The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide: 5 Steps to Achieving Your Goals in 2020

A new year is an opportunity to gauge your milestones and realign your goals towards a new trajectory. As the beginning of a new decade, 2020 is the ideal year to get your priorities and goals right from the onset. It has the potential of setting your agenda for the coming decade. Goal setting entails focusing on identified objectives based on a plan. However, while plans are intentions, follow through with your goals. The following steps will guide you towards achieving your goals in 2020.

Assess your Previous Record First
It would be futile to begin a new journey in 2020 without knowing how badly or well you performed the previous years. You’ll be hanged up or unsure about how well your goal achievement for 2020 will pan out. While assessing your performance with goal setting and achieving a track record, always look for areas of weaknesses and strengths. You can build on your strengths and find ways of working around your weaknesses for a better 2020.

Be intentional and honest in the assessment of your performance. Get to know why you never follow through with your plans beyond February and use that as a launchpad for a successful year. Self-reflection and constructive criticism will rejuvenate you for the challenges ahead.

Develop Goal-orientation Habits and Skills
One of the commonest reasons why people don’t follow through with their goals is a lack of goal-orientation habits and skills. Develop a penchant for a high sense of discipline and hard work. Have strong willpower that will not waver in the face of challenges. Sometimes you’ll have to power through these challenges to reach your goals.

If your plan in 2020 is to buy condo, then you’ll need more than just budgeting. Sometimes you might have to make sacrifices and let go of some things to save enough money to put down for the down payment. Therefore, learn how to master your willpower, inculcate goal-orientation habits and skills such as discipline and hard work. There are several self-help tests and tutorials on how to become goal-oriented. Alternatively, you can ask for professional guidance.

Set Goals and Plans
It is not enough to desire a holiday to the Caribbean during the summer. Breathe life into your desires in 2020 by setting specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely goals. If you plan on going on a holiday, pinpoint a particular holiday destination and the date. Be pragmatic and realistic while setting your goals to avoid being overwhelmed after months into the implementation phase. When setting goals, it is advisable to establish them on the right reasons. For greater motivation, go for goals that naturally give you the willpower to achieve them. Don’t force goals on yourself because you want to please someone.

Make Gradual Progress
Your New Year goals will significantly impact your life in 2020. When planning, your essential proposition changes. Like in the case of all successful change processes, always start small and make gradual progress as you count down towards the end of the year. Sometimes, success can be measured in days and then built on these small victories. Small progress will motivate you towards the end goal, which is to have a successful 2020. Always remember that you set the goals for the year, not months or weeks. Only consistent improvements will count at the end of the year, not a big effort in April that left you exhausted for the rest of the year.

Learn What Has to be Sacrificed
Nothing can be achieved without putting in the effort. Sometimes the effort required to achieve your 2020 goals might lie in making painful sacrifices. If you want to lose weight, you might need to sacrifice your favorite snack or hamburger. A holiday in the summer this year might call for putting more back into your savings portfolio and less partying during the weekends.

However, don’t overcommit too much of your resources and time to your goals. You may end up reaching the end of the year, drained and unhappy. Don’t lose your friends because you were saving for your dream holiday. Find a way of striking a healthy balance between your goals and daily activities. Find alternatives to the activities you have sacrificed. Achieving your aspirations calls for finding a healthy balance between the present and future.

Take-Home
Making yearly resolutions is a healthy ritual that can easily set you on a path to success. While we are winding up the first quarter of the year, it’s not late to keep up with your 2020 goals. Be intentional from the onset and understand your limitations and capabilities even as you set out to achieve your ambitions.