Seven Proven Steps to Setting and Achieving Any Goal

The ability to set goals and make plans to accomplish them is the master skill which anyone that wishes to achieve success must possess.

Before I go ahead to outlining these steps, I want to say that a well-written goal must the fundamental ingredients generally referred to as S.M.A.R.T. To spill it all, your goal must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. Talking about a SMART goal can be 'theoretical' sometimes and a lot of people do not understand how to apply these theories in real time.
 
But whichever is the case for you, and in whatever situation you find yourself, this principle when properly applied will make the drive you along the road to success. Whether you are at the helm in ExxonMobil Nigeria, or a small business entrepreneur who wants to break even, or an student who simply needs to wake up by 5:00am daily; learning how to set SMART goals and following them through with actions is the difference between failure and achievement.

Now below are the seven proven steps, applied by the all successful people in the various fields all over the world, in setting and achieving any goal they wanted, no matter how small or how big the goal. 

Step 1: Decide exactly what you want

Clarity is the starting point of great success. A number of persons battle with indecision, they are not able to properly identify what their problems are and so lack the clarity on what exactly to do in order to move on. So fundamentally, you must be able to ask and answer these fundamental questions; what exactly is the challenge facing me? What precisely do I want in this area of my life? Precisely what do I want to accomplish? What is the one thing I can pursue now that when accomplished, will make the greatest impact in this area of my life? Etc. An honest answer to these questions is an important step forward, and it makes it easy to decide in very clear terms what exactly you want.

Step 2: Have it written down

Write down your what it is you want in detail and set a reasonable deadline. Set sub deadlines if necessary. A lot of people do not find the need to write down their goal(s) because they believe they already know them and can always remember. But Brian Tracy in his book The Power of Self-Discipline stated;

'A goal that is not in writing is like a cigarette smoke: It drifts away and disappears. It is vague and insubstantial. It has no force, effect or power. A written goal however becomes something that you can see, touch read and modify if necessary’.

Writing down your goal has a psychological effect of making you feel that you are serious about what you are doing and this affects the rest of the things you do in the process of attaining that goal.

Step 3: Determine the additional knowledge, skills and abilities you would need to achieve your goal and how you intend to acquire them.

The man climbing up a ladder requires additional energy to move from one step of the ladder to the next. In the same vein, there is an additional knowledge (information), skill or ability you require to move from where you are right now to where you want to be (your goal). If you wish to achieve what you have never achieved before, then you must be willing to know what you have never known before and then do what you have never done before. Determine and make a list of these new knowledge, skills and/or abilities, and how you are going to acquire them.

Make a list of the obstacles both internal and external you envisage you would be faced with on the road to your goal and how you are going to overcome them, arranging them in order of size and importance.

Make a list of the people, groups and organizations whose help you would require to get to your destination and how you are going to convince each of them to be of help to you.

Arrange these in order of importance.

Step 4: Set a deadline

By accurately determining the amount of work you would need to do to achieve your goal, you would be able to set a realistic deadline for that goal. Never set a goal without a deadline or a time-frame within which you intend to achieve it, else you would be like an athlete who started running a race without knowing how many meters it is he is running. Use pen and paper to break down your goal into activities and set sub-deadlines for those activities. Time-bound goals play the same psychological games on you that exam timetables play on candidates. It drives you to doing what is necessary and important within the time for achieving your goal.

Step 5: Make a detailed plan broken down by activities and organized by sequence and priority.

By sequence you talk about what to do first, what to do second and what to do later. By priority you talk about what is most important and what is least important. Sequence and priority may be seen as the same, but must time they are not.

To illustrate this difference, we may employ this scenario of a student who has a lecture to attend by 8:30 but doesn’t have a pen; he would need to buy a pen before entering the class. So the student has two activities here, ‘buy a pen’, and then ‘attend a class’. The most important (priority) is to attend a class, but the first to be done (sequence) should be to buy a pen.

When you are able to organize your goals in terms of priority and sequence, you are able to know what to actually do first and what are really your most important activity/activities. A rational way to act is to perform an activity that is urgent and important first before an activity that is urgent but not important. 

Using the earlier illustration with the student, if by 8:20 the student is still unable to get a pen, and he requires a 10mins walk to get to the lecture venue, then you would agree with me that although to buy a pen is urgent, to attend a class has become both urgent and important. You should therefore consider these eventualities when making important decisions concerning your goals.

Step 6: Take action immediately

This is probably the most important step in accomplishing your goal.  Every other step you will take or have taken is only necessary because of this one step; taking action: acting out what is in your plan. This doesn’t necessarily mean getting so busy, rather it means undertaking activities in a strategic manner, taking the first step, and then the second step and then the third, the fourth and so on strategically. Get going and keep going until you achieve the result(s) you expect. Action is the difference between winners and losers. While losers are pessimistic in taking action for fear of failures, winners muster the courage and optimism to take action. They bear in mind that there are no short cuts to achieving success, there are only bold actions. They do what is necessary to get to where they want to be.

So from the first time you decide on what your next most important goal should be, put it down in a strategic plan, and follow it up with actions. Do something every day that moves you closer in the direction of your major goal. This is a wonderful strategy for achieving success.

Often times, people get discouraged with their goals because of the enormity of work that need to be done before it is achieved. They forget that no matter how little the amount of work that is put in a day on a goal; it reduces the amount of work to be done by that little percentage. So that if the work is broken down and tackled every day by that percentage, it will keep reducing to a time when there will be no more work left to be done.

So, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, do it! Do something, anything that moves you at least one step closer to your goal. NEVER procrastinate.

Step 7: Read and revise your plan periodically.

 As you go through the processes of implementing the strategies for accomplishing your goal, find time to read through your plan and strategies over and over again, if possible daily. This refreshes your memory, motivates you and enables you to always keep in mind what your plans and strategies are and to always take appropriate actions.

Be willing to revise your plans and strategies especially when you obtain new information or get to understand situations better.

At each stage in life whenever you are confronted with the challenge of making new choices or setting new goals, sit down and think them through using these simple steps. Always think on paper. Never ever say ‘Yes! I’ve got an idea of what to do’, without putting down that idea on paper. Keep working on your plans until they are complete and then execute them boldly.

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