7 Steps to Strategize Smart Goals to Achieve Success

Since the setting of your goals on New Year’s Eve, how do you describe your journey and its achievements?

Are they accomplished?

If your answer is no, then let me assure you that you are not alone.

Most of us have no idea how things roll out after we set our goals.

Life starts becoming freaky disturbing, and somehow things do not happen as we plan.

The right time to work on our goals never comes, and this truth too never dawns on us until the time we had set for our goal accomplishment has run out to the last second.

What do you think might be the blockage in the process of achieving your goals or the obstacle between you and your “goals?”

Is there any shortcoming in your strengths? NO.

Are you afraid of achieving success? NO.

Then probably it is because you are missing the right strategic plan to knock your goal.

A study by Dominican University on Goal Research concludes that they saw 33% of increase in the competition for goals by the sample of people that had written down their goals, strategized an in-action plan, and shared it with a friend.

You Can Do It – Strategize Smart Goals

Framing a strategy is not tough, and if right now you feel like you are lost, you are actually not.

You have come to the right place and are reading the exact post that can help you to change your game and accomplish your goals, without selling your peace of mind.

Disclaimer: This post is not something that will turn your goals into reality, out of nowhere, like magic. No. This post will show you how to set your goals in a way that they are attainable and that too if you are ready to take action right after reading it.

Sounds good?

Start, shall we?

1. Have A Daily Routine

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ~ Aristotle

Having a routine in your life is most important.

A structured and organized way of living can bring in you those inner desires that can be your calling. These desires are often buried under what we call temptations in an unorganized life.

When you are bound by a daily schedule or routine, you tend to feel positive and light because you know what you have to do every particular day.

It kind of builds momentum for you, in the long run. Imagine, writing at least 1000 words daily. By the end of the year you would have completed 365,000 words that are good enough for a book!

Setting a routine also helps you beat procrastination and thus saves you loads of work backend (which often gets piled up due to procrastination).

You do not need to have the “perfect” routine. Don’t make it so stringent that you never follow it. Create a routine that has enough time for both, your goals, and your recreation.

2. Take Your Goals As A Challenge

Taking your goals as a challenge can dramatically affect your performance on it. Don’t try to take up goals that are beyond your limits.

Similarly, do not chase goals that are too easy for you to attain. Having an optimum pressure for your goal getting is the key to proper goal setting.

According to Yerke-Dodson’ law (or the inverted U method as it is popularly called), peak performance is only achieved when people are subject to moderate levels of pressures.

With huge pressure, their performance begins to decline and having no pressure for goal getting also drives them in a sloppy, poor performance graph.

Other factors that play a major role in the consideration of what makes a goal challenging for an individual are:

• Skill level – Check out the skills required for achieving your goal. Learning a new skill for a specific goal can demand time so make sure to include it in your deadline.

• Personality – Every individual has a different personality. Set the goals keeping your personality in mind.

• Trait anxiety – Trait anxiety is how you handle yourself under pressure. People who motivate themselves and are positive can complete a given goal in time while people who have negative criticism for themselves often delay in getting goals.

If you are amongst the latter, don’t worry it is not something that cannot be solved. Practice positivity and move closer to your goals.

Here is a perfect guide for staying positive under any condition.

• Task complexity – This is what level of dedication your task needs to get completed. If your goal is a complex one requiring high levels of attention, you need a relatively calm and serene atmosphere for completing it.

3. What Is Your Version Of Goal

Allow me to share a short story.

On the morning of April 6, 2007, a lady was lying in her home office surrounded by a pool of blood. She had her cheekbone broken and her eye cut nastily by hitting the office table while her way down.

Upon waking up, she found herself subjected to numerous medical diagnoses, from MRI to echo-cardiogram to CAT scan. The doctors found no serious internal injuries, and the problem for her collapse was nothing but hard work.

This lady had been working for 18 hour work days, seven days a week and hence the sleep deprivation and burnout. (Source: Thrive)

Before you figure out this lady as a seeker of success, let me tell you she had seen more success than almost anyone in this world before this tragic collapse. Her name is Ariana Huffington.

She had founded The Huffington Post in 2005 and was chosen as one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine.

So, was this the success (goal) she aimed her whole life? Did she dream of working 18 hours a day 24*7 after all the success she had seen?

Definitely – no.

Hence, make sure what you want from life before setting your goals. Goal selection has a crucial role in the strategic action plan for goal accomplishment.

One wrong goal and you could be chasing your success for the whole life, like a mirage.

Ask yourself this question. What is your version of goal?

Is it money and fame? Well, these both are extremely crucial in deciding one’s success but are these only factors?

Having a goal to earn money is no harm. The concern is you should know when it is enough so that you can enjoy life.

The right goal should aim at taking us forward from where we are. It should have nothing to do with proving something to somebody.

If your version of goal has to do something with what others are going to perceive of you, I am sorry, you will end up in a tunnel where you can never feel proud of yourself.

So, discard all those “will show them” type of goals because they are the ones that block your way to achieving goals that matter to you.

Your goal action plan should be to move closer to authentic goals that change the meaning of your life rather than getting entangled in the endless web of hoax goals.

4. Set Proper Time Limit For Your Goals

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.” ~ Bill Gates

Do you know that timing is very important when it comes to making your dream come true?

Just like work pressure discussed above, timing too is an important aspect of any strategy towards goal getting. Allocating less time to a goal might not let it happen on the given day.

Similarly, taking too much time for getting a job done might dilute your enthusiasm for getting that goal accomplished.

The key here is to set realistic goals and set the appropriate amount of time it needs.

For example, you can write a book in the next six months.

However, what if you are told to write it in a week time. I do not think it is a feasible idea.

Always break your goals into smaller tasks and allocate a time for each chunk of goal you got. If you are to complete a book within six months, break this goal into writing a chapter every week or ten days.

This way you not only get a large pile of work done seamlessly but also put in more dedication to each part, and hence the quality of work increases significantly in your final version.

5. Stay focused

Staying focused is becoming numb to every external stimulus, till you want to get a goal is attained.

While you are working upwards towards your goal, try to cut the rope for every distraction that can pull you down.

Distractions when internal can be tough to handle. These are mainly temptations that pull you from working towards your goals and push you towards indulgence and procrastination.

Often when goals seem to take longer time, smaller and wicked satisfactions try to replace our goals. So, there should be nothing that should take your focus off your goals no matter what.

If you think you need to work on focusing towards your goals, this article will definitely help you.

6. BHAG

Pronounced as BEE-hags, BHAG is the short for Big Hairy Audacious Goals. BHAG have goals on a bigger frame, often with a visionary aspect.

According to Wikipedia, a true BHAG is clear and compelling, serves as a unifying focal point of effort, and acts as a clear catalyst for team spirit.

It has a clear finish line, so the organization can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot for finish lines.

While this strategy is usually used by bigger brands or business with teams and huge goals, I will tell you how to use it for your goal accomplishment.

For example,

SpaceX has a BHAG to enable human exploration and settlement on Mars.

Sam Walton, set a BHAG for Walmart of reaching $125 billion in sales by 2000, he did it in 1998.

Microsoft in its BHAG chalked out that it wanted, a PC on every desk and in every home.

You do not necessarily have to be one of those bigger firms to set a BHAG for yourself; Sam Walton was not a big guy before he founded Walmart.

He just set a BHAG for himself to take his home business and make it most profitable in Arkansas. The rest is history.

What to do for setting a BHAG:

The first and foremost rule of setting up a BHAG is to envision how you are going to see yourself in the next 20-30 years.

I know this is kind of big, but it ultimately will help you to align your smaller goals systematically.

The main aim of BHAG is to get you out of the small bubble. You should think big, outside the box, and work towards achieving it.

In a common example, a father can have a BHAG of seeing his children acquire high-quality education and a respectable life.

In order to achieve this goal after 20-30 years, he should align all his smaller goals in order.

This can be getting himself into a position to afford them quality education.

Other smaller goals can be investing in a mutual fund or any similar policy so that he stays secure at a time of adversity and so on.

7. Learn To Win From Your Loss

Winning is not a universal truth. People, sometimes fail, despite giving their hundred percent. This does not mean they should never try to rise.

Failure is the stepping stone to success is what we are taught at the very beginning of our school life.

If one goal was unattainable, it does not mean all our future goals will get ruined too.

In her post on how to rise every time you fall, Harleena Ma’am has clearly described how keeping an ACE up your sleeve can help you change the game and accomplish your goals.

ACE here stands for:

Accept: your failures
Change: your approach towards goal getting
Explore: new opportunities to get work done easily

Having the ACE approach can help you move closer to your goals, in a more practical way. The key principle of the ACE approach is to stimulate progress.

Winding Up

One of the most challenging aspects of making a goal come true is your journey towards achieving it.

In case you still aren’t able to discover your calling, you should work towards finding your goal that will define you in the near future.

However, if you are sure about what you want from yourself, you should then try to frame a path towards achieving it.

This guide will surely help you in framing a path that leads you to your goals and helps you to change the game.

Over To You –

Have you found the purpose of your life? If that’s a yes, how is your journey towards your goals in life? I would love to know what helps you to keep to your goals. Do share your strategy about goal-getting. We’d love to hear your action plans, please share them in the comments.