How to Achieve Your Yearly Goal in 3 Simple Steps

Every new year, people will make resolutions and set goals with the hope that their new year will be much better. And I believe that includes you and me. But unfortunately, according to research, the majority – 92% of people who make a new year resolution – never get to achieve it.

Let’s face it, sticking to your goal is difficult. It will be even more challenging if you have to do it for the entire year.

This is why most people fail to achieve their goals. When they first began with the goal, they are extremely excited. They have high hopes and motivation.

But after a couple of days or weeks later…

When they don’t make much progress
When there are too many distractions due to their busy life
And when they lose their motivation

Most people will start to lose hope and then give up.

So, how do you achieve your yearly goal then? What did the successful do that they managed to reach their goals and achieve the results they want?

Well, in this guide, I will share with you 3 simple steps you can follow to help you reach your yearly goals…

1. Create an Actionable Plan for Your Goals

Step #1, the first thing you need to do to achieve your goal is to create an actionable plan.

Too often, the goals we set are vague and broad, and they are not actionable. For example, if your goal is to increase sales by 50%, but you don’t have an actionable plan, you will end up confusing your mind. Your mind doesn’t know what you want it to do.

Ambiguity will lead to confusion. And when you are confused and not sure what to do – without specific action steps – you will procrastinate.

This is why you want to create an actionable plan.

If your goal is to lose 10 pounds, what are the specific action steps you need to take? For instance, your action plan could be…

Take protein shakes as breakfast every weekday.
Jog for 30 minutes every Monday and Wednesday.
Exercise in the gym for 40 minutes every Tuesday and Thursday.

These are the steps that will make you reach your goal of losing weight.

A goal without an actionable plan will never happen. Remember, success is created by design, not by accident. And that means you have to be the one who designs how your life is going to look like.

You should design and plan to make your goals a reality. You cannot let things up to chances.

If I want to build a profitable blog, what I need to do is to break down the goal into many small, specific steps that are actionable.

Because if I don’t have a plan, I will not know what I need to do. And when I don’t give my mind a specific action step, I will end up doing something else, like playing computer games or reading a book because I have no idea what to do.

Do you get that?

If you want to achieve your yearly goal, you must sit down, spend time, and plan for it to happen. Create an actionable plan where you can execute.

A goal is just a destination of where you want to get to. It is a result of what you want. But in order to get to the destination or to get the results you want, you must know what you need to do to get there.

And that’s why creating an actionable plan is a vital step to achieving your goals.

Need more help? Read this: How to Turn Your Goals into Actionable Plans

2. Focus on Making Progress, Not Results

If you want to make sure you hit your target, you must make sure you do this – focus on the progress, not the results.

Why? The reason is simple. If you focus on getting results, you will quickly lose your motivation, and eventually, you will quit on your goals. But when you focus on making progress, you will eventually produce the results you desire and hit your target.

Allow me to explain. Imagine you want to become a famous YouTube. And so, you start a YouTube channel and publish videos online.

Here’s the problem, most people focus on results – views, subscribers, and how much they can make from their videos.

Now, you may begin a lot of enthusiasm to publish videos on YouTube. And you have high hopes and set big goals such as getting 10,000 subscribers for your channel or receiving 100,000 video views in a month.

The problem comes when after a few weeks, you found that your videos don’t get as many views as you have expected. And your channel didn’t get the number of subscribers as you have projected.

What happens then? You started to lose steam. You feel dejected and you lose your motivation. And that’s when most people will abandon their goal and choose to give up.

This is what happens when you focus on the results.

Try to flip the situation around – you focus on making progress rather than results.

Instead of focusing on how many videos views you get or how many subscribers you are going to receive, you focus on the number of videos you can produce and publish to YouTube.

What if you consistently publish 2 videos to your YouTube channel every week? After a month, you will have 8 videos. And because you focus on making progress, every time you publish a video, you feel great because you have created a small victory for yourself.

And 3 months later, you have published 24 videos to your channel. Some of your videos are not performing well, but some are performing great. And you started to see your channel gaining traction.

Every day, you see your video views increase, slowly, but surely. And you also notice that your channel subscribers are growing too.

You feel great and on track. Your motivation is high, and you continue to publish even more videos on YouTube.

Do you see the difference between focusing on results VS focusing on making progress now?

Progress is what gets you the results. If you focus on results/outcomes, you will quickly lose your motivation and give up. But when you focus on making progress, you will eventually produce the results you desire.

Here are some additional resources to help you in this:

3. Stick to the 90-90-1 Rule

If all else fails, just follow this rule: the 90-90-1 Rule.

I first learned this rule from Sir Robin Sharma. You can read about the full detail of this rule in my Medium article here.

This was how Sir Robin Sharma explained the rule:

“For the next 90 days, the first 90 minutes of your workday, focus monomaniacally on your single most valuable project. I call it your game-changing move. It might be creating a new piece of code that will revolutionize the marketplace. It might be a new product that, when you launch it, will fill a need within your industry that no peer is currently providing. I don’t know what your game-changing move is, but this is your poetry. This is your magnum opus for the next 90 days.”

The rule is simple, for the next 90 days, spend your first 90 minutes working on your #1 goal.

Imagine if you stick to this rule for a year, guess how much you will accomplish? Do you think you can achieve your goals and accomplish greater success if you work on your #1 goal for 90 minutes every day, for 90 days?

I bet the answer is a big yes.

The key to success is about spending time, putting in real effort, and working on your goals. As long as you are willing to spend time, put in the effort, and work on your goal, you will have no problem creating progress and getting nearer to your goal.

The problem with most people is that they always procrastinate. They choose to do something else than work on their goals.

Never let that happen to you. You are not most people.

You are much better than most ordinary people. That’s why you are reading this guide right now, isn’t it?

Therefore, stick to the 90-90-1 Rule, and you will have no problem achieving your yearly goal.

If you want to discover more interesting methods and secrets about success, I suggest you get this – Goal Setting Formula.

Shawn Lim

Shawn is a passionate coach who empowers individuals to achieve their goals and reach new heights of success. With his experience in the personal development industry, Shawn has guided countless people towards fulfilling their potential and achieving outstanding results in life.