How To be Damned Serious About Your New Year’s Goals

Written By Dave Navarro

You’ll undoubtedly read far too many blog posts telling you how to set goals for the new year.  I will not try to repeat anything that is covered there.

I am simply typing this (in between New Years’ Eve beers) to remind you of the two critical things that need to be present for you to reach your 2009 goals.  You can set goals any damned way you want, but you need to, need to, need to do these two things if you want to make serious headway, unlike all those other years where you go “Oh crap, I didn’t get it done.  Again.” (self, I’m talking to you about goals 1 through 3).

Those two things?  Simple.

• Write your goals down in detail (that means monthly or quarterly milestones) and look at them every single day.

• Take 10 minutes each day and journal your progress on those goals.  Every day.

Now, you won’t work on every goal every day.  But by checking in every single freakin’ day, you will remind yourself of what’s important to you and fire off those “get to it” alarms if you haven’t taken action for a few days.

Daily Check In = Staying Accountable

The reason you didn’t hit some of your goals this year is - more than likely - because you didn’t check in daily.  Think back on the year and ask yourself how things would have been different if you did the two things I mentioned.

You know they would be different.  I know they would be different.  I flubbed the tracking part for my business goals until after the mid-year mark, and my business made 70% of it’s money in the last 3 months of the year.  No coincidence.

Stupid mistake for this year - one I won’t repeat this coming year.

Daily Check In = Satisfying Sense of Balance

Checking in daily keeps you focused on maintaining a balance of action across all your goals.  This means you’ll be less stressed as you feel you’re not too “goal-heavy” in any one direction.

That’s all the advice I have for you on this December 31st.

Daily check-in.  Secret to success.

The end.

Happy new year.

Posted on December 31, 2008 
Filed Under Goal-Setting Riffs | 3 Comments