Find out how to write an action plan to help you achieve your goals successfully.
Make a Plan to Achieve It
To have the life that you want, you have to create goals. But goals are pointless unless you create a map to turn those goals into a reality. What you have to do is break your goals up into milestones to identify what you need to do and what issues might crop up.
You might not have all the knowledge or tools that you need to achieve your goals, so you have to take care of what you should know so that your goals are attainable.
Things You Need to Learn
It’s exciting to set goals and think about how your life is going to change. But something that stumps people when they’re creating goals is a lack of knowledge. Thinking and dreaming about what could be is often left to shrivel and die on the rocks because you don’t know enough to make goals obtainable.
Write Down Your Goals
Write out your goals – and then beneath those goals, write down each step it’s going to take to make those goals happen. It could be that you want to find the right person to be in a relationship with.
Goals are pointless unless you create a map to turn those goals into a reality hence there is need to know how to achieve a goal successfully.
Then you would write down the best places to meet people and the best first dates to go on. Then you would research what it takes to have a successful relationship. You might look up compatibility information, what a healthy relationship is and what to look for.
If you want to start a business, but you’ve never done it before and you don’t really have any idea where to even begin, then you’d need to start learning. You’d have to search for startups in the field that interests you.
Since business launches often require capital, if you don’t have enough, you’d want to research how to find investors or how to raise the money you need to get started. These are all learning processes that have to become part of the action plan.
People who have goals of kicking a habit – such as smoking, overeating, skipping breakfast, worrying excessively, and so on – would need to find the resources that would teach you what you need to do.
Identify New Skills To Be Acquired
Sometimes, when you’re starting a new goal and looking at where you are and where you want to be, it can be daunting if you have a lot of things to learn. It could be that you need to learn some new skills or you need to get some extensive education.
Whatever it is, your goals are achievable if you break them down into smaller steps. So on a card or piece of paper;
- write down what you want – which is naming the goal.
- Then write down how to make it happen – which is what you need to accomplish to make it a reality.
If it’s for wealth and what you want to do is change careers, then you would write down how to make that happen. Your list might be something like;
- take a class,
- find a mentor,
- attend meetings for that career or
- find webinars to help you.
It might take you days or weeks or months to figure out the knowledge aspect of your goals and that’s okay. Don’t try to rush the process. Most people simply abandon their dreams, but you’ll be making steady progress on something that will be life-changing for you.
Actions You Have to Take
Setting goals is really the easy part. It’s making them happen that trips some people up. When you set a goal, you’re thinking about what it is that you want to see happen. Unfortunately, some people never get out of the thinking stage.
They procrastinate their goals right into oblivion. But that doesn’t have to be you. Taking action is what brings your goals to life. Those action steps will often be in the form of hard work, gaining new knowledge or skills, changing your thought patterns and having perseverance.
Write Down Your Ultimate End Result
When you’re thinking of a goal you want to achieve, the first thing you need to do is to write down your ultimate end result. That might sound simple yet it’s one of the most important steps.
When a goal is just in your mind, your brain doesn’t make the connection between it being nothing more than an idea and it being actual action that leads to change. Your goals should be written out and they should be reviewed every day.
The reason for this step is that it reminds you of where you’re headed – and that whatever day you’re on is a step toward making that happen. It helps keep you both motivated and focused.
Breakdown Your Goal Into Actionable Steps
To reach your goals, you have to have steps that keep you accountable each day. It might be something such as creating new ads to bring more customers to your website or business.
It might be something like showing current customers that you appreciate their business. Think of your action steps as tasks you need to cross off of your ultimate goal list.
Schedule And Have Deadlines For Each Action Step
Scheduling is important. Give your action steps a schedule. Knowing that you have action steps that you need to take, but not having a concrete deadline isn’t helpful. If you don’t have a deadline for your tasks, it’s too easy to develop an, “I’ll get to it when I get to it” mentality.
Have deadlines. You want a completion date for your goals and action steps. If not, you’ll find yourself wasting time and getting sidetracked. Break them down. Keep in mind that if you have goals that are big, it’ll be easy to feel overwhelmed when you look at the big picture.
Having a goal of your entire life changing in a year is daunting unless you also have the small steps in place. Each of these small steps need their own “due date” for completion.
This should be written down somewhere. So an end goal of making an extra $50,000 a year might have a smaller goal of about $4,200 a month. When you break down goals into actions you have to take, it makes them seem easier.
Elaborate How You Will Accomplish Each Goal
Now, along with breaking down these goals, write down how you’re going to accomplish them. Know what it takes. Just knowing you need to bring in $4,200 a month isn’t much of an action map without you listing ways you can make that $4,200.
So that’s what you’d do next. Write out several ways you can think of to boost that income. Set a schedule to carry those actions out. If you need to sell 70 products a week to make that money, then that’s 10 per day – map out the steps to get 10 a day sold and keep track of them.
Work On Your Mindset Especially Attitude And Focus
Something that most people aren’t aware of as a tool when creating goals is their attitude. If you have the attitude that you’re probably going to fail, then you probably will. If you have the attitude that you don’t know enough, then you don’t.
Or if you think that you’re going to have too many struggles and will keep having to start over, then you will. Your attitude is half the battle toward reaching your goals. An important action step to make sure you succeed starts in your mind.
Make sure that your mindset doesn’t focus on the negative. Keep a strong, upbeat attitude. You can do this by holding onto the excitement you felt when creating your list of goals.
Maintain those feelings by surrounding yourself with things that lift you up and keep your motivation strong. This will be things like keeping upbeat quotes on hand to read, listening to empowering messages, or connecting with other people who have done whatever it is that you want to do.
Pay attention to your focus, too. An action step you can’t ever forget is to focus on the present – but don’t forget to look ahead to what you’ll gain once your journey of pursuing satisfaction comes to an end.
Grow Your Skills
New goals often mean that you’re going to have a learning curve. Most people do. So when you write down your goals, write down the skills needed. Then write down what it’ll take to gain those skills. If you don’t know the skills needed, do some research to know them.
Spend money to improve. An action that you’ll need to take is to invest in yourself to reach your goals. For some people, this might mean buying some workout equipment to lose weight or to build muscle.
It might mean buying a gym membership. Or it could be buying workout clothes or new walking shoes. For others, it might mean investing the time and money into life or financial coaching so that you can learn the best way to build your wealth according to the success that you want to have.
Obstacles That May Interfere
No one ever reaches a goal in a straight line. The journey is filled with roadblocks, with difficult times and often with mental or physical fatigue. But knowing that there are obstacles can help you be prepared.
If you want to achieve your goals, you have to consider what things might crop up that have the potential to derail you. This might be a money situation, a lack of knowledge, lack of investors, trigger foods or emotions, struggles with your new relationship or more.
The time after something difficult has happened isn’t the time to suddenly get prepared. You must be prepared before the difficult situation occurs. To do that, you need to think about what could happen.
Next, you need to take these scenarios and create a way around, over or through them. Because if you don’t, these difficult things could cause you to fail. But knowing what you can do when they occur puts you ahead of the game.
You’ll be mentally prepared so you’ll be less likely to quit pursuing your goals when you know what to do to overcome the obstacle. It’s inevitable that at some point when you’re walking toward your goal, you’re going to do something wrong.
You’re going to fall off the healthy eating wagon. You’re going to make a financial mistake. You’re going to do or say something that will cause relationship pain. It’s a sign of being human.
First, You Are Your Own Obstacle
Know ahead of time that you’re going to be one of your own obstacles. Decide how you’re going to pick yourself up when you let yourself down. Determine that you’re not going to dwell on the mistakes that you make – but rather you’re going to learn from them and you’re going to keep on trying.
Second, Letting Other Things Get In The Way
Another obstacle that’s common when you’re trying to achieve your goals is letting other things squeeze out steps you need to take to reach the goal. If you don’t protect the time and money you need to put toward your goal, it’ll quickly get put on the backburner.
What some people do to ensure that their goals aren’t pushed aside is they block off time for it on the calendar and then they make sure they’re unavailable for other things during that allotted time.
Third, Lack Of Understanding Of What It Takes
Another obstacle that can happen to interfere with your goals is a lack of understanding about what it’s going to take to achieve the goals. When this happens, people usually underbudget the cost or the time involved.
Sometimes, they assume that they have the necessary knowledge or skills and the goal turns out to be more than what they’re able to do without assistance. Not getting the parameters of a goal exactly right is something that commonly happens.
You need to course correct and keep on going.
Fourth, Be Wary Of Inevitable Frustrations
Frustration is an obstacle some people will face. A goal is sometimes going to cost more money, time and effort than you originally thought.
So keep in mind that while it might not be the fast progress you wanted it to be, you’ll still on the right path.
Fifth, Make A Robust Plan
One obstacle that trips up many people is having a hit or miss action plan.
If you don’t work at your goals every day instead of when you feel like it, that finish line will start to feel like it keeps on moving further away from you. You have to work on your goals every day.
Sixth, Underlying Or Indirect Obstacles
Some obstacles are caused when you try to do too much at once to make your goals a reality. This usually happens when a person tries to concentrate on too many areas or too many tasks all at the same time and this can lead to you feeling like you can’t accomplish anything.
You have to concentrate on what needs to be done today to reach your goal and cut out all of the unnecessary steps.
Seventh, Self Doubt
A final obstacle to achieving your goal is self doubt. This can make you hesitant about stretching your wings.
You’ll stick to your comfort zone, afraid that if you attempt to reach your goal, you’re going to fall short – or others will tell you that you’re not going to succeed. This makes many people turn their backs on their goals.
A Schedule Alone Is Not Enough
While it’s true that obstacles can interfere with your goals, so can your schedule – or lack of one. You need to create a schedule that you believe you can adhere to for the completion of your goals.
You can set your schedule according to the short term – such as daily or weekly – or by longer, such as monthly. But you can also have an overall schedule such as one that takes into account a year at a time for goal reaching.
What you have to keep in mind is that you can’t have a schedule that’s written in stone. This is because mistakes happen that will cost you time and effort and life can also intervene.
So don’t schedule your goal accomplishments down to the wire. Give yourself some wiggle room. Use a planner or a calendar and write out what you need to get done by what date.
Use A Modern Planning Tool
What can help keep you organized and on track is to use coded notes in whatever planning tool you use. For example, if the deadline relates to the financial side of your goal, you can use a green marker or pen to identify that goal as having to do with money.
If it’s relationship, you can use red for matters of the heart. Pick another color for health related goals. That way, you know at a glance what you have to focus on in which area of your life for that day or week.
When you create a schedule, it helps keep you on the right path. You know what you have to get done before you can take the next step. What many successful people do in life is something called scheduling out.
This means you sit down with the goals you want to reach and you figure out when the end date is for meeting that goal. For example, if it’s losing fifty pounds and you want to lose 2 pounds a week, then you’d schedule your weight loss deadline 25 weeks from the day you create your schedule.
Consult Your Schedule Daily
Your schedule gives you a purpose and a guide and should be the first thing that you check in the mornings before starting your day. You can schedule daily tasks that break down your goal for you.
For example, if you want to start a business, you might fill your Monday slot in with things like: secure a domain and create and set up website. Then Tuesday might be something like: write out a week’s worth of blog posts or find graphics for your site.
Just remember that your schedule should work for you and it shouldn’t be so full that you can’t possibly accomplish everything. Don’t be afraid to tweak or rework your schedule as needed as you work toward your goals.