How to: Set Goals and Actually Reach Them
New year, new me, right? With the chaos of 2020 (hopefully) coming to a close, it’s the right time to be thinking about how you can make positive changes to your lifestyle. This could be in any and all aspects of your life, including eating healthier, exercising more, being more present with friends and family and so on.
As you can imagine, we’re particularly interested in people’s financial resolutions. The period leading up to the end of the year provides an excellent opportunity to take stock of your financial goals and assess where you are along your way to reaching them. Are you on track with where you thought you’d be by now, factoring in any setbacks that occurred this year due to the pandemic? It’s also a great time to think about how you can improve your level of financial literacy. Are you investing in, or at the very least, researching financial products and services that will help you grow and protect your wealth? Do you know how to file your own taxes correctly? These are essential skills for every adult in charge of their own finances, and if you’re reading this and realizing you’ve got room for improvement, now is a great time to shape up!
January is often a month of frenzied activity for many people as they work towards their new goals, but things tend to slow down for most by the time March rolls around. It’s estimated that around 60% of people set New Years resolutions, but only 8% of that group actually achieves them over the course of the year. So, you may be asking yourself, is it possible to set New Year’s resolutions that I can actually stick to?
Like you’ve probably read before, the real challenge in reaching your goals has more to do with your mindset than anything. Staying focused, optimistic and confident in your progress is an essential step of any attempt to reach a lofty goal, whereas letting yourself procrastinate and lose focus is the enemy of your success. This energy has to come from within you, and there’s no easy “how to” guide available on how to manifest it. However, behind your willpower, there still needs to be some structure, and that part can absolutely be taught. As such, we wanted to create a guide offering you some strategies to try if you’ve never had much success reaching goals before (whether they’re financial in nature or not). Combining your passion and with the use of these tips might be exactly what you need to take your aspirations to the next level in 2021.
Create SMART Goals
We’ve gone over SMART goals before in our Beginner’s Guide to Financial Planning, but it’s so important to re-emphasize creating SMART goals because of how effective they can be. The SMART framework is taught in high-level business courses around the world because it works.
SMART is an acronym describing five characteristics that all effective goals should have. They are as follows:
S – specific
Your goal needs to be specific so that there are clear parameters for you to follow. For example, saying “I will save money” and saying “I will save $1000” are different. The former leaves an ambiguous question of how much money to save, whereas the latter sets a clear objective.
M – measurable
You need to be able to measure your results in order to know if you’re on track to achieve your goal. For example, resolving to save your $1000 in your QUBER account (so you can clearly see a balance of $1000) means you’ll have concrete evidence that you’ve reached your goal.
A – attainable
Your goal needs to be something you can attain given the resources, talents and time you have now. For example, saying “I will save $1000 by walking everywhere I need to go” only makes sense if you live in a busy metropolitan area. If you need to drive to get to work on time, walking everywhere to save money on gas is not an attainable way to achieve your goal.
R – realistic
Your goal needs to be something that you can actually achieve, barring any kind of miraculous event. For example, pledging to save $1 billion dollars is not something the average person can feasibly reach in their lifetime. On the other hand, pledging to save $1000 should be no problem.
T – time-bound
Goals mean nothing without some kind of time-based structure to ground them. By saying, “I will save $1000”, you’re establishing a specific goal but leaving it open-ended. Instead, saying “I will save $1000 by July 25, 2021”, you set a deadline for when that $1000 needs to saved by. Having a timeline will keep you accountable, and will be crucial when breaking down large goals into smaller, easier to handle steps.
From our above example, our SMART goal could be “I will save $1000 in my QUBER account by reducing my spending on coffee and takeout by July 25, 2021.” This goal gives you a specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound outline of how you’re going to save $1000, and eliminates the ambiguous wiggle room that we often allow ourselves when facing challenges, causing us to fall off track. Creating a SMART goal will also help you to reverse-engineer the path from your end goal to where you are now, helping you create a clear, detailed plan of attack for how you want to reach the finish line.
Write Things Down
This is such a simple step, but is essential if you want to achieve your goals! Of course, chances are, you already think about your goals and what it would be like to achieve them from time to time. But, they can’t possibly be top-of-mind all the time, which means there’s going to be times where you’re vulnerable to making choices that’ll set you back as you go about your day-to-day life. For example, if you’re not clearly reminding yourself that you want to spend more time with your family when you set your work schedule for the coming week, you’re going to be way more likely to overlook setting aside that time for them and end up working the same schedule you usually do. This is often followed by the thought, “next time”, which we all know often does not lead to your behaviour actually changing the next time around.
There’s an often-cited study by Dr. Gail Matthews that took a group of participants within a wide range of ages, genders and professions and split them into two groups: those who wrote down their goals, and those who didn’t. Her results were clear, in that the group that wrote down their goals and dreams on a daily basis were 42% more likely to achieve their goals. That means, taking the time to write down your goals every day will almost double your success rate when it comes to achieving them! This is because the exercise of writing will help you focus on what you consider to be important, and bring whatever that is to the top of your priority list on a daily basis.
Beyond writing your goals down as a regular exercise, you should write yourself reminders about your goal and leave them for yourself wherever it’s important you see them. For example, if you’re trying to cut down on the amount of sugar you eat, you could leave yourself a post-it reminder on your fridge or your cupboard. Or, if you’re trying to reduce the amount of online shopping you do, leave yourself notes by your computer or in your agenda. Soon, you’ll find that because you’re thinking about your goal more often, you’ll be thinking about how most of your choices impact your ability to reach that goal. In this light, you’ll have a much easier time avoiding decisions that’ll just throw you off course.
Don’t Overcomplicate Things
When you’re setting goals, the first step is to think about what you want to accomplish over the next period of your life. This can be an exciting process, as you get to visualize what your life could be like if you achieved all your goals; it could include a higher bank balance, a healthier lifestyle, more time with friends and family, travelling to a dream destination and so on. These visualizations are really important, as that vision of what you want your life to look like is usually the most powerful motivator you’re going to have when it comes to putting in the work to achieve your goals.
However, if you’re just setting goals for the first time, be warned that you can reduce your chance of success by getting too caught up in this vision. For one, if you’re trying to achieve too many goals at the same time, you won’t be able to really devote your attention to any of your objectives. You might just end up doing a bunch of things sort-of well, or get overwhelmed by the task at hand and stop working entirely.
Furthermore, your vision is just that: a vision. Just because you see your end result taking the form you’ve visualized in your mind doesn’t mean it will look like that in the end. This also applies to all the steps along the way to the goal, as progress is almost never linear and your idea of your trajectory may not match how things happen in real life. For example, if your goal is to gain a six-pack by summertime and you’re going to work out every day, you might assume that by week four you should see a tangible change in your appearance compared to day one. If you then make it to week four and still don’t see any new muscles peeking out, that doesn’t mean you’re not on the right track; things just aren’t aligned with your pre-conceived notion of where you thought you’d be by now. This can be a discouraging thing to go through if you’ve been working hard, but can be avoided entirely by staying out of your head. So, keep things simple wherever you can. Focus on one or two major goals you want to achieve over the next little while and stick to them. Beyond that, as long as you’re working towards your goals, try your best not to get too caught up in how you think things should be going.
Set a Standardized Check-in
Though this part seems a bit tedious to some people and thus might be something they skip over, it’s really important to set aside a short amount of time on a regular schedule to check in with your goals. If you aren’t measuring your progress, you’re not really engaging in the process of reaching your end goal. In the same manner your teachers used to give you a letter or number grade on assignments leading up to your final grade, you should be able to give yourself a tangible grade for how it’s going with your goals every time you check in. This is particularly important if you’re trying to achieve a large, long-term goal, like saving for retirement. This is an area where setting SMART goals helps tremendously, as you’ve already established your system of measurement when you set the original goal.
So, set aside a standardized, scheduled period of time to devote to tallying up your progress with your goals. This can be any period of time, but should be relatively frequent, and ideally should take the parameters of your goal into consideration. For example, if you’re trying to save a certain amount of money by a specific end date, you probably don’t need a daily progress check-in if you’re not getting paid every day. Instead, setting aside 30 minutes on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to make your calculations and compare to your road map will help encourage you to keep going and will also highlight major issues before they arise. If your data suggests you’re slipping, you know you’ve got to tighten up before you fall so far off course it’s hard to get back.
Have an Accountability Buddy
If you’re working towards a goal on your own, you only have one voice guiding you as you work. One of the reasons people often fail as they try to reach big goals is that they let a self-sabotaging inner monologue take over and guide themselves off the path to success they were on. It could be by way of procrastination (“I can do it tomorrow instead”), or it could be more sinister (“I’ll never really be able to reach that goal”).
If you’ve tried to reach goals before in the past but found that you gave up too easily, having an accountability buddy might be exactly what you need to succeed. Ideally, this person should have a stake in being your accountability buddy. For example, this person could be a friend that wants to work towards the same goal as you (ex. exercising more together), or someone close to you that has a vested interest in you reaching that goal (ex. someone who wants their partner to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle). Once you’ve added another person to the mix, cutting corners becomes much harder. While we tend to give ourselves a ton of slack when we’re feeling uncomfortable, an accountability buddy is going to give you a harder time if you start procrastinating and falling off track.
If you don’t have an accountability buddy in mind, openly sharing about your attempts to reach your goals is the next best thing. Even if it’s not the same person all the time, your family and friends will be much more likely to check in on how it’s going if you’re sharing openly and remind you to stay focused. Beyond that, saying the words out loud to other people (for example, “I’m trying to lose some weight this year”) will help make your goals feel much more real, much like how writing down your goals crystallizes them for you.
Be Brave!
Finally, it’s been said before that people fear failure, but they don’t realize that they also fear success. This seems odd at first thought, but there’s some real truth here. For obvious reasons, nobody likes to fail when they apply themselves to a task. The feeling of failing to hit your target doesn’t feel good, regardless of what the end goal was to start. This alone can sometimes be enough to push a person off their goal, causing them to fail in the end anyways. However, when you think about success, there are aspects of it that can subconsciously cause people to stay in their comfort zone. Success often brings you attention and recognition, but more importantly, it brings change into your life. The unknown element of change is scary for many people, in this light, the devil on your shoulder might convince you that life is easier at your comfortable, current plateau.
Whatever your goal is, don’t be afraid to make mistakes and stumble along the way, but also don’t be afraid to achieve it. You are the only person who can catalyze real change in your life. If you want to achieve something, you need to firmly believe in your ability to do it.
We hope these tips help you re-approach the way you’ve been setting goals, or, that they inspire you to give it a try if you haven’t before! Just because you’ve failed in the past doesn’t mean you’ll never reach your goals. In fact, if you were to ask any successful person, they’d say failing at something actually teaches you valuable lessons about what to avoid going forward, and can propel you to a higher degree of success than you might have achieved otherwise. Whatever your goals may be, they are absolutely worth trying for. Happy New Year!
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