My super simple goals system

One personal system I’m refining this year is how I stay focused and committed to my goals.

I think we can all relate to that feeling of the “new year high” where we’re all in on working towards goals. But as the year goes on, we slowly disengage and forget about all the intentions we had at the start.

This year I’m implementing a very simple system for staying engaged with my goals:

1. Define a clear outcome—”what” I’m trying to achieve. Track my progress weekly.
2. Define clear inputs—”how” I will achieve the outcome. I like these to be small, measurable actions I can take every day. Track my progress weekly.
3. Each week, review and reflect on my progress towards my inputs and outcomes. Make adjustments as necessary.

What I’ve found for myself and others is that we either don’t have clearly defined inputs/outcomes, or maybe we defined them, but we don’t track, review, and reflect on them regularly.

In the past, I found myself in the latter camp. Specifically, I would be tracking the outcome, but NOT my inputs, which is arguably the most important part!

When I wasn’t tracking my daily actions, it was so easy to compare my present day self against the big goal and miss all the progress I was making. It also made it impossible to see what was working / not working and make adjustments.

If you have some goals that you’re working towards, but have struggled with staying committed, do you have a system that supports you in tracking, reviewing, and making adjustments?

Maybe a simple system is the missing piece to the puzzle.

Until next week,

~Rachel

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