A 3-step Guide to Achieving Your Goals

Erin is the founder of the Tiers System, a nationally recognized public speaker, and a serial goal-crusher.

Set big goals. REALLY big goals. And then, use these three steps to crush them.

Successful teams and competitors set goals for themselves at the beginning of each season (or more frequently). If you want to succeed, you need to set goals. Goal setting not only allows you to take control of your team’s direction; it also provides you a benchmark for determining whether you are actually succeeding. 

Let’s take dance team members Erica and Alexa as an example. At the beginning of last season, Erica and Alexa set three big goals for themselves for the season. They hoped these three goals would help them work harder and help the team to score higher. The goals they set out were to improve flexibility, do more conditioning, and get more done in practice. These goals sound great, but they turned out to be useless. Erica and Alexa were able to say they had goals, but they were not able to use these goals to achieve what they wanted—and by the end of the season, they had forgotten all about the goals. 

So what was the problem? How can they set more useful goals this year? 

It is hard to tell whether the goals are being met. What does improved flexibility look like? How can you tell if it has improved? Would a tiny increase in flexibility mean that the goal was met? How do you know if you are getting enough done in practice? Erica and Alexa should take each of these goals and make them measurable. 

1. Make your efforts, activities, and outcomes measurable!

When you make goals measurable, you turn a general aspiration into something achievable. The easiest way to make a goal measurable is to think about how you would count it. For example, “improve flexibility” could be measurable in a few different ways. It could be measured as the number of times you stretched outside of practice, the distance you can reach in a seated pike, and/or the number inches in your over-split. The trick is to make “improve” into something that can be counted. Think about the efforts you made, the activities you engaged in, and the outcomes that resulted. Pick one of these things and count it. At the end of the year, what do you want to be able to look back on as your accomplishment? 

2. Track your goals simply and visually! 

Setting goals alone is not enough. Erica and Alexa needed to not only set goals, but have a plan for tracking their progress that they and their team can refer to regularly. Tracking goals serves three purposes. It lets you know if you are making progress toward your goals—good job, keep it up! It lets you know if you are not making the progress you wanted—an opportunity make a change for the better. And, it helps you set better goals for the future—what does progress on your goals this year mean for the goals you should set next year? 

3. Have a celebration plan! 

While Erica and Alexa had some goals, they did not have a plan for rewarding progress toward those goals. Without reinforcement, encouragement, rewards, and celebrations, goals simply become forgotten. Too often people set goals without a plan for what to do once they meet them. The key here is to plan on rewarding yourself—when you meet your goals, you deserve it!