Goals That Work - Part II

In my last post, we discussed that goals must be specific and that goals must also be measurable. I told you that there are four components to goals. Here is the second component:

Goals Must Have a Time Limit
Goals that do not have a time limit are unable to be broken down into "micro" goals to measure your progress. You might say, "I want to write a book." Great, when? In twenty years? In twenty months? If you don't put a deadline on the goal it will never happen and you will get to eat the bitter fruit of regret. You will say, "I always wanted to write a book, but I just never got around to it." I am not a very good writer in the literary sense, but a blog like this is a great way to teach and convey ideas. When I decided to write this blog, I decided on deadlines for updating my blog with different posts. So here I sit today finishing this post to stay on pace to hit my goal. See how powerful goal setting is?

If you say you want to make $100,000, that is not good enough. If you say you want to make $100,000 in this year, now we have something to work with. You will need to work backwards from that number. Figure out how much income you need to average each month to make $100,000 per year. Next, figure out how much you need to make each week on average to earn $100,000 per year. You need to learn what the average sales price is for your sales and how many quality relational contacts have to be made to result in one sale. So, now you have some easy math that you can do to get an idea of how much work will need to be done to accomplish your goal of $100,000.

If you want to lose thirty pounds you cannot just say, "I want to lose thirty pounds." Not good enough. When? I want to lose thirty pounds in three months. Now we have something we can build on. Are you already doing the math? That is ten pounds a month and therefore two and a half pounds a week. So we are going to exercise more and eat less to hit the two and half pounds per week. If you hit the chocolate cake or the second helping, the scales will yell at you that you are off the mark for your goal.

So if you want to be more social, lose weight, own your own business, increase revenues, write a book, or have a better marriage, your goals need to be specific and measurable and have a time limit.

Stay tuned for my next post where I will share with you the third component to setting goals.