In order to start your journey towards success and begin developing successful habits you first need to have some goals. This is the destination that was discussed in Chapter One.
Learning how to set goals properly isn’t complicated, but it does need to done the right way. However, the most important thing that you understand about goal setting is that the journey is much more important than the end result.
This was discussed a little in Chapter One. When you have goals and you are on track to reaching them, you are happy. But your happiness isn’t going to become permanent when you finally reach those goals. You will be more satisfied with life and happier, but you are still going to want to set new goals. You will never be satisfied, and that’s perfectly okay.
What Are Goals Then?
So, you might be wondering just what the purpose of goals actually are then. You cannot be successful without goals, and you cannot form good habits without goals.
You can try to force yourself to do something habitually, but without a goal behind them, those habits have no power and they will not stick, even if you do follow the steps required to get them to become permanent. Your goal is not only your motivation; it is also your blueprint. The goal that you are working towards will put demands on the types of habits that you create and it will shape the way that you change.
Creating a List of Goals
One of the best ways to set goals that will show you what habits you need to form to achieve the end result is to use the YEAR-MONTH-WEEK model. This is a style of goal setting that is similar to the LONG-TERM/SHORT-TERM model that most people are familiar with. However, YEAR-MONTH-WEEK is a much more effective model in today’s world, where we measure success in those clearly defined periods of time.
If you are lucky enough to be reading this in January, then you have a great opportunity to create a perfect goal structure. If not, then you have a couple of choices: either set your plans for “the rest of the year,” however many months are left, or you can set your longest goal period over the next 12 months, no matter what month you start in.
Those goals for the 12 month period are your long-term goals. They will be the guide that you will use to create habits. Your 12-month goals are going to be what you are attempting to accomplish with the habits that you create and you will see how they break down into those habits shortly.
First, we need to set some goals so that you can see how the process works. Let’s start with some simple example goals for the 12 months period.
- Learn a new language
- Improve website traffic
- Lose some weight
- Read more books
The problem with these goals is that while they definitely tell you what you should be working on, they aren’t clearly defined enough to create habits from. So, let’s make these goals something with a definite achievement point.
Goal 1: Learning a New Language
Instead of learning a new language as a goal (which may actually take you longer than a year) let’s use something that you can actually measure. For example, suppose you used the popular (free) language learning website Duolingo.
Duolingo allows you to earn a specific amount of XP (Experience Points) each day that you study your language. It also tracks your learning so that you can know when you are 100% fluent. This is perfect for a goal because you can set a goal of becoming X percent fluent rather than the rather vague (and maybe impossible) goal to learn a new language in a year. As a side note, you should also choose your language.
Goal 2: Improve Website Traffic
This goal assumes that you have some type of website (possibly one that is making money) that you want to get more traffic to. This may not be your goal at all, but it is just an example to help you form your own goals.
In this case, your goal simply identifies your objective without a specific end point. If you increase web traffic by a single visitor, you will have achieved your goal, and that’s probably not what (the hypothetical) you had in mind.
Goal 3: Lose some weight
Okay, this is a common goal, but again, it’s not specific. Lose how much weight? By when? If you don’t have a clearly defined timeline, you aren’t going to be able to make habits that allow you to reach that goal.
Goal 4: Read more books
You are probably getting the hang of it by now. How many more books do you want to read? If you are planning for a year, then you need to realistically choose how many you will be able to get through. You also need to identify what types of books you want to read.
Goals That Will Actually Work
Let’s rewrite those original goals that we have identified into ones that will actually help you create habits, as outlined in the next section. Here are some examples of these goals with more specifics and a timeline.
- Goal 1: Become 25% fluent in Spanish using Duolingo
- Goal 2: Improve Website Traffic by 50%
- Goal 3: Lose 50 pounds, 8 inches from waist
- Goal 4: Read 20 Fiction Books & 10 Nonfiction Books
Creating Short-Term Goals AKA Habits
So, once you have some reasonable, specific 12-month goals, you want to break them down into 30 days goals. Remember, your key to success is 30 days of training a habit.
This is where you break down your goals into monthly ones that will help you create daily habits. Remember, the goals themselves are simply a destination. Now, you have to create action to go along with these goals.
Sometimes, you can create smaller goals that give you a much more manageable short-term achievement within a 30 day period. For example, if you were to use the goal to create more web traffic for example, you might have a goal during the first 30 days to evaluate your current web traffic, search keywords and the like. You can also set goals to research methods for increasing traffic.
In some cases, however, this is counterproductive. For example, if you set a goal to increase your Spanish fluency by 20% in a 12 month period, you can’t really break it down into more manageable goals unless you plan out which lessons you want to tackle each month and this often backfires because some lessons are much harder than others and people get frustrated when they cannot reach their goal.
The bottom line here is that you basically want to look at each goal individually and figure out how you are going to break it down. The YEAR-MONTH-DAY system is great for using habits to reach goals, but just be aware that you don’t have to worry too much if all you have is a destination goal – one that is specific and measurable – and some habits that will take you there.
