Setting goals and planning for success

When you go on vacation, you plan the final destination and goals for that vacation. Let’s say you decide you want to go to Southern California and stay close to a beach but still want to go to many of the tourist attractions.

The first thing you do is decide when you can take vacation, when the weather is right for going to that destination. (Don’t go to spend time on the beach in June – they have June Gloom all month).

Now, plan all the places you want to go while in Southern California. Make a list and make sure you have enough time to make it to all of them.

Next, plan where you are going to stay. This will depend on where you want to visit. Can you get the dates you want? Is it central to all the places you want to go? Are you flexible with your scheduled time?

I like a vacation where I have lots of time to unwind, read and play games with the kids and grand kids. Others love vacations that are so packed that they almost need a vacation when they get home from vacation. You make sure this imaginary vacation is set up the way you want.

There are many things to decide when you are taking such a vacation. What happens if something goes wrong? No sun the day you want to go to the beach, or the amusement park is closed for a special event. Some things can’t be planned for so you have to have flexibility.

Planning for your self and your business

To make a year truly a success for you and your business, you have too plan ahead like you would for your vacation. The thing is, it needs to be done for 48 to 50 weeks. So many people put weeks into planning a vacation and a few hours (if that) into planning their personal and business year. The thing they don’t realize is that you don’t have to do it all at once, but a vision has to be created to start with. Then smaller, mission-level goals can be implemented and planned throughout the year.

You need to know and define what a success is. How do you know you’re a success if you don’t know what that looks like when you get there? This is the easy part of a successful year. Now, how do you create a plan to get to “the most successful year yet?” You have to have a road map. Let’s look at what you need for a successful road map for you and your business.

Many people throughout history have talked about the importance of setting goals. For a yearly plan, you need both yearly long-term goals and short-term goals. Most people only focus on one aspect or category of goals – personal, business, family and others. We need to look at all aspects of life or we will find that we won’t accomplish what we wanted to.

Michael Hyatt, a business coach and mentor, has put together a program to teach others about “Designing Your Life.” He asks his audience to answer three questions and then teaches them how to use these as a foundation to create a game plan for designing their lives this year. It’s a powerful program, and I suggest you look it up on his website (https://bestyearever.me). It’s focused on overall life success, not just business success.

One of the three questions Michael asks is “What is important to you?” He teaches you to write down the categories of your life and then rank them by importance. There are many but the top five for many people are God, Self, Spouse, Children and Work. Other categories include friends, parents, hobbies and many others. Sometimes, there are many work categories or businesses. Then he asks his audience to rank them according to their importance to them.

If you have gone to Michael’s site and done this,, you can now start to write goals for each of these areas and then make sure they meet up with your rankings. There are a few things to doing this:

Write the goal down. It must be livable, deliverable and measurable by the time it is to be accomplished.

Have a deadline for each goal. Long-term goals need to include short-term goals to help you stay on track. You must also have a coach, partner or spouse that you can share the goals with who will hold you accountable for these goals. Be flexible when problems occur (as they will).

You need to define the goal so others will know when you have achieved it. Maybe your goal is to get in shape. How can you define that? Another is to read daily. So how much reading will you do? Pages, time, chapters, what? Be specific. Say when you want this to start.

Make your yearly goals.

Say you have a goal to increase your business by $150,000. When do you want do so by? What shorter goals would help make tracking possible? How about a goal of having 1 billion people go to your website in one year? What short-term goals should you make? You would need to start it slow and build up. You can’t expect to have 100,000,000 views the first or second month.

Once you have your vision goals for all of the categories that you ranked, then you can create the mission goals (the short-term goals) that will help you attain the vision. Sometimes, you can’t see far enough in the future to see the second or third goal to meet the vision goal. Set the goals you can see and evaluate as you near the end of those goals to set the next ones. It’s like only being able to see a few feet in front of you. You change and add goals as needed to get to your destination.

Remember that not all goals that aren’t met are failures. In fact, many aren’t. I worked on a goal to lose weight recently. I was a few pounds short. Was I a failure? In a way yes, but I lost 10 pounds that wouldn’t have come off without the goal. I have re-evaluated that goal and implemented it into my new goals for 2016.

The London to Paris train could be another example of failure if viewed through that prism. Railroad officials wanted to cut the travel time between those two cities by half. It was a great goal, but they didn’t achieve it until recently. They only cut the time by 45% rather than the 50%. There were some turns on the line that the train had to be slowed down for and it cut how much time that could be saved. To go from close to 5 hours to 2 hours and 45 minutes was great but it didn’t reach the goal they had set for the train. Some people thought that the project was a failure. But they persevered and today, that trip can be taken in as little as 2 hours and 16 minutes. The goal is now met but it took longer than was originally envisioned.

The final thing to remember about goals is that sometimes they need to be adjusted to meet some limitations that can’t be overcome. (Remember the London to Paris train). Other goals will be too easy and will need to be adjusted up. Be willing to be flexible and celebrate the milestones that you meet and the success that you have achieved.

The last thing I want you to do is set up a weekly planning meeting with yourself to schedule everything that is important to you. Block out time for reading, writing, doing LinkedIn or other social media, work meetings and other business contacting. Make sure you stick to your schedule. This was something the Franklyn Covey program is all about. Napoleon Hill, Stephen Covey and others have all said that the habits that make great men great start with taking control of their time. Another is to set goals that stretch your abilities but could be attained.

The way to have the “Best Year EVER” is to plan to have it. Start with goals and time management and you will win BIG TIME! Happy New Year.

Boyd Petersen
Boyd@bpmedia.com