Achieving Your Goals

I see a lot of people talking and writing about goal setting and keeping positive and how to get what you want. It’s all great but I know from experience that without any accountability built-in you’re unlikely to achieve anything.

It’s easy to write a list of your goals in life. It’s harder to actually realise and make them happen. In my professional career, we help digital agency leaders grow their businesses. We write a lot of content to help them, we’ve got books and courses, platforms dedicated to the subject. But the thing that actually gets them the results they need is a mastermind group that holds them accountable to their business plans and goals. There really is nowhere to hide. They go through a process to confirm their plans and then they work through the next few months achieving them. They have monthly catch-ups in which they give updates on where they are and what they have physically done in the last month. Whether it’s making ten new business calls or sacking the underperforming team member or adding a new process in, they have to prove that they are working on their goals and if they’re not, they’re just letting themselves down and not likely to last much longer in the group.

So what learnings from this can I share with you to make you more productive? Here’s a start:

Make plans and lists of your goals. Then you must write the actions that you are going to commit to achieve those goals. For example:

I want to save £1200 by the end of the year. I will put £100 a month in my savings account.

I want to lose 4kg by August 1st. I will run 10k every week and only eat treat food at the weekend.

I want to learn a new language. I will listen to an online lesson every week and I will join a new class.

Can you see that without the actions, a goal doesn’t really mean much? You must revisit your goals and action list to hold yourself accountable for making stuff happen. Otherwise, it will just get pushed aside with the busyness of life and your goals will be nothing more than scribbles on a piece of paper.

Your goals must also be achievable. There’s no point in writing: I want to have paid my mortgage off by the time I’m 30 if you don’t have the funds to do it. Or I want to meet the love of my life by the time I’m 35, you can’t control the timings of this. Or I want to visit ten new countries this year, unlikely as we’re still in a global pandemic. Your goals can be aspirational, but they must be achievable too.

Good luck!