Have you started the journey toward reaching New Year resolutions? If the answer is yes, I congratulate you. If not, the below is for you.
Most people, me included, will take aback to think about how to execute after setting the goals. The act of delay – also known as procrastination is the main obstacle we have to get rid in order to achieve our goals. I realise that we could overcome procrastination through the below steps:
- Find out your WHY
I realised that we too often set goals that are not paramount important to us. Many goals are good to have, or rather looked good to others if we have. First thing first, I think we need to take some moment to connect ourselves to find out the burning reason why we want to have a particular resolution. This is how I realise why I always procrastinate and sit on the goal after stating it.
To start off, I asked these questions to find out whether the goal is paramount important to me:
- Why must I want to accomplish this goal?
- What is the ultimate benefit I want to gain by accomplishing this goal?
- What is the pain I have to endure if I had failed to accomplish this goal?
Only when I know for sure that there is a burning desire for me to accomplish a goal I shall proceed to the next step to find out what does it take for me to accomplish this goal.
Remember, less is more! Sometimes by only focusing on few compelling goals will lead us achieving greater and much impactful results.
- Plot out timeline & make it visible
This is the most crucial yet difficult step to turn our resolution into reality. The simple reason is it involves us knowing the detail process, actions required and time taken to make our dream comes true. The key point is putting down in black and white to accomplish certain milestone by a certain date with commitment. Initially, I thought only a person with project management background will be able to do it compared to others but I was wrong. I realized there are many resources available online to assist us in doing so. The below is one of the methods I adopted that I would like to share:
- Only focus on 3 main goals that you want to achieve for the year;
- With each goal, list out the steps and milestones you have to do to accomplish the goal for each of the quarter;
- Then, focus on current quarter and plot out the action for next 30 days, 60 days and 90 days;
- Lastly, translate the monthly action into your weekly and daily to-do-list;
- One more tip. Use the planner app in your phone to help track the completion of your weekly and daily tasks.
- Hire a coach
Not everyone is discipline and systematic. You may need an extra hand to guide you along the way, perhaps sometimes to give you a push if needed for you to finish the important tasks in hand. That’s why many high achievers engage professional performance coach.
There are many benefits you could gain from hiring a performance coach:
- They help you to develop a greater understanding of you goals and set practical action plan in achieving them;
- They identify road blocks and the negative emotion created along, and help you to overcome these negative behaviours;
- They help to track on your progress and provide you feedback for you to take the necessary action to be on track.
Before hiring a coach, it is important for both of you to discuss on the coach-coachee working relationship, the scope of coaching and agree on the style of coaching.
