We’ve all been there before.
We have goals, resolutions, big plans, and a desire to accomplish and achieve exciting things.
But somewhere along the way, something happens: we get stuck. Our plans end up all but forgotten, our dreams lost in the chaos and busyness of everyday life.
The problem, often, is that while we’re great at setting high and lofty goals, but when it comes to breaking those goals down on a practical level and implementing them on a daily basis, it can be a lot more challenging!
In our series this month, we’ve been talking about living with intention. We kicked off the series by encouraging you to select your 2020 Word For The Year and followed that with some of our favorite Tips for Living a Well-Designed Life. And then, most recently, we uncovered the importance of Setting Intentional Goals across the five most important areas of life.
Today, we’re going to take a look at breaking these goals down into practical steps on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis. Are you ready?
To reach your goals this year, it’s important to turn them into actionable steps and put them within your reach. Here’s our favorite way to do just that!
Make Sure Your Goals Are Clear
First things first, it’s important to ensure that your goals are clear. Instead of having a goal to focus on your health, it’s important to be specific. What does “being healthy” mean to you? For example, does this mean sleeping eight hours per night — or exercising four times per week — or learning to cook healthy meals?
Once you have clear objectives in mind, you’ll be able to break them up into doable steps—and start working towards accomplishing them.
Start Planning
Next comes the planning. Planning for success is important, but actually making it happen is where the real work begins.
Here are some simple ways you can break your goals down into smaller steps that will make them more possible to achieve.
✔️ Decide on a goal you want to accomplish, write it down clearly, and share it with someone to increase your commitment. Break down your goal into smaller, manageable parts, plan your first step, and keep moving forward. Remember to celebrate your progress along the way.
✔️ Define Monthly Actions
First, with your overarching goal in mind, define the things that you’d like to accomplish on a month-to-month basis.
Say your big goal is to run a marathon in six months, your monthly sub-goals might include using the first month to build a base level of fitness and to work on establishing a good running technique. This stage should also include adjusting your diet, getting plenty of rest, and hydrating enough as well. The next month might include building endurance and increasing speed.
No matter what your big-picture goal is, it’s important to break it up into monthly actions, so that you have time-based objectives to work towards, gradually bringing you closer and closer to your goals.
✔️ Set Weekly Routines
From there, you can start setting your week up for success. It’s important that you set aside 20-30 minutes a week to create a plan of attack for your upcoming week. Here at Day Designer, we love the routine of a Sunday planning session.
Schedule out your week with the routines and tasks that you need to accomplish as well as the goals that you’ve set for yourself each week. Breaking your monthly sub-goals up into weekly routines will not only make your larger goals easier to reach, but it will also help you stay on task and incorporate these things into your daily life as well.
A great tool to help you visualize what you want out of each week is our Ideal Week worksheet, which can be found in our Flagship Daily Planners and Flagship Weekly Planners. (We also offer it as a free printable!) Schedule in what matters most, and then fill in the rest.
✔️ Create Daily Habits
You’ve heard it before, and it’s true: “You have to plan your own success.” Without a plan, it’s difficult to finish anything, and harder still to reach your goals. Either you can be in control of your day—or the events of the day will control you!
Be sure to plan your day in an effective manner, looking over your tasks and eliminating time-wasters and unneeded tasks. You should also be sure not to overload your day too much. Always plan for unexpected tasks that will arise. At this stage, you’ll also want to ensure that you work to implement healthy daily habits—things that you can incorporate into your routine that will better you or others in some way—as well as ones that will help you to reach your big-picture goals.
Our signature planning page, which is the heart of our Flagship Daily Planner, will guide you through the process of mapping out your day — aligning your schedule alongside your to-dos with additional prompts for dinner, daily gratitude, and more. (Try it for free here!)
Planning takes time and effort, but it’s tremendously important and vital for achieving your goals! No matter what your goals are or how daunting they might seem, breaking them up into doable steps will help to bring success within your reach.
We’re rooting for you, and know you can do it!
Stay tuned: Next month, we’ll share our top tips on planning and prioritization.
Tell us about a daily habit or weekly routine that is designed to support one of your overarching goals.
Day Designer is a proven system to get organized and live with intention—your tool for mapping out your big-picture goals and carving out time in your schedule for the things that matter most. Be sure to pop over to look at our Flagship Collection today!