If you want to know how to achieve your goals and plan effectively, this is for you.

How to Plan Successfully for Life🧐

• Goal planning and goal setting can be very exciting; they usually mark the beginning of something and spark motivation and inspiration for the future. Nevertheless, as good as we are at setting goals, we don’t always end up achieving them.

• Of course, this depends on several factors, and we can’t guarantee that we will achieve every single goal we set by the day and time we set and how we set it. Still, there are some things that we can do to nudge ourselves on the right track. For starters, having a plan. 

• A plan is something many people don’t want to spend time on. But if you don’t want to spend time on the plan or you don’t have time for it, do you even have time for execution? I’m not sure. Planning is important, but planning is not execution, it’s just the first step to getting us on the right track.

Why You Need a Plan to Achieve Your Goals🎯

🔗 A Harvard study from 1979 – 1989 found that the 3% of MBA graduates who had clear, written goals and an actionable plan ten years later were earning, on average, 10x as much as the other 97% put together.

• I would say that is enough to agree on the impact that planning and goal setting can have in accelerating your career and helping you achieve your goals.

Research and science have shown that for the probability of us achieving our goals to increase, those goals need to be specific and, more importantly, concrete.

• Concrete means that you not only know what the goal is but also the action steps to get to that goal. Maybe you don’t know every single step, but you at least have a starting point. A plan can also help you organize your time and resources and have a long-term vision and short-term motivation. 

Why You Should Write Down🖋️ Your Goals

Writing your goals down can help you gain something elemental: clarity. Clarity on what you want to achieve, why it’s important to you, and how to achieve it.

Knowing why it’s important to you will be fundamental to generating action toward your goal. If you don’t know why you want it, it won’t really spark anything in you to prepare or motivate you to take action. 

1. Make a Review👀

You can start by reviewing your previous year, including wins, lessons, setbacks, or whatever you consider not a win. You can review your past year or consider recent weeks. This will depend on what you are planning for. 

Some guiding questions:

• What were you able to complete?
• Did you complete everything you expected to?
• What did you need to move to another week, month or year?
• What have you continually been pushing to next week?

2. How to Set Achievable Goals❓

Before we dive into making a list of things you want to achieve, consider the following. 

🔗 Studies show that we are more likely to achieve goals that are difficult or moderately difficult. Things that seem too fluffy or extremely impossible, we are not likely to achieve because motivation is not there, even if we think it is.

Other goals that we are more likely to achieve are those that are specific. Some people don’t want to set specific goals, or what is commonly referred to as SMART goals.

Many people want to make their goals as ambiguous and general as possible, thinking that in case they don’t achieve them, they can avoid failure. But we are not those people. The idea here is to make your goals as specific and concrete as possible so that you increase the possibilities of achieving said goals.

3. Set Achievable ✔️ Goals  

Now, with the first step, which was a review, we can start thinking about next year. You can ask yourself:

• If you had the best year ever, what would be part of that year? 
• Where do I want to be on December 31^st of next year?
• Now, you can plan for that and set the milestones to reach that goal.

If you are not planning for next year, you can start with the long-term vision or the “big picture.” Where do you want to be in 5 to 10 years? I’d do 5, 10 seems too much. These are large-scale goals, which we will later divide into smaller actions. 

You can set goals for different areas of your life and goals of different sizes. Many people find the wheel of life useful for gaining clarity, which usually includes areas like:

• Career / Business / Professional Development 🎯
• Family 🤗
• Finances 📊
• Health & Fitness 🤸🏻‍♀️
• Hobbies, Leisure & Fun 👩🏻‍🎨
• Personal Growth 🌱
• Social & Friends ☕️
• Spirituality 💭

Others do it by default without actually filling out the wheel. I don’t use it simply because I personally don’t view the areas of life as something that I want to quantify; I just know which areas I’m currently paying more attention to. Other times it’s about knowing which areas are going well and which need improvement.

Instead, I use this wheel in step one: Review. When using this wheel for Review, I don’t actually quantify the area, but I like to have visibility into the areas in which I made progress the previous year. I like to be specific and clear about what that progress was; that’s what I quantify. 

I have not read research on this, maybe if I do, I’ll change my mind. But I’ll leave it here as a reference, just in case it works for you.

4. Write Them Down (yes, with pen and paper)📝

Once you have an overall idea of those goals, write them down, this can really help you achieve your goals. 

🔗 Studies show that people who write their goals down have higher probabilities of achieving them.

So, don’t just make a list; be descriptive. Once you’ve brain-dumped and have your list, you can start getting more specific, writing a paragraph about what achieving that goal looks like. Not how it feels like, but how it looks like:

• How do you envision yourself achieving that goal?
• You can even do this for the action steps needed to achieve that goal, asking yourself: what does complete or finished look like for this task or step?

As we mentioned, when writing down your goals, you should also consider the Why. You can ask the following questions about each goal you want to achieve; in the end the idea is not to have 20 big goals for the year. Andrew Huberman says he would recommend 3 big goals at most. So, when you try to answer these questions, they will help you filter out some goals and stick with those that are most important to you. 

Some questions to ask yourself:

• Why do I want to achieve this goal?
• Why is this goal important to me?
• Why is this essential for me?
• What will happen if I don’t achieve this goal?
• What opportunities can come from this?
• Are all these goals important to me? Where do they come from, and why do I want to achieve them?

5. Write Them Down 🎨 Creatively

Now that you have a list and the goals you want to achieve, you can write them down creatively. 

Why and what does this mean?

Experts recommend not only making a list but also finding creative ways to write your goals, such as drawing. A more creative approach can activate different parts of your brain, which can help your brain process and cement your goals. It also helps you see new possibilities without getting stuck.

6. Personalize 💁🏻‍♀️ Your Approach

Think about how you will keep track of your progress:

• Will you use a productivity app, a planner, or a monthly review?
• What are you going to do to keep yourself on track?

You know yourself best, so identify what approach will work for you. This also applies to how you tackle your tasks. Are you going to set aside time every day, or will you try to complete all the tasks related to your goals in a single weekend? Consider this before you create the plan; this way, your plan will actually work for you.

7. Create an Action Plan🗒️

Making an Action Plan has several steps, which is why we just did a quick review before moving on. 

If you’re unsure of what goals you want to achieve, I’d recommend you go back to steps 4 and 5, which can help you gain clarity on what is most important to you. 

If you’re set on which are your most important goals, let’s get planning.

1. Prioritize 🚦 Once you have written everything down, you want to turn that list into an actionable plan. You can start by identifying priorities and setting a timeline. 
2. Resources 📝 List everything you need to do to achieve your goal.
3. Actual Resources 📲 Do you need any tools, platforms, or technologies?
   • For example, if I know I’ll need a Project Planning tool, I research different tools to see which one best fits the specific project I’m thinking about. I do this before the year or project starts. You want to have everything ready and in place.  
4. Action Steps 🤸🏻‍♀️ The idea is to break down your goal into small, tangible actions—tasks to which you can assign a date and can realistically complete. 
   • You can initially write down all the tasks and everything that comes to mind. Then you can organize them by month or week. 
   • Here, you want to set deadlines and add sequence. Deadlines are not there to stress you out; they are a way to keep you accountable and motivated. If you don’t complete the task by the deadline, you simply move the deadline, but at least you have some notion about what you need to do and by when. 
   • The same goes for the overall goal. You may achieve the goal before or after. The idea is to have a target time. If you don’t complete the goal by the deadline you set, you can change the deadline but don’t change the goal.
5. ✏️ Write all tasks, steps, and recourses down. Make sure you have everything you need in place to achieve your goal.
6. In the end, your plan may look something like a calendar 🗓️. I would recommend going as granular as you can and as realistic, too. You won’t realistically complete 20 tasks in a single day. 🔗 Studies say your best guess is 5-6 tasks at most per day. 

➡️ Yearly Planning

If you are planning for next year, I would start by organizing goals by month. I use something like this, but only with the first row, “Goal.” If you want to focus on a specific area or project each month, you can also use the other rows. 

Once the month passes, you can add a progress bar, notes, a status, or whatever indicator you need. Based on your achievement, you can update next month accordingly.

➡️ Monthly Planning

I would go into the monthly / weekly detail at most 3 – 4 months before. Yes, that much or that little ahead of time. Type As won’t think it’s too early; Type Bs will probably want to plan the day before…

When going into monthly / weekly planning, you want to be more specific about the tasks. Here, you’re not thinking about the overall goal but the day-to-day actions you need to take. This example may end up looking like a Gantt chart, but there are many templates and ways to do this.

➡️ Weekly Planning

This is where you probably want to use your planner or daily calendar. To plan for the week, you want to start with the most important tasks of the week and then plan around those. Start time blocking based on priorities.

Now that you’ve made a plan or at least started one, find ways to keep yourself accountable and on track. 

8. Tick Items Off The List ☑️. 

So much research and studies say that you should celebrate your progress. I personally wouldn’t celebrate every time you complete a task. I think that if you do, then your brain will be expecting a reward for every little thing you do.

Instead, enjoy the satisfaction of completing a task. For me, this can be something as simple as checking that task off a list. Of course, this will depend on how big the task is. If you spent weeks and hours on a specific task, then maybe what you do is different and more meaningful than checking a task off your list. Again, personalize everything.

The idea of the plan is to help you succeed. Don’t design a plan based on what keeps someone else on track and motivated. Base it on what works for you. 

9. Surround yourself with people🤗 who have goals. 

I would say surround yourself with people with similar goals, but sometimes it may be hard. So, within your possibilities, find and talk to people with goals and plans. This may be a group of friends, colleagues, or anyone in your reference circle. 

10. Get Started and Keep the Motivation Going 💥.

If you’re interested in learning more about the role of motivation, neuroscience, and dopamine in achieving your goals, you should read ➡️ How to Set Achievable Goals According to Neuroscience