How to Reach Any Goal in 30 Days -- Let's Make an Action Plan

By breaking a huge goal down into manageable steps, you can make huge strides and progress in a VERY short time! Give it a try and see for yourself.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A willingness to try something new
• Persistence
• A real passion to achieve your goal

1. The most important step is discovering what you want. Having passion for your goal will make it easier to overcome obstacles and stick with your goal. Brainstorm the things you want most in life. Make a list of as many ideas as you can, and then read each idea out loud. The items on your list that you feel resonance with (in your heart, mind and gut) will be the right goals for you. Pick the one you feel most strongly about, or think makes the most sense to tackle right now.

2. Write your goal clearly on an index card. Hang in on the wall in front of your desk, mirror, or wherever you spend the most time at home. You can bring your card to work as well and keep it in your office drawer -- you'll see it every time you search for a paper clip or notepad.

3. Visualize what it would be like if this goal came true! After accomplishing the goal, what will your life look like? Do this at a time you are very relaxed. See as many details as you possibly can. What does it look like? Feel like? What thoughts would you have in that situation? Do you think you deserve it? If not, continue to work on this stage until you feel very deserving of achieving this goal.

4. Now that your goal is clearly in your mind, you will be able to do the fun part: achieve it! To start the process, you need to determine your action steps. Think back to the visualization you did in step 3 -- what would someone who achieved all of that HAVE that you DON'T have YET?
   
   Make a list. Next, make a list of what you can do to find, learn, or locate everything you need. For example: if you think a famous celebrity would need to be confident and have good hair, where could you find out how to learn to be confident? How could you get good hair? etc.

5. Now break down each NEED into more categories: daily steps. Some items will require more breaking down than others. If you need to develop confidence, steps would include: googling "how to get confidence," reading a book about confidence, talking to a friend about it, going to a seminar, trying and learning new things, taking risks, etc. Each of these are fairly small steps.

6. Now break these small steps down even further. Each should be a clear and EASY action. Everything is easy when it is broken down.
   
   For example, talking to a friend about how they became confident may involve contacting the friend on the phone, suggesting lunch, preparing questions to ask your friend, making reservation, attending the lunch, taking notes, etc.
   
   For a full example, let's take "go to a seminar on confidence" and break that down into these steps:
   
   1. Google "seminars on confidence"
   2. Read web site options and determine which seminars fit into your schedule.
   3. Sign up for the most interesting and affordable seminar, pay for it online.
   4. Put it on your calendar.
   5. Print out a map to go to the seminar.
   6. Attend the seminar, take notes.
   7. At the seminar, talk to at least five people.
   8. Give out business cards to anyone who seems interesting.
   9. Review notes when home.
   10. Send an email to contacts you'd like to follow up with.
   
   You will notice how small, specific and EASY each task is! This is key. Goals are difficult when they are big and certain. Make the goal specific and certain and it becomes incredibly easy!

7. Now, write out ALL of the steps for each of the items on your list. Break each step down to ridiculously easy tasks that seem SIMPLE to complete. Your list will be very long! This is a good thing.

8. Now, take a calendar and in a separate Word document, list every day for the month like this:
   
   Friday November 7
   
   
   Saturday November 8
   
   
   Sunday November 9
   
   and so on...

9. Go back to your original task list. Under each heading, such as "become confident" take each individual task and make it a color. So all tasks related to "become more confident" would be, let's say, purple. Everything related to "get a great haircut" would be green. Color the entire list under each heading. and add bold or italics if you run out of colors.
   
   In a separate document.

10. Now pull up your calendar list. Somewhat randomly copy and paste every action item onto 30 days. You don't have to do tasks in order, unless you want to. Your goal is to fairly evenly divide up the work and spread it out over all 30 days. Make sure you have a reasonable, attainable amount of work for each day. You may need to add, or remove, task headings.

11. You now have a detailed calendar of all of your daily activities for the next 30 days. You can look through and easily find which tasks fit under which goal heading by noticing what color the task is, but you will have variety of tasks spread out over several weeks so you won't get as bored. It will be almost a fun surprise to see what task is up tomorrow!

12. This is a crucial step -- you must find someone to hold you accountable for taking every single action you have committed to. Email your calendar goal list to a spouse, best friend, etc. and ask them to contact you EVERY day (or every week) and give them proof that you have completed EVERY single task! It may be preferable to work with someone who is objective and isn't affected in a good or bad way depending on how you spend your time (or else they may influence your ability to reach tasks, i.e., should you really be googling that and working on your "goals" when you need to help cook dinner?) A business associate, mastermind group member or Life Coach can come in very handy here.

13. Select BOTH a positive reward and a negative punishment. Use the reward after completing tasks (you choose whether you want a daily, weekly, or end of goal reward). Also choose a small punishment you will get if you fail to complete even ONE item on your list.
    
    Make sure the punishment is not harmful or self-defeating. It is probably just a task you don't enjoy, e.g., if I don't finish my business plan, I will have to cold call 3 companies and I HATE to cold call.
    
    Or, a small daily reward would be a relaxing walk, or bubble bath.
    
    A 30-day reward would be bigger -- a day trip, a shopping outing, a special restaurant -- whatever is within your means, healthy and enjoyable!
    
    The combination of negative and positive reward/punishment is powerful.

14. Now the fun part. Just look at your list every day, complete all of the tasks. Get your list approved by your task master and collect your reward! Or, your punishment...30 days later, you'll likely still be motivated, will have seen great progress and results already, will have increased your confidence and belief in yourself by your tangible results, and you will have done everything in your power to achieve your goal -- most of the time, your goal WILL be achieved in whole. If not, you will have made major progress! Then, it's time to celebrate with your reward!

Tips & Warnings

• Know that some goals, such as finding the love of your life, or starting a business, may take longer than 30 days to complete in full, based on factors you can't control -- but take comfort in the fact that you DID everything in your power. You will also be well positioned to achieve the goal with just a bit more work -- the ball will be rolling and your momentum and motivation will be strong.
• Make a second list for month #2 -- your action items and goals may have significantly changed already from the past month!
• Work towards the new set of goals. Now that you know how easy it is to achieve, you'll probably be hooked!
• You want to build in breaks for yourself to relax during the month
• Make sure you don't over-schedule yourself, to avoid burn out
• Always leave time for family, friends, fun, exercise and healthy meal preparation -- this gives your body and brain what it needs to stay focused, achieve and enjoy the journey!

Resources

• Learn more about Life Coaching
• Read a Life Coaching blog

[respectfully]

on 9/7/2009 another great article. Just keep it up. don't stop writing. you have important views. 5*

[BadN10Tions]

on 12/17/2008 Great article.

[Rockney]

on 12/7/2008 Great tips for accomplishing life goals! 5*!

[BamaHorseman]

on 11/13/2008 I really enjoyed this article,very well written.Thanks for sharing. 5*

[JulieMelillo]

on 11/9/2008 taskeinc: yes, sticking to it is difficult! That's where the accountability comes...making sure you have someone there as your task master really helps!