A 7 Step Guide to Setting and Accomplishing Goals for 2010

Given that it’s my first post of the new year, I figured the most appropriate topic was a guide on setting and accomplishing your most important goals in 2010. If you have read some of the recent articles I’ve written or seen the video I published, I encouraged people to get a head start on setting goals for the New Year. But, no matter how self motivated you are things always come up so, I wanted to revisit this topic.

I recently received an email from Steven@HumanExplosion about a goal setting program that I think you should be a part of if you are a blogger. It will do a few things for you. It will get you exposure on his blog, and it will be a way to share and measure your progress with other bloggers. So I encourage you to consider it.

Now, let’s get down to this business of setting goals. Many bloggers have offered up a ton of advice on the importance of setting goals, so I’m going to focus on the “how-to” component of setting goals.

A 7 Step Guide to Goal Accomplishment

Mind-map/Brainstorm:

I like the mind-map brainstorm free form thinking approach to starting. Maybe you have no idea what you really want to accomplish in 2010. In that case it’s best to start with a really unstructured approach to goal setting. Don’t worry. After this first step, you’ll get some structure. The key to this is just brainstorm many goals that you believe you can accomplish and even write down a few that seem really out there.  Just do a brain dump.

Pick the top 10:

Once you’ve done your brain dump, find 10 goals that are really important to you that you strongly believe you can accomplish in 2010.  I like the number 10 particularly because it gives you a little over a month of time to focus on each goal. You probably won’t go in any particular order and nature will take its course, but 10 is a perfect number because it seems fairly realistic and achievable. You might actually knock some goals off your list faster than you think.

Prioritize:

Once you’ve got your top 10 list, then prioritize your goals. The reason you should prioritize is because the top goal is going to be the first thing you see every day when you wake up and every night right before you go to sleep. You will of course see all of them, but in my experience of applying autosuggestion, I’ve noticed you’ll come up with the most ideas for the goal at the top of the list and you’ll often accomplish that one faster than the others.

Write Down Your Goals:

This is a no-brainer. Write down your top 10 goals. Write them in the positive present tense  and add a deadline (ideas from Brian Tracy).  For some reason writing goals down does something to your mind. Once goals are written for some reason your subconscious is propelled forward into making them happen. However, the next few steps in my mind are the MOST CRITICAL to achieving these.

Review Daily:

The daily goal review is really your chance to leverage the power of autosuggestion, goal setting commitment and consistency. By reviewing every goal daily you will start planting the seeds of your goals in your subconscious mind.  Consider the daily review like watering the seeds that you planted. You are essentially nurturing them in order to see them grow from seeds into plants.  You can either write them every single day or you can read them out loud. Whatever you chose to do, just make sure you do it consistently.

Take Inspired Action:

Taking action is obviously key to accomplishing any goal, but if you conduct a daily review you will take inspired action. You will come up with the right actions to take to make progress towards your goals. In fact you might find yourself saying things to yourself like “how did I not think of this before?”If you just guess at what actions to take, you are going to be shooting in the dark.  Take advantage of inspired action.

Cross Goals off your list:

At some point you’ll be crossing goals off your list. This of course is cause for celebration. Cross it off your list so you communicate to your mind that you are making progress towards accomplishing everything you want to accomplish.

I hope that you will find this goal setting exercise valuable and follow through on it. I encourage you to at least give it a try for the first 2 months of 2010. I think you’ll be really surprised with the results that come from doing this.