Last week I did my mid-year review and set myself for some big things to accomplish before the year ends. 

2020 taught us that no matter how much we plan our life, it’s still God’s plan that prevails. 

And so, I don’t want to be too hard to myself in terms of accomplishing everything. However, I want to achieve something for sure. 

Here are quick tips to help you stick to your goals. 

1. Put a deadline

It’s important to put a deadline on your goals. Having a specific time frame to when you want something to get done will help you move towards achieving that goal. 

A simple goal of reading 10 books will not be as effective as saying, read 10 books by December 2020. With the set deadline, you can now work your way backwards. Decide in advance how much time you need to devote towards your goal and make sure you will stay accountable to yourself. 

This actually became effective for me when I launched The SavingsPinay Podcast. I told myself I will launch the podcast by April 30, 2020 and it forced me to work my hardest.

2.  Breakdown your goals into smaller tasks

Another way you can stick to your goals better is breaking them down into smaller tasks. A big goal can be very overwhelming and you want to ensure that you make them more manageable considering the amount of time you can only spend in a day (or in a week).

Start taking one small actionable each day. Create a to-do list for the day and make sure you block time for your goal.  

Reading 10 books by December 2020 may seem an easy task at first but without breaking it down to a much smaller and simpler task will force you to sway away from what’s important. 

First, minimize the decision-making you’ll do by preparing a list of the books you will want to read. 

Then, find the first two books you’ll commit to finishing. 

Lastly, select a dedicated time when you will read. 

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3. Include your big goals on your day

Should you find yourself stressed out how to balance your non-negotiable to do’s and working on your goals, follow this simple rule:

Work on your goals first thing in the morning.

At the beginning of each day, choose a small part of your goal you’d like to accomplish. Make sure you complete the task before your day job or school begins. 

This is the same technique work-from-home mothers do or those who juggle a blog and household tasks. They use the free time before the kids wake up as their personal time. 

Avoid wasting your time and get into the habit of making progress with your goals daily. 

Following the same reading 10 books by December 2020 goal, you may want to set an intention to read for an hour before your day job begins. This is what helped me read through books during this whole pandemic season. 

Without the commute, I am able to devote an hour for reading. I read at exactly 7am to 8am or before my day job begins. 

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4. Remember “WHY”

Every goal has an accompanied “why” factor. 

This will serve as your motivator at times when you just feel lazy and procrastinating. Your “why” will act as your purpose, your anchor to move forward, especially when life happens.

To do this you here are some helpful questions :

Why did you start your goal?

What will you get from achieving your goal?

What will change if you achieve your goal?

Always remember your “why” when things get tough and you don’t know what to do next.

Working on the same goal as the previous tips, your”why” can be to travel your mind away and reduce your stress. 

Because you know that reading will help you destress, it will become more important for you to accomplish the goal.

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5. Just get started

Last but not the least, just get started.

As simple as it sounds, this one tip when it comes to sticking to your goals has a lot of impact. I believe in bursts of productivity. That few minutes to an hour where you feel like getting a lot of stuff done. 

And what I found to be the trigger to these productivity boosts is just getting started. 

One way you can force yourself here is to take a timer and set it to a comfortable number of minutes where you can work on your goal. This is actually the very foundation of the Pomodoro Technique. 

Just open that book and start reading!

Overall

As surreal as this year may be I know that you have goals you want to achieve as well. I do hope the above tips will help you as it has helped me.