Setting goals wasn’t always important for me. I would quite happily float through the day, week, month, year without having any specific end in mind. Although I was pretty relaxed and carefree, I didn’t get anything done, I didn’t accomplish anything. There was no moment in which I could look back and say "I’ve completed my goal."

The pitfalls of not setting goals hit me when I realised that I had nothing to work towards, I had no real path to walk along in life because I had no destination in mind. I needed an idea of where I wanted to go if I was going to have any chance of achieving it. I had to start from the end, and work backwards.

The method that worked for me (and still is doing) is simple. I don’t concentrate too much on the long term goals that are longer than 1 year. I’m pretty young, and I know that my outlook on life could completely change in a year, making those goals obsolete. Instead I use a vague idea of where I would like to be, and then my goals are much smaller chunks of this overall idea, making them easier to digest, and easier to achieve. Having achievable goals means constant progress too, and that progress means that I’m getting closer and closer to the end idea that I have in mind.

The end idea I have, like so many other people, is to be wealthy and successful, but I know that one day I might wake up and decide to live in a tree eating what squirrels eat and not even having an internet connection. With this in mind, I don’t really concentrate too much on the overall idea; it’s not important. What is important is what I’m doing today, right now. I’ve split the overall idea into smaller goals which are again split into smaller achievable chunks.

The idea that I have is to create baby steps, then I can easily complete them, all the way to the finish line!

Firstly, my goal for the year is to create a sustainable, mostly passive income from home. That way I have laid a foundation that I can build on to get to this end idea that I have.

I broke this down, and stated that I would create 3-4 income streams for this to happen.

These 4 ideas I have can be split further, which helps me to specify what needs to be done. Let’s use this blog as an example.

For my blog, I decided on four important points: setting up and designing the blog, writing posts, attracting traffic and somehow making income from it.

Again, these four can be broken down further.

I broke these down into monthly goals, and gave a numerical value to what I want to achieve, such as x amounts of posts, x amounts of visitors. This was broken down into weeks and then finally days; giving me tasks for each day.

Now looking at a day’s plan, the goals of the day are pretty small, and won’t amount to much on their own. But over time, all the little goals that I’m completing are snowballing and adding further to the achievement of the bigger picture. I’m constantly getting closer to my year goal, and the closer I am to that goal, the closer I am to my overall idea. In essence, designing a step by step (tiny steps) approach, the goal is much easier to achieve, then focusing on the end and trying to force myself there.

This takes me back to the point I made about starting from the end. When setting goals and planning, it is important to start at the end, to create a destination of where we want to end up. But it also important to realise that we aren’t at the end, we are at the beginning, so we need to find out what it is we do at the beginning, and not worry about the end. The end will come to us when we take our first step and continue on that path.

So let’s break down this method of setting goals with a summary:

Don’t worry too much about the long term goal; just have an idea of where you want to be.

Understand what steps need to be done to complete this, and write it down.

Break the step(s) down further and further, allowing you to get it down to a week.

When you know what you need to achieve in a week, plan your days so that you achieve your week’s goal.

Walk through your goals, and find yourself at the finish line without having thought about it!

With these five steps, I believe getting to where you want to be will be far easier!