What Do I Do When I Fail at My Goals? – Part Two

In my previous post I discussed the reasons why I believe people fail at New’s Years Resolutions.  The biggest reason they fail is because they are using a broken process.  Here is the process I use.

1. Start with a 3-5 year vision.  The 3-5 year vision is where I determine what I want my life to be like in the future.  This is the most important step in the goal setting process.  Remember where I stated earlier that most people underestimate what they can accomplish in five years.  The 3-5 year vision establishes where I want to go and what I want to become.
2. Now that I have my 3-5 year vision I break my 3-5 year vision into yearly goals.  I determine what must occur each year in order for me to achieve my 3-5 year vision.
3. Annually, I look at the next twelve months.   I know what my goals are for this year.  I develop a strategy to accomplish this years goals.  The strategy enables me develop a plan of action that will lead to me successfully achieving my yearly goals.
4. Quarterly, I develop my quarterly priorities.  The quarterly priorities detail what I must do over the next 90 days to accomplish the quarterly priorities. Each quarter has 13 weeks and 3 months.  I now develop tasks, benchmarks and objectives that I will use for each week and each month.
5. Monthly I review my progress on my quarterly priorities.  I determine where my successes are and where my failures occur.  I analyze why I was successful and why I failed.  I refine and adjust my objectives so that I build on my successes and make corrections to what I’ve done that resulted in failures. I set monthly priorities the set the direction of what I will work on the following month. I develop monthly projects.  The monthly projects list the actions that I need to perform to achieve my quarterly projects.  By doing this monthly review process I determine now what needs to be done in the future.  I don’t have to think about it later.  I already know what needs to be done because I did the heavy lifting of thinking.
6. Weekly I review my monthly priorities and monthly projects.  I determine what projects I will work on.  I look at my monthly priorities and monthly process to determine what I will work on this week.  I develop a list of items to work on during the next week.  This list is divided into two categories.  I have my business priority list and my personal priority list.  I look at last week’s priorities list and hold myself accountable to the priority list.  I determine what items were completed on my list and what items remain uncompleted.  I now develop my priority list for the next week.  I schedule time during the next week to accomplish those weekly priorities.

Every week I succeed at accomplish some items on my weekly priority list.  Most weeks there are uncompleted items on my weekly priority list.  That means I failed to complete those items.  Ultimately, I’ve made progress on moving forward.  This week I’m closer to my 3-5 year vision than I was last week.  Every week, I’m working on the tasks that will move me closer to where  I want my business and personal life to be.