Setting Achievable Goals

The basics of setting a goal are well known to athletes, successful businessmen top achievers in all walks of life. The more you can learn about achievable goal-setting, the more likely you are to be able to actually attain the goals you set. Setting goals will give you both a big-picture and an immediate focus, and lay out clear, actionable steps to help you achieve them. Goals help you set focus on exactly what needs to be done NEXT, and help you to plan your time so that you can continue to progress toward success, each and every day.

Milestones

One thing that I missed about goals until pretty recently is that they're not just about the destination - clearly defined goals help you to measure your progress toward the final destination. As an example, when I started P90X back in September of 2010, I set myself a goal of reaching a healthy weight of 190 pounds by Day 180. In the past, I would simply work out and watch my diet in general terms for 180 days, and then weigh myself to see whether or not I'd met my goal. What I'm learning over time is that each goal is made up of many smaller goals which help us to stay on track. In my case, 93.5 pounds over 180 days equals .46 pounds per day, or about 3.24 pounds per week. It's an optimistic goal, to be sure, but I'm well ahead of schedule as I write this, just over halfway through. At this point, I need to lose 2.3 pounds per week for the next 87 days in order to get where I want to be. Based on my progress so far, I can do that, and thanks to my diet logs, workout records, and weight logging at The Hacker's Diet Online, my original goal has helped me to determine my success level every step of the way. Looking at goals in this way helps create a perception of constant progress, rather than monotony, and this progress boosts confidence, which makes it easier to keep working.

Why

At the core, setting goals involves deciding what you really want to achieve, but also WHY. This is a point often missed in discussions about goals, but to my mind, it's the most important part. Why do so many programs encourage you to cut out pictures of the body you'd like to have before you start, and to look at the picture every day? The WHY attached to each of your goals adds emotion, and emotion translates to a turbo-boost to motivation. Emotion makes you hungry for success. For me, my daughter is a big part of my WHY for fitness. Want to talk about emotion-driven motivation, hang "being a good parent," on the hook with your goals, then watch the milestones fly by!

Once your goals are set, and you've somehow verified that they are achievable (do they require you to lose 100 pounds in six weeks? Not achievable.), it's time to break them down into more manageable interim targets, such as my weekly loss targets, above. Once you've drawn the map, don't stand around - get to work. Take little bites every day, and you'll have eaten the whole elephant before you know it.

90 Days

One tip that I find useful is to focus on just one PRIMARY goal every three months or so. Now that I've been doing P90X for more than three months, gaining confidence and familiarity with the program, and consistently getting in my workouts over this period, it no longer requires the time or attention from me that it once did. I still have P90X and fitness goals, but for the NEXT three months, they become secondary goals, and I can focus on building my website and coaching business as my primary goal.

You'll read elsewhere that 21 days or even less is enough to create new habits in the pursuit of new goals, but trust me on this one - if you're truly serious about achieving each and every goal that you set for yourself, give them time to sprout. It's much better to set and achieve four primary goals per year than to set and fail to achieve seventeen.

Review Regularly

Another suggestion I'll make is to revisit and review your goals AT LEAST weekly. With my website work, I check in on my goals and milestones at least four times per week. Am I reaching my marketing goals? Am I creating enough quality content? Am I logging my workouts every day? Am I taking care of my customers, answering their questions, and helping them to succeed? Just as my weight and rep milestones help me track my fitness goals, metrics like site visitors, blog comments, and customer feedback can help me to track my website goals. Sometimes you may need to hunt for them, or even manufacture them, but for any 90-day goal, daily or weekly metrics can be identified and tracked. They can be as simple as, "increase my reps every time," or, "lose an average of 1.5 pounds per week;" or much more complex.

Ultimately, it's up to you to set your goals, and to determine how best to achieve and track them. Given that you're reading this, though, it's likely that fitness is important to you. Why not carve out the next 90 days to work on that?

Rick Young is a Beachbody Coach and P90X graduate. He spends his time helping others to get healthy and to reach their fitness goals.