What you need to understand about goal setting
I know, I know. You came to this post because you wanted to learn about daily goals. You want to set your daily goals, achieve your daily goals, work on your daily goals.
I get it.
But first, you need to see how your daily goals fit into the overall scheme of things. You need to understand what goal setting is.
What are goals?
Goals look at who you are today, who/where you want to be tomorrow, and how to get there.
You can do amazing things with your life if you use your time effectively. If you spend your 24 hours each day to the fullest and have a plan, you can learn to harness and control it as you wish.
It’s not easy though and you need to have a strategy for how to spend your time.
Goal setting is one great way to do that. Because goal setting gives you a plan for your time.
Goal setting and your daily goals
So how is goal setting related to your daily goals? See it like this – your goals are the big picture and your daily goals are the “little picture.”
If your goal is to save $10,000 over the next 18 months (a long term goal), your daily goal could be to save a certain amount of money each day to help you save up that amount overall.
Or you could have a goal to read 1 book this month (a short term goal). Your daily goal in that case then could be to read a certain amount of pages each day to help you finish the book in time.
The goals you set are the big picture. They are the macro. That thing off in the distance that you are working towards today.
Your daily goals can be seen as your daily actions. The micro. The things you need to do each day to help you achieve your macro goals.
Breaking it down – your daily goals
There is more to the goal setting process than just setting macro and daily goals. There are things like:
Determining what the right goal is to choose in the first place
How to plan out your goal in both the macro, micro, and in-between
When to take action
And what to do when you hit roadblocks
So moving forward, know this – the purpose of setting daily goals is to help you reach your overall big picture goal.
Don’t see daily goal setting as its own thing. See it as a piece of a much larger puzzle. Once you have your goal and plan in place, then you can set daily goals to help you make the progress that you’re after.
In other words, daily goals = daily actions. Use them to help you achieve your checkpoints and goals and move forward each day.
Daily goals examples
I’ve touched on them a little bit already, but I’ll give you a couple more daily goals examples to help solidify your understanding.
Again, your daily goals should be the actions you take each day to help you reach your overall goals.
How to achieve your daily goals
Finally! The reason you’re here – how to achieve your daily goals. To do that, there’s an exclusive tool that I’ve continuously used to keep me accountable, focused, and determined.
You don’t need some sort of daily goals app or daily goals template. You don’t need a daily goals planner.
What is an Accountability Tracker?
An Accountability Tracker (AT, for short) is a tool that you can use to track and record your actions each day. Often in the form of a spreadsheet, it’s a way to:
See what you need to be doing each day (ie. your daily action)
Confirm that you are putting in the work
And prevent you from making excuses. You’re either putting in the work or you’re not.
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Why you need an Accountability Tracker
When it comes to goal setting, there are a lot of variables. Especially when you’re first starting out with a new goal, there are going to be a lot of things that you just don’t know yet.
Plus, working towards a goal, particularly a challenging one, is often daunting and hard to do.
That’s why an AT is so nice – because it shows you what you need to be doing each day and keeps you accountable for doing it.
By using an AT, you can see if you’re actually putting in the work or not.
So if you’re not making any progress but can see that you’re putting in work each day, you can recognize that your daily actions are misaligned with your goal and can then change things.
Or if you’re not making progress and see that, based on your AT, you aren’t putting in enough effort, then you can make adjustments to start putting in more work.
The AT is the tool that you can use time and time again to help you achieve your daily goals.
I am going to give you a simplified process for creating your very own “light-version” of the AT.
Here’s what to do:
Consider what daily action you need to take in order to achieve your goal
Write that action down on a spreadsheet, doc, or piece of paper
Put in the work
Open up that doc each day and note whether or not you completed your daily action
Continue to do that daily
Watch how you start to make progress towards your goal
And if you aren’t making progress, recognize whether you need to put in more work OR change your daily action
These aren’t the most polished directions, but again, I want you to be able to create a simple AT on your own that you can get started with right now.
So take some time – 15 or 20 minutes – and go through the steps above. Create your own “light version” of the Accountability Tracker and see for yourself how you can start making swift progress towards your goals.
Daily goals plus your week, month, and year
You may be thinking: how does the Accountability Tracker help me set weekly goals? How does it teach me how to set monthly goals?
Your AT will help you put in daily action. It will help you achieve your daily goals.
In turn, the more daily goals you complete, the more weekly goals you’ll complete, which will lead you to completing more monthly goals, which will eventually lead you to reaching your overall goal.
As for setting weekly and monthly goals though, that’s a whole other beast in and of itself. For that I recommend the following posts:
Time is the most valuable thing you have. Don’t waste it! Use time to your advantage by setting goals for yourself.
Use the goal setting process to create a plan for your time.
Then with your plan in place, use things like productivity and time management to enhance your efforts and get even more done.
Utilize time management tips and time management strategies to better structure your time. Learn how to be productive and take advantage of the various ways you can increase productivity.
When you treat your time as a tool to be harnessed instead of something that you just want to have pass you by, you can start to do amazing things.
With your macro goal in place, use daily goals to ensure that you are moving forward each day. Consistent, meaningful effort is the key to achieving your goals and taking daily action is imperative.
Use an Accountability Tracker as your exclusive tool for achieving your daily goals and keep striving to achieve great things.
Your effort will pay off, so keep going!
And if you are ready to take your goal setting seriously, I highly encourage you to take a look at my goal setting course.
I know I’ve mentioned it a lot in this post.
Some may argue too much.
But the reason I bring it up is because of the value I know it will add to your goal setting life. Whether you’re new to goal setting, or have set goals in the past but know there’s room for improvement, this course will give you what you need to know.
It will take you from start to finish: from choosing a goal, to planning it out, to taking action, to understanding what to do and what to avoid along the way.
I recommend it because I know the positive impact that it will have on you. So when you’re ready, you can learn more about the goal setting course \< there.