Something changes when you write out your goals. But less than 3% bother to do it. If you're still in the 97% that don't have written goals, now is the time to take action and identify, prioritize, and embrace your highest and best desired results.

Read on: blog.WednesdayWin.com​

Read time: 4 minutes

Written goals help us make the large and small decisions each day that focus our efforts on what's most important to us. Here's a simple exercise you can complete in a few minutes to put yourself on a positive path with clear goals.

Let's explore:

1. Why write them down?

What's so special about written goals?

There are three powerful reasons:

• The act of choosing specific goals forces us to think about what's most important to us and best aligns with our life priorities
• The act of writing them increases our internal acceptance and understanding of what we've chosen
• The act of reviewing those goals regularly helps reinforce them as part of our identity which is the ultimate driver of our decision making

The combination of choosing, writing, and reviewing creates a cognitive dissonance between our current reality and our desired state which is the most powerful driver for us to taking the necessary actions to reach our goals.

The essential steps: choose meaningful goals, write them down, review that list regularly (best to re-write those goals in reviewing), and then track your progress. That's the positive flywheel of written goals.

2. What's essential?

Our goals need to meet a few basic conditions to be effective:

• They need to be specific and be easily described in a few words
• They need to be measurable in some way so you can in an instant know if you've reached them or not
• They need to be time-bound and have some sort of schedule or due date
• And, they need to be deeply relevant for you and tied to your overall life priorities

Vague, open-ended goals are much harder to act upon. Your motivation might be to get healthy or increase your income, but converting those general targets into something specific on a schedule will help you make the necessary incremental progress.

3. Which goals are best?

Now we're ready to take action. How should we decide on our goals?

Investor Warren Buffet has popularized a great strategy for identifying and prioritizing our goals. The steps are simple:

• Take out a notebook or open up a simple text doc on your computer and start brainstorming. Write down every good thing you want in your life. Everything. Property, experiences, new or improved relationships, income, professional, personal. Everything. Take some time with this.
• Pick the 25 from that list that most interest and excite you. What are the ones that carry the most importance for you? Move exactly 25 items to this second list.
• Reflect and think about each of these 25. Imagine what it would be like for that to be your current reality. Take a moment to feel what that would be like for each one. Now, circle the exactly 5 most important goals from that list of 25. The measure of importance is completely up to you, but you need to choose wisely based on your own criteria.
• These five are the only ones you are going to work towards. The importance of this process is not only to find what you will be working on, but recognize the large number of desired goals that you won't be working on. At least for now.

Now you have your five top priority goals. There's one final check to complete. Reflect again on your five selections. Imagine having reached them. Think deeply about each one and verify that you aren't doubting its importance to you. You are about to commit so make sure your aren't holding on to any doubts or indecision. These are your choices. Nows the time to fix it if one of your five should be swapped out for another from your list of 25.

Decide and commit.

4. What's next?

Sort your five goals into short and long-term targets. Long-term is anything that will require more than 3 months to complete. For your long-term goals, break them down into key steps with at least the first step achievable within 3 months.

• For each of the five goals, you now have your target for what you will complete in the next twelve weeks.
• Print a simple calendar or create one on a spreadsheet for the next twelve weeks.
• Write out the key tasks to complete each week for each goal to ensure you are going to hit your target by the end of the quarter.
• Be realistic. If you are traveling, have vacation, have an especially busy work season, or any other unusual schedules, factor those into your plans.
• Commit to your plan.
• Review and re-write your goals weekly at least. Measure your progress as you go and make adjustments, but don't just push off the work. Stay on track.

For more detailed guidance on breaking down your goals into plans and tasks, check out my guide to the 12 Week Year strategy.

5. Is there more help?

The most important step is identifying your priorities and writing them down, but there's a lot more about how and why goal setting works.

Two useful titles: Goals by Zig Ziglar and Atomic Habits by James Clear. Clear takes a slightly different approach to defining a good goal, but the key emphasis is the same: know where you want to go and build up the focus on that target through good habits.

Action Summary

Written goals are the key to unlock great personal progress.

Join the 3% and start making more progress faster than you thought possible.

• Reflect and identify the primary goals that matter to you and are motivating to you
• Write them down. Review them at least weekly
• Breakdown your goals into plans and tasks every 12 weeks
• Execute

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What do you think? What have written goals done for you? Reply to this email and let me know.

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To your success,

Christopher

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P.S. Like this one? You'll probably want to check out this earlier Wednesday Win essay on speeding the progress towards your goals, too.

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