The MostEffective Goal-Setting PlanYou’ll Ever Find.(Plus TemplateWorksheet)

BY MELISSA JOY KONG

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EffectiveGoal-SettingPlan You’llEver Find.(PlusTemplateWorksheet)

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Recently, I talked about the #1 reason

why people don’t accomplish their goals:

lack of genuine connection and

commitment to them.

But once you’ve figured out what you

really want to do, you still need a strategy

for accomplishing it. Your goals are not

going to get you anywhere if you don’t

actually do something about them. And

not just anything—but the right things.

So here’s a very straightforward, fail-proof

goal setting template for achieving your

goals. I say it’s fail-proof not because

error isn’t possible (no one can predict

the future or control all circumstances),

but because if you follow this plan, you’ll

accomplish more than you would under

any other plan you’ve been testing out.

1.) Focus on 1.) Focus on only only 1-2 major1-2 majorgoals. Seriously.goals. Seriously.

Now that you’ve figured out how

you’re spending time each week, let’s

switch gears for a moment. Figure out

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what your one major goal is this year. I

have two major goals—one personal, one

career-driven—but wouldn’t advise

choosing more than 1-2.

This is the hardest part for most peoplebecause choosing just one BIG goal topursue requires extreme focus andconnection to purpose.

But, it’s really important that you stick to

just 1-2 major goals. Goals to me are

different than habit changes, which I

wrote more about on my blog. Your 1-2

goals should be so big that it would take

an entire year to accomplish. If you were

to accomplish only these 1-2 things, you’d

feel like you had a very successful year.

Examples:

Lose 40 pounds

Successfully launch a startup and drive

$100k in revenue

Get into a top graduate school

Learn how to code and land a job as a

front-end developer

Save for and take a month-long trip to

backpack through Southeast Asia

Based on what you really want to

accomplish—where your deepest values,

passions, and skills intersect—choose 1-2

goals to focus on for the rest of the year.

Do not aim for “reasonable.” Be a bitBe a bit

unreasonable.unreasonable. What do you really want

to accomplish in the next 365 days? That’s

what you should make your goal.

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2.) Create monthly sub-2.) Create monthly sub-goals. goals.

Once you’ve created your 1-2 major goals,

create monthly sub-goals for each one.

The idea is that your monthly sub-goals

would very clearly lead to you

accomplishing your 1-2 major goals for

the year. (Note: I’d recommend planning

for 12 months, but you can certainly plan

for 6 months, 18 months or whatever

number you feel comfortable with.)

Example:

Big Goal:Big Goal: Learn how to code and land a

job as a front-end developer.

Sub-Goals:Sub-Goals:

AprilApril – Apply and get into the Starter

League Beginner HTML/CSS class

MayMay – Take Starter League (SL) class &

code my own personal blog for

practice

JuneJune – Continue taking SL class, finish

coding the blog, and work on a Demo

Day project

JulyJuly – Finish SL class & find a company

to let me do front-end coding for free

to help them redesign a website

August August – Apply and get into

the Starter League Advanced

HTML/CSS class

SeptemberSeptember – Continue taking SL class,

finish up coding for the company side

project

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October October – Finish SL class and take on

one more front-end freelance project

for another company

NovemberNovember – Finish freelance project

#2 and apply to a minimum of 8 front-

end developer jobs

DecemberDecember – Interview with

companies, apply to 5 more jobs if

necessary…and land a full-time

developer job by 12/31!

When you break your major goal down

this way, you can see the natural

progression of your goal and exactly what

needs to be done each month in order

for you to get a job as a front-end

developer by December 31st. Breaking it

down this way makes the end goal seem

even more tangible. It will get you superexcited about the idea of taking on your

plan and tackling that one big, amazing

goal of yours.

Is it possible that you could do all of this

perfectly and still not get a job as a front-

end developer? Of course. But you’re

significantly more likely to get one if you

actually plan like this, versus not planning

at all—or using one of the much more

tedious, less user-friendly goal setting

strategies out there.

3.) Create weekly mini-3.) Create weekly mini-goals. goals.

If you put my post from earlier this week

into action, you’ve figured out the 20% of

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your work that’s driving 80% of your

results. Now, the question is: What

systems can you put in place to do less of

the 80% of activity that isn’t generating

results, and more of the 20% activity that

is?

Example:

80% of work that isn’t driving a ton80% of work that isn’t driving a ton

of results:of results:

1. Checking email for 4 hours a day

2. Using social media too often

throughout the day

3. Taking too many meetings during the

week

Strategies to eradicate the issuesStrategies to eradicate the issues

above:above:

1. Check email for only 2 hours a day—

one hour between 11-12pm, and one

hour between 4-5pm. Use Inbox Zero

techniques to answer, archive, and

delete more emails in half the time.

2. Block social media websites between

the hours of 9am-12pm and 1pm-4pm

using one of these distraction blocking

apps.

3. Only take meetings on Tuesdays and

Thursdays from 12-3pm. If it doesn’t fit

into the other person’s schedule, the

meeting gets pushed to the following

week. Exceptions can be made, but

only if the meeting is of extremely high

importance and/or urgency.

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Once you create a list of strategies, use

those—in addition to your set of monthly

sub-goals—as a guide, and create around

50 mini goals (about 4 mini goals per

month—one for each week). Each mini

goal should take no longer than a week to

accomplish. Essentially, the mini goals are

a way to further break down your

monthly goals into highly manageable

weekly chunks.

Example:

April sub-goal –April sub-goal – Apply and get into

the Starter League Beginner HTML/CSS

class

April weekly mini-goals – April weekly mini-goals –

Week 1: Do research on Starter League

program

Week 2: Submit formal application for

Starter League

Week 3: Send hand-written notes to

the founders to let them know how

excited I am about taking the SL class

Week 4: Get accepted into SL and set

up coffee meetings with 3 alums to get

advice on making the most of the class

When you break your monthly sub-goals

down like this, you basically create a

detailed road map for making stuff

happen. It seems so obvious, but no one

plans like this. That’s why most people fail

(in addition to not creating strategies to

eradicate triggers that lead to wasting

time).

4.) Do your weekly planning.4.) Do your weekly planning.

Based

on the

weekly

goals

you outlined for the current month you’re

in, you need to set aside 30 minutes to

create a weekly “plan of attack” for

accomplishing your mini goal for the

week ahead. I created this template

worksheet of what your weekly planning

sheet could look like:

It’s a good idea to add in your major goal,

monthly sub-goal, and weekly mini goal

at the top of your weekly worksheet to

remind you of what the whole point is

with all this planning business and hard

work. At the beginning of every week, you

should know exactly what you’re looking

to accomplish every day to achieve your

weekly mini goal—so that you can move

on to your next mini goal, in order to

move on to your next sub-goal, in order

to accomplish your one major goal.

Fun to look at goal setting this way, right?

You’ll see that I listed “additional projects

and tasks” on the weekly goal

setting template I created above. That’s

because none of us have just one

responsibility. We’re all juggling multiple

things at any given point in time. I’ll

explain how to best fit these additional

projects and tasks in later this week.

The point of this sheet is to help you

make the tasks that are directly related to

your major goal a priority over the other

stuff you have to do. This is a huge part

of goal accomplishment—you need to be

willing to get your goal-related tasks

done first, even when you’ve got other

important things going on. If you don’t

get into the habit of doing this, you’ll fail

because there’s simply too much other

stuff out there to distract you from your

longer-term goal.

5.) Do your daily planning.5.) Do your daily planning.

Once you’ve done your weekly planning,

you need to set aside time to plan every

single day for the upcoming day. I’ve

soaked up a ton of productivity advice

over the last several years, and this is

something I hear from pretty much every

productivity guru and successful person

out there:

You have to plan on your ownYou have to plan on your ownsuccess.success.

If you don’t break it down to what you’ll

do every day, then there’s no way you’ll

accomplish your weekly, monthly, or

annual goals. Basically, if you don’t plan

daily, you’re screwed. Either you’reEither you’re

going to own your day, or your day isgoing to own your day, or your day is

going to own you.going to own you.

I see an enormous difference in my own

productivity when I plan it out thoroughly

versus just wing it. Of course, your daily

plan needs to go hand-in-hand with the

strategies you implement to actively

avoid time-wasting triggers and activities.

Here’s an example of what your daily

planning worksheet can look like:

As you can tell, I like using pretty colors

on my templates. You can tailor your

weekly and daily worksheets to look

however you want them to look, but

these sheets work really well for me.

You’ll notice a few new sections on this

daily sheet. The first is “Today’s Top“Today’s Top

Tasks”Tasks”—these are the top three things

you must get done for the day. If you

accomplish these three things only, your

day will have been a success. At least one

task should be related to your weekly

mini goal.

This is really important: make sure youget this task done before you do anythingelse on your daily task list. Do your top 3

tasks in order before you do anything

else, and get them out of the way. Each

task should take no longer than 90

minutes (…And yes, it’s possible to get

your taxes done in under 90 minutes,

depending on complexity—I’ve timed it).

You’ll also notice a “Batch Tasks”“Batch Tasks”

section. This is a list of all the basic

operational stuff you need to do your job,

like coffee meetings to build new

relationships, checking and answering

email, getting organized, sending out

email newsletters, etc. Basically, they are

the tasks you need to do to keep things

going, but aren’t really going to equate

directly to “success” at the end of the

year.

For example, I need to publish content

daily for Technori.com, but if I just focus

on that, we’ll have a lot of content, but

not that much growth. For me, a major

sub-goal would be focusing on growth

strategy. Therefore, while very important,

editing and publishing articles is

actually not a top task for me—it’s a

batch task. You need to figure out how

you differentiate between top tasks and

batch tasks, given your own work and

priorities.

I’ll talk more about batch tasks soon, but I

wanted to show them to you on the daily

sheet for now, because it’s important to

make note of and label them as such.

As a note, I learned a lot of the above

techniques from reading I’ve done over

the years. My favorite thought leaders in

this space are Steven Covey, Leo Babauta,

and Brian Tracy. I would highly

recommend reading any of the books

these three guys have written,

particularly Leo’s Power of Less. That

being said, I’ve learned about and tested

the psychology behind why we achieve

and don’t achieve what we set out to do.

So, I tailored the plan above based on

what I’ve seen actually work and not work

through my various productivity testing. I

believe the plan above is the absolute

best aggregated, tailored plan for making

your goals a reality.

So there you have it! An easy-as-they-

come, fail-proof goal-setting (and

achieving) method. Five steps. A lot of

happiness and accomplished goals.

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