Ten steps to setting and achieving your goals

Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy goal. To be truly successful, you have to set goals.

Guidance and Ethics 03/11/2017
  1. Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy goal. To be truly successful, you have to set goals.
  2. Choose goals that are important to you and get clear on why you want to achieve them. Write down a vision of what you want your life to look like when you achieve the goal. For instance, if it’s not having to worry about cash flow constantly, how would feel for you? How would it change your life? What is behind that goal that is important to you? The prospect of achieving it should make you feel good – you’ll need that when things get tough – and, if you’re doing it right, they inevitably will. Write this down and make it as vivid for yourself as possible. Don’t worry about having this perfect at the start; you can refine it as you go along. But don’t start without writing down the reason why you’re doing it all in the first place.
  3. Set ‘SMART’ goals. Your goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-focused and Time-defined. And, above all, they must be written down. For instance, improving cash flow isn’t a SMART goal. But if you need €30,000 a month to cover everything, setting a goal to have ‘fees of €30,000 transferred consistently each month by [chosen date]’ can be a SMART goal.
  4. Set ‘stretch goals’. Don’t play too small. It’s easy to set SMART goals that you can realise comfortably but that don’t challenge you and move you forward towards why you are doing all of this in the first place. So set goals that stretch you and push you out of your comfort zone. SMART goals should be achievable, but they should also stretch you to go further than you would otherwise.
  5. Have long-term goals, medium-term goals and short-term goals. Big picture, long term goals are great and important, but they can seem too abstract and unattainable on their own. So set medium-term goals that lead in the direction of the long-term goal and set short-term goals that build to the medium-term ones. The best short term time-frame is 90 days – 12 weeks. (Read The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington.)
  6. Break what you need to do to achieve your goal down into steps. Identify all of the elements that you need to have in place to realise your goal and then identify the actions that you need to take to bring each element about. Prioritise these actions and list them into a series of steps with number one as most important.
  7. For example, if you want turnover of €30,000 a month, identify each practice area that can bring you each part of this – write down how much from each. Identify what matters you need in each practice area to give you that turnover. How many files of what type of matter? How long will each matter take to produce the turnover you require? Identify where this work might come from. What will you need to do to get it? Working back from your goal in this way, you can see step by step what you need to do to make it happen and you can plan the actions that you need to take in sequence to realise it.
  8. Then just start with step one and keep working on step one until you have accomplished it. Don’t quit or allow yourself to be distracted by something novel or more interesting. Consistent implementation of a carefully thought-out plan designed to achieve an important goal is difficult, takes hard work, and can get boring. This is where you need the clear vision identified at number two above. Write that down at the start, develop it as you go along, and refer back to it when you get disheartened.
  9. Remember that you don’t have to do everything required to achieve your goal – in fact, you shouldn’t. You should only be doing the work that you can bring greatest value from. Always consider whether you are the best person to be doing any particular task required by your plan and delegate and outsource accordingly. Leverage the skills and resources of others. Look at sites like www.upwork.com.
  10. Review your progress regularly and review your goals at the same time. See what is working and what isn’t. Adjust your plan accordingly, always with a view to the goal. And when you realise your goal (including interim goals on the journey towards your main goal), take some time out to celebrate and congratulate yourself. Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy goal; it’s a process, not an event. Take time to enjoy it along the way.