Achieving Goals and Realizing Ideas Is Actually Possible

What can I do every day that, over time, will result in me meeting my goals or seeing my ideas come to fruition?

This question has quickly become front of mind for me. I’m the kind of person who has a lot of ideas and goals but lacks the sort of daily followthrough to see a lot them come to fruition. It’s part lack of discipline and part being easily distracted by the sexiness of a new idea; either way it’s a recipe for watching a lot of good ideas and goals float past me with the constant question of ‘what if?’ left echoing in my head, which sucks.

So this brings me to the initial question in this post, ‘What can I do every day that, over time, will result in me meeting my goals or seeing my ideas come to fruition?’

The first step is to have a clear understanding of what my goals and ideas are. This is as simple as having an easily visible list somewhere I will see it regularly. This is the easy part. Determining the ‘what’ is always easier than determining the ‘how’.

Once I have my goals and ideas laid out it becomes very important to determine the little things I can do every day to ensure that the goals get met and the ideas get realized.

A simple example is weight loss. The goal is: I want to to lose 30 pounds. That’s a great goal but it isn’t something that is going to happen overnight. It’s a goal that will take time and discipline to achieve. So what do I do each day to work towards that goal? Some possibilities would be: no more pop, alcohol, and junk food, get at least 8 hours of sleep each night, eat balanced meals, and exercise 3-4 times a week. These are little things that I can track, each day, to help build better habits as I break bad ones, to help ensure that I meet my goal eventually.

The idea here is to build momentum behind the good habits and break the momentum behind the bad ones.

By giving myself daily and weekly achievements to meet, I can take a lofty goal like losing 30 pounds and make it more manageable. Another benefit of focusing on the small, daily tasks is that a bad day doesn’t have the ability to de-rail my pursuit of my goal. When the goal seems so daunting and hard, any type of setback or screwup can snowball into quitting on the goal very quickly because of the pressure I feel to be perfect. If, however, I’m focused on meeting smaller, more manageable goals that I can track, a bad day has less power to send the whole thing off the rails. I can look at my track record and see that while I didn’t meet the goal today, I’ve met it 5 days in a row before that, and 17 out of the last 20. This is incredibly powerful. It allows me to not be perfect while at the same time encouraging me to get back on the horse tomorrow and fight the good fight.

This is the sort of momentum building that will help me achieve my goals. In fact, as of this writing, I’m down 10 pounds. I’m 33% of the way to my goal. I’m building momentum and better habits each day and it feels wonderful.

But what about less tangible things? What about all of the ideas I have? How can I set daily or weekly tasks to help realize them?

It works much the same way, I need to have a clear understanding and definition of what the idea is. For example, I wanted to start writing again. That was it, that was the idea, just to write regularly again.

So I thought about it for a little bit and realized that I needed a writing prompt. I’ve got enough historical data to prove that sitting around and waiting for inspiration to strike is a way to ensure that I won’t write more than 5 times per year. I also realized that I get a notification everyday on my phone with the Verse of The Day from the Bible app and there it was, my writing prompt.

What’s great about this daily prompt is that I don’t have to go find it, it comes to me at the same time every single day. It’s then up to me to show up to do something I’ve already agreed to. What’s more, I know for a fact I would not have written this article if I hadn’t gotten into the habit of writing again. I would have had this idea and just like so many that have gone before it, it would have floated on down the ‘what if?’ river. This is just another example of how building momentum around small, daily tasks can lead towards long-term growth.

The progress I’ve seen in these 2 specific areas of my life has been really enjoyable and I want to see it spread. So I’m going to make a list of all the goals and ideas I have currently, prioritize them by what is most important to me, and then come up with daily and weekly tasks I can accomplish to help me accomplish them. This really all comes down to taking initiative and owning the little things each day so that future you can enjoy the benefits.

To ensure that I don’t forget about these tasks I use an app called Streaks on iOS. This app allows me to track the habits and tasks that I want to accomplish, while providing historical data (which can be a huge confidence boost), and reminder notifications so I don’t forget to do them. It’s a really simple app but it has helped my write more, post to this website more, drink more water, read more, and eat and drink less crap. I’m eager to see the progress I can make in other areas of my life as well with this new mindset.