5 Steps to Effective Goal Setting and Follow Through

Or "How to set your new year's resolutions so that they stick"
Around this time of year I see many posts of people setting their new years resolutions.
They generally start with some sort of statement of want.

• "I want to lose 6 pounds in 2 weeks"
• "I want write a book"
• "I want to make more money"

A few well known things about writing these kind of statements:

• make them positive,
• make them actionable,
• make them specific.

But that alone will not help you achieve your goals, so what will?


So we get told 'visualise yourself having achieved the goal' and ask yourself how you did it.
But still that may not help enough...
So how do you create goals so that they stick and you follow through on them.

1. Phrase your goal
2. Create a compelling future of having achieved your goal
3. Work out what it will take to achieve that goal:
• what do you have to do?
• How often do you have to do it?
• How will you know you have done it?
4. Rephrase your goal in terms of your plan and compelling future
5. Implement and monitor your plan and make the future ever more compelling - implement positive and negative feedback.

If you still can't get it done after this then you probably didn't account for all the other things you have to do, so you created a plan that would not work for you. Or you probably didn't really want the goal enough to pay the price that your plan involved - maybe you need another plan?
So, those steps in more detail...
Phrase your goal
"I want to stop eating as much"
And do all the normal steps:

• make it positive (I want to lose weight),
• make it specific (how much weight?),
• can you action it? (Can you do this? Do you need help?)

Create a compelling future

• How will your life change after having achieved your goal?
• How happy will you feel?
• What will you do differently having achieved your goal?

Work out what it will take to achieve that goal.
Create a plan. Create a number of plans. Figure out all the different ways that you could achieve your goal. Pick the one that works best for you. Combine a couple of the plans.
e.g.

• Stop eating sweeties at night

If any part of the plan comes out as a negative (i.e Stop, Won't, Never) then... identify what you will do instead?
When changing habits don't create a vacuum, create a new process. If you intend to go to bed hungry then state "I will drink some water and go to bed hungry and have breakfast in the morning"

• "I will do exercise anytime after 8pm that I watch TV"

Make sure you identify how often you will do these things. This will enable you to build a visible chart and timetable to track what you do and when.
How will you know you make progress?

• "I will weigh myself every 3 days and record the weight in my log. "

How will you know you have done it? "When I weigh 168 pounds I will count this goal as finished."
Rephrase your goal in terms of your plan and incorporate your compelling future 

• "I will go to bed hungry and do exercise when I watch TV because then I can run up the stairs and wear better fitting clothes"

Implement the plan
The key to any change of habit involves putting the alternative actions into practice. Doing Something about it. And we need to check if our plan works. If our actions achieve the results we want. We need to take action on our observations.
So if I choose to lose weight through exercise but when I measure my weight I find that I have not dropped any pounds. Then I need to do something different because I have not achieved the results I want.

• Have I eaten too much? Do I need to count calories too?
• Have I exercised intensely enough? Perhaps my workouts need to tax me more?
• Have I secretly eaten some sweeties? I need to change that habit.

I need to test the results of my actions and using the feedback from those tests. Adjust my plan.
There... now you can set New Year's resolutions that work.