June 10, 2010
The Goal Kicker – June 2010 Edition
Welcome to this month’s edition of “The Goal Kicker” – the monthly ezine produced by achieve-goal-setting-success.com - dedicated to helping you achieve your goals by providing goal setting related articles and reviews of the latest goal setting products available.
In this edition you’ll find:
- An article on “Top 10 ways to make your New Year Resolutions stick”
- A review of ways to stay on track with your goals
- ToolBOX Talk – how to get the best out of the ’Goal Progress Review’ tool
- Highlight the “Productivity Start-Up Kit”, by Time Thoughts
Yours truly,
Sam Sander
Achieve Goal Setting Success
Your Money and Finance
The Success Squid
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Top 10 ways to make your New Year Resolution stick
I realise it isn’t new year’s so an article on ways to make your new year resolutions stick may seem a little out of sequence. But it is a useful exercise to review what makes successful New Year resolutions, particularly since by now, many people haven’t achieved any where near what they’d hoped to achieve back in January – and some people have simply given up! It’s a sad fact that fewer than 10% of people who set New Year Resolutions actually achieve them. Are you one of these lucky 10%?But you can increase your chances of success just by applying these tips – and you can apply them NOW. Don’t wait until 1 January 2011!
1. Write Them Down. It's a proven fact that writing down your goals gives a higher probability of success. And keep them somewhere handy, so you can refer to them regularly to trigger your mind and motivation.
2. Make a Plan. Prepare a step-by-step plan on how you will achieve your goals. Try starting with the end vision of where you want to be and work backwards to where you are now. Detail the steps you progressed through to work backwards, and these are the steps that you need to take in reverse to move forwards. Your plan is essentially your set of instructions to yourself on how to get to your end goal. Always know what your next step is.
3. Make it Personal. Before you decide on what goals you’ll set for the year, ask yourself whether YOU are the main reason for setting this goal, and not your partner, boss, family or peers. Also ask yourself whether the goal makes you feel excited and energized and whether it is in line with you life purpose or mission. If you can answer yes to these questions, then it’s a good goal. If you can’t then you probably won’t achieve it.
4. Be Realistic. If you're thinking about writing down a goal that you always put down and never achieve, take a look again. Why will setting this goal now be any different? Is this goal something you just need to let go of?
5. Commit. Stop thinking in warm fuzzy thoughts and get out of those day dreams into reality. Make the decision that you will wholly commit to and complete your goals. Keep telling yourself through positive affirmation that you are committed to your goals.
6. Go Public. Or at least share your goals and your commitment to your goals with your closest family and friends. This way you’ll have someone to lean on when things get tough, someone to bounce ideas off and most importantly someone to share your successes with.
7. Be Accountable. Diligently track your progress against your goals and if you aren’t on track, ask yourself why. It can help to talk to a Coach or someone in your support network to help you account for your actions.
8. Focus With Reminders. Once you've written down your goals and created a plan, make sure you have a system for reminding yourself of your goals and to take action on them. Put reminders in your diary or calendar, post notes where you will see them, whatever it takes to trigger you to keep on track.
9. Believe and Visualize. Visualize yourself on New Years Eve with all your goals achieved. And visualize yourself in your perfect life? What would that look like? How would it feel? Visualize once a day and see the difference it can make in your life.
10. Use anchors. Tie your goal to a habit you already have in place. Perhaps you decide to exercise right after checking your morning emails, or practice meditation after brushing your teeth. Anchoring your new behaviour and goals to an existing habit is a great tool for success.
And now is the perfect time to revisit those resolutions you set yourself back in January and see how you’re progressing towards these goals and perhaps whether any of the above tips can help your mid-year focus and keep you on track to making 2010 a goal setting success.
Staying on Track with your goals
In our last edition we discussed one way of tracking your goals – Goals On Track.We must apologise though – we said that this is a free web based program. It isn’t free, but it is reasonably priced for the service it provides. Thanks to those of you who pointed out our error – we always endeavour to give our readers the best advice, but sometimes we get it wrong.
We still recommend the Goals On Track program as a way of setting and tracking your own goals online, and hope you give it a go.
But if Goals On track isn’t your thing, there are other systems and software available that can help – here are three different options.
1. There’s this Goal Reminder Service from Empirical Coaching. It’s a FREE (yes, I double checked this time!) service that allows you to register 3 goals and then you will receive monthly reminders of these goals so you can monitor your progress or just be triggered to do something to achieve them. It’s a useful tool for reminding you to keep tracking towards your goals, but has some limitations – you can only register 3 goals (OK for getting started, but we inevitably end up with more than 3), and the reminders are time based rather than action or trigger based. It also lacks the ability to break your goals down into detailed sub-goals. But it is a handy way to keep some focus, particularly on longer term goals – and it’s free.
2. Goal setting software like this Goal Pro - a feature-rich application in the self-help industry. The new version has great interface, lots of new features, and new video tutorials that show you how to work with this program. That's great, because the program is so full of features that it can take some time to learn how to take advantage of all of them. You can literally do hundreds of things with this program, like:
- Build your personal Success Tree. (I love the name!) You do it by breaking your goal down to smaller goals, then to tasks and appointments, so it's not so overwhelming. All you have to do is to follow the plan step-by-step. It’s a bit like mind mapping for your goals (and I love mind maps, but that’s a story for another day).
- Manage all your tasks in calendar.
- Check your progress with reports and visual graphs (great for some inspiration!)
- Keep a daily journal (for a stuff like "What I'm grateful for?", "What made me happy today?" "What have I accomplished today?").
- Write down all your brainstorming sessions.
- Plus it has build-in Success Coach, that encourages daily specific actions.
3. Or if you’re looking for a more interactive way of keeping motivated to achieve your goals, then try www.comotivate.com.
CoMotivate is your goal setting E-buddy where you can find someone who is just like you and who is striving to achieve the same goal. You can track and share progress with more confidence and work together with your perfect E-buddy to keep each other motivated and on track to achieving your goals.
You can also join teams of like minded goal setters, where you can share your experiences and advice on your wins and your losses towards your goal, and get advice from other members of the team.
CoMotivate has goal setting teams and buddies in all life aspects you can think of - quitting habits, losing or gaining weight, getting fit and healthy, finding happiness, passing exams, reducing debt, preparing for an event, starting a business, getting a job, learning a skill and even reducing your carbon footprint.
There is something for everyone in the online world of goal setting, and don’t forget to check out our ToolBOX which is full of FREE templates and tools to help you set and achieve your goals.
ToolBOX Talk – how to get the best out of the ‘Goal Progress Review’ Tool
The ToolBOX on the website contains FREE forms, templates and worksheets for all your goal setting needs.In the “”Life Planning Workbook” you’ll find a Goal Progress Review.
It’s important to review the progress of your goals for several reasons:
- To see whether you are achieving the deadlines on tasks required to achieve your end goal.
- To make sure you’re still actually heading in the right direction towards your goal.
- To make any necessary adjustments to your action plan so that it is still achievable.
- As motivation – to see what you’ve achieved and that you’re that much closer to achieving your end goal.
The Goal Progress Review provides a number of prompts to trigger your thoughts on how you are progressing. Now, we adopt the “SMARTer” goal format for setting goals – so our Goal Progress Review tool gets you to review each of these elements to guarantee that your goals stay smart.
So first of all, measureyour goal progress - goals need to be able to be measured so you can monitor progress. How you measure your goal (eg ranking system, actual measure such as weight, etc) should be established at the start of the goal setting process, along with your starting measurement. By determining your current measurement and comparing it with your starting point, you will be able to see whether or not you have progressed towards your goal.
Secondly, are you using your Action Plan - your action plan is your road map to achieving your goal, which is your end destination. If you’re not using your map, how do you expect to get there? Think about how you have set up your action plan and whether there is another method that will suit you better.
You also need to look at whether you’re achieving the deadlines on your action items – if not, why not? Deadlines are there for a reason – to keep up momentum! Perhaps your deadlines were unrealistic (don’t worry, this is common!) or your time has been directed to other more urgent activities – either way, think about why so you can adjust your action plan.
Thirdly, is the goal still relevant - Goals are established based on your situation at the time of setting them. If there has been a significant change in your life, you need to consider whether you are you still able to achieve this goal – or whether you still WANT to. Remember, goals MUST be relevant otherwise you won’t have the motivation to achieve them. Remind yourself why this goal is really important to you, and ask whether this is still the case.
And finally, consider your resourcing - is your level of resourcing (money, time, information, support) adequate? Identify any additional resource needs and where/ how you might find them.
For more information on progress reviews for your goals, refer to the ”How to Achieve” tab on the NavBar.
Have you got a better goal setting tool that you’d like to share with the world? Well, send it in and we’ll add it to the ToolBOX – kudos to you of course!
Time Thoughts website and Productivity Kit
One of the reasons that our goal setting efforts suffer is that as the year wears on and there are more and more pressures on our time, we just struggle to fit our goals into our life. Effective time management goes hand in hand with successful goal setting and achievement.You will find lots of tips and advice on time management on our website, but we also recommend that you check out the Time Thoughts website.
The website on its own offers practical goal setting, time and stress management advice, and also includes sign up to the FREE Productivity Start-Up Kit. This kit sets out the essential building blocks for effective time management and goal achievement, and provides practical tips and strategies you can put into practice right away to help you get the most from your time - starting now.
Verbatim from the Time Thoughts website, in the Productivity Start-Up Kit you'll discover...
- How To Get More Done In Less Time
- “The Productivity Test” - Find out what specific skills YOU need to improve most.
- 50 practical tips and techniques you can start using right away to increase your productivity.
- Ten deadly productivity killers... and how to avoid them.
- Get access to hundreds of time management tips, ideas and techniques to get organized, increase your productivity and make better use of your time.
It’s definitely worth a look if you want some new techniques for managing your time.
Well, that’s all for now! But don’t worry, the next edition of “The Goal Kicker” is only a month away.
We would love to get your feedback on “The Goal Kicker”– what do you like? What don’t you like? - so we can make it even better.
Catch you next month!