You have two months to complete your goals before New Year’s Eve rolls around again. Then this year is over, finished, kaput, gone!
And here’s the big question you must answer (drum roll, please…): Have you achieved last year’s goals?
Remember those goals you set back in December or January last year?
Like most people, you probably haven’t achieved them—or not all of them. To be honest, I haven’t achieved all of my goals either.
Here’s the good news… You have two months left to accomplish your goals and feel better about yourself.
Maybe you can’t achieve all your goals, but you can pick a few and knock them off your to-do list. As you do, you will find yourself more able to move into the New Year feeling positive, successful and confident, which, in turn, will help you achieve more success in the coming 12 months.
Time to Get Your Butt in Gear!
Now is not the time to shrink as you say, “Oh, another year gone and more goals not accomplished.”
No. To create inspired results you have to say, “It’s time! It’s time for me to get my butt in gear and achieve some goals.”
If you want to create inspired results before the end of the year and then move into the year to create more desirable results. To do that, try the following six suggestions.
1. Set new goals.
Only two months left to go, and I’m telling you to set new goals—when you haven’t accomplished the ones you set ten months ago. You think I’m crazy… I’m not.
Look back over the goals you wrote down in December or January. Review them.
Next, determine which ones are still doable and which ones are impossible at this point. Put the goals that won’t happen before the end of the year on a list for next year (if you still want to accomplish them). Put the ones that are doable on a new list.
2. Rewrite old goals to make them new.
Now rewrite those old goals. Make them fresh and new, but be realistic in your timeline for completion. Choose two or three you know you can accomplish by December 31.
If there’s one goal you think is a stretch, but you’d like to put that on there, too, do so. Just know it’s a stretch.
What do you have to do to achieve these goals before the end of the year? To find out, chunk each large goal into smaller, actionable items. Make a to-do list of action items you know you can complete in the next two months.
3. Prioritize
Prioritize your last-minute goals. Which ones are most important or must get done before year end?
Prepare to focus on the goals you know you can or must accomplish.
You could pick one goal and only work on that one goal for 60 days.
4. Place the goals on your calendar.
Create a timeline for your goals. Put them on your calendar and schedule time to complete them.
What do you need to do by what date to achieve the goal?
Make sure you’ve scheduled enough time to achieve the goal in the time you have left.
5. Focus on accomplishing your goal(s).
You can do and achieve goals in a short amount of time if you focus your attention in the available time on doing so.
Don’t get distracted by holiday shopping or Thanksgiving.
Put your attention—your focus on knocking off the action items that get you to “done.”
6. Rewrite and prioritize the other goals for next year.
As you work on your end-of-year goals, take that energy with you into the New Year…now. Review the goals you determined weren’t doable for this year, but that are doable for next year. Rewrite them, schedule them, and plan to focus on them.
Make sure you go through the same process above as you create new goals.
No Stretching Until the New Year
I’m a big fan of stretch goals—ones that push you to grow and level up. But I don’t want you to take on a stretch goal now.
Instead, take on goals you know you can accomplish by the end of December. Why? I want you to enter the New Year feeling prepared to achieve your goals and confident you can do so.
If you stretch now, you may fail because you have too little time. That will leave you feeling bad about yourself, which is not a good way to enter the next year.
If you feel the stretch goal is doable, albeit challenging, then go for it. But only if you feel pretty confident you can get it done.
Limit Your Number of Goals
You shouldn’t pick more than one or two goals—three max—to accomplish by year’s end. And carefully consider the number of goals you put on your list for next year. Five goals are plenty!
I’m at fault for setting too many goals each year. Instead of giving myself five goals for the year, I’ll have 15 or 20. I have personal goals, career goals, and relationship goals.
About halfway through the year, I look at that list, and I say, “There’s no freaking way. Not happening. Maybe four or five of them.” That’s discouraging, which is why I don’t recommend having more than five goals total or at most two goals in each area of your life.
To be totally transparent, I often create new goals during the year. An opportunity arises, or I get a new idea. And I accomplish those.
I get a lot of things done every year, but I have to learn how to whittle my goals down to the essentials. There’s a great book called Essentialism by Greg McKeown. It focuses on the need to pick the one thing that is the most important to you. That’s how you’re going to get things accomplished. Also, read The One Thing by Gary Keller, a book discusses the need to focus on what matters most in your personal and professional life.
Level Up Your Productivity and Performance
If you’re not achieving your goals, your performance and productivity are not at the level that supports the results you desire. How do I know? Because last year you said, “This is what I want to do,” but you didn’t do it.
How will you make the New Year different? Level up.
You master your psychology, physiology, productivity, your ability to influence yourself. Act on your purpose. And be present with the things you want to accomplish.
If you can master your psychology, physiology, productivity, influence, purpose and presence, next year will be your best year ever. You’ll be energetic, clear, courageous, influential, and productive. You’ll crush it.
You see, the thing is that the only thing holding you back from achieving your goals in the next two months or the next year, is you. You need to level up if you want to achieve your goals.
Isn’t it time you did that? Of course, it is. So start now.
And if you need help, apply for a free Certified High Performance Coaching Strategy session so we can discuss techniques and tools that will help you level up now so you can succeed before December 31 and in the following 12 months.
If you would like to discover how to achieve your goals more consistently, apply for a FREE Certified High Performance Coaching strategy session. (Click here to download the application.) After the strategy session, if you sign up for a 12-week Certified High Performance package, I’ll give you a ticket to Brendon Burchard’s next High Performance Academy event (value $997).
