get it” or “I know that I have to take that course to improve my skillset, but I don’t have the time, money, etc.”.
There’s extremely valuable information about yourself, your current beliefs and fears in this internal dialogue. Dissect those objections. Ask “Why Not ?”. Document your concerns and fears and the answers you come up with to tell yourself you can’t achieve what you want. Those objections might inform some areas of your life that you can focus on in the next couple of months as they are blocking you from taking action to achieve your long-term goals.
Addressing your blockers
One example of an insight from this exercise is that you might want to do something in the future, but you’re afraid of what others might think of you. Once you become conscious of these limiting thoughts, you might want to identify what you can do to, not only understand the source of that fear, but also to come up with creative ways of addressing it. Only after you become conscious of these fears, limiting beliefs and other blockers, will you be able to address them and make progress towards your goals.
Remember, if you want to achieve something, but internally you’re afraid of taking steps, you’re sending mixed signals outwards and inwards and you won’t make any progress. You need committed action. I.e., you need to take active steps towards your goals and not just say that you want to achieve something. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to understand what your blockers are and to come up with very specific actions to address those blockers. That is the only way to be fully committed to working towards your goals.
At the end of this step, you should have a good summary of:
- What high-level strategies you’ll be focusing on in the next 30, 60 and 90 days
- What might be preventing you from taking actions on these strategies (your blockers)
- How you plan on addressing your blockers through committed action
The long-term plan and your 90-day planner are your roadmap, your north star, to help you stay focused on your long-term plans.
Download the planner here to help document this information.
Once you have your roadmap, it’ time to translate the plan into your daily life.
The next step in this approach is to translate these plans into actionable, small steps that you can fit into your daily life. A key piece of this to build daily habits that can help you stay focused on what you want to achieve.
What doesn’t get scheduled doesn’t get done
High-level plans and actions can be overwhelming and paralyzing. The effort required to execute the task seems too big and we tend to default to procrastination.
Thinking in terms of weeks and days
The key is then to further breakdown your 90-day planner actions into 1–5 key areas/ tasks of the roadmap that you can focus in the short-term. Take small steps. The key, again, is to get started. Forget about everything else on the roadmap, just focus on those items.
Weekly focus
Having a weekly plan helps you create a more manageable set of actions. If Start by reviewing if there’s anything that you had planned to complete in the previous week and that didn’t get done. If that task is still relevant, add it to your backlog for the following week so you don’t lose track of it.
Next, think about those 1–5 key areas/actions you want to make progress on during the week.
Finally, identify specific actions you can take throughout the week to accomplish it.
You can use this template to document these steps.
Once you know what you’ll be focusing on during the week, identify actions you’ll take tomorrow.
Daily focus
On a daily basis, take 10–15mins in the morning to review your weekly planner and to identify actions that can be accomplished during that day.
Start by identifying what your focus for the day will be. Don’t add more than 3–5 key activities to your day.
Schedule your activities in the daily planner, or any other calendar of your preference.
As you go about your day, add any new tasks that you hadn’t planned for that might be relevant for your long-term goals. If needed, add these to your weekly or 90-day planner.
You can download a printable template to capture these activities here.
Weekly reviews
At the end of the week, review your week. Cross the tasks from your weekly planner that got done. If an activity was not completed this week, decide if it still needs to be done next week, or if it needs to be moved later or canceled all together based on what you learn during the current week.
I find that scheduling 10–15 minutes at the end of the week to review my progress helps me stay focused on my goals. I usually go through a checklist of items to help me assess my progress in multiple areas of my life:
- I review my wins for the week. What I accomplished, what I learned and identify any areas of improvement for the following weeks.
- I start thinking about what I can accomplish in the following week to get closer to my goals.
- I try to take stock of how I’m feeling about different areas of my life and identify anything that may need to be better balanced. For example, I might be working too much and not focusing as much on personal relationships.
Last, but not least, thinking about what you might be grateful about is really important to help you value what you have, where you are and to not fall into the trap of comparing your progress with that of others.
Once you complete this process once, then you just have to repeat it every day, every week, every month.
In order to make sure you follow this process over time, start creating the habit of scheduling, and protecting, a few minutes each day to review your daily plan as well as some time at the beginning and end of the week to plan and review your weekly progress.
Every couple of weeks, reflect on your long-term goals, review your 90-day plan and determine if anything needs to be adjusted, updated.
The plans should be a living document. As you progress through your journey you will get feedback and insights. These may make you change course or re-evaluate your priorities. This is normal and expected. What is important is that you are moving forward. One way or another you’ll get to where you need to be. Not because you’re always making the right decisions, or choosing the right options, but because you’re moving.
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Originally published at yournorthstar.co
