GOAL-SETTING | HOW TO MAKE DREAMS INTO GOALS
Many of us have dreams or ideas of accomplishing big things, creating amazing art, speaking or performing in front of thousands of people, making loads of money, traveling across the world – better yet changing the world – but we have no idea how to make it happen. “A goal is a dream with a deadline” Napoleon Hill once said - meaning until we put our dreams onto paper, well, they’re just dreams.
So let’s talk about dreams for a moment. When I say dream, I mean a daydream – “a short-term detachment from one’s immediate surroundings, during which a person’s contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake” as Wikipedia defines it.
Here are a few goal-setting tips that have dramatically helped me:
- Write it down - Before you begin your day write down your daily goals. I like to break mine up into home and work goals (shown below)
- Estimate - Take a guess as to how long each goal will take, then jot it down. Bonus: Once I do this, then I total my home goals and my work goals together, that way I know how long I’ll be working and what time I will be done with work.
- Prioritize - After each goal os written down with the duration of how long it will take, I then prioritize each one with theABCDE Method.
- Accomplish – One by one, I cross off each goal as I accomplish it. This is so satisfying that I make sure to write downeverything I have to accomplish just so I can have that satisfaction of crossing it off. My ideal day is when I accomplish everything on my list and have time to spare – which I’m working on goal by goal, day by day.
The ABCDE Method: Check out the picture of one of my goal sheets filled in (below). You will notice each goal is prioritized with a letter and a small number beside it. This method is called the ABCDE Method, an amazing and helpful method I learned from the book Focal Point by Brian Tracy. This method prioritizes your goals with letters than numbers.
- An “A” task is something that is important and you must do no matter what. The number after the letter signifies which important task you must complete first. For example, when I wake up the very first thing I do is eat breakfast. Therefore this is my first priority or “A1″.
- A “B” task is something you should do. There are consequences if you do not get this task done, but they are not as important as “A” tasks.
- A “C” task is something you would like to do, but there are no consequences if you can’t get to it today.
Whether you’re looking to organize your thoughts and goals, launch a new business or grow your current business, it all starts with a dream. So enjoy the daydreaming process – it’s a beautiful thing, but once you’re done write those dreams and ideas down, prioritize them, estimate the duration then accomplish them. Click here to download this free goal-sheet to help you organize your dreams and make them into goals.
My latest big goal is to launch my new business next week, what goals have you been reaching for lately?