So you want to make 2022 to be your best and most successful year?
Then you need to learn how to plan your 2022 goals because everything starts with a goal. Without a goal or the intention to achieve, you will never do what is necessary to move forward in your life.
No matter what goals you are trying to achieve, whether it is a career goal, a business goal, or a personal goal, you can use these 7 steps to design your goal, plan for it to happen, and create a clear path to success in 2022.
1. Identify the goals you want to achieve in 2022
The first step you want to take is obvious – identify the goals you want to achieve in 2022. This may seem straightforward, but unfortunately, most people don’t identify their goals.
They don’t know what they want out of life, and they have no idea what kind of results they want to achieve in 2022. Never let this be you.
Before you can get to a destination, you must first identify where it is that you want to go so that you can plan and work yourself to get there.
But the question is this – how do you identify what you want to achieve in 2022? Here are a couple of resources you should check out:
- Top 5 Goals Everyone Should Set For 2022
- 5 Ways How to Find Out What You Want Out of Your Life
- Specific Goal Setting: How to Set Crystal Clear Goals
It is important to get crystal clear with what you want to achieve because vague goals produce vague results.
Successful people are successful because they have clear targets and goals to achieve. On the other hand, unsuccessful people often lack a crystal clear goal and they lack direction.
In short, if you want to achieve greater success and live a better life, then you must get clear with what you want to achieve in 2022.
2. Get everything down on paper
That’s right, get everything down on paper. Why? Because if you keep everything on your head without writing them down, you will forget about them the next minute.
Besides, people who write down their goals and plans are those who are more committed.
You see, if something isn’t important to you, you will never bother writing it down, isn’t it?
You will write something down ONLY if it is important to you and you are absolutely committed to making it happen.
Not only that, writing down your goals helps you remember them better. It allows you to work on them more often and of course, it increases your chances of success.
According to this article on Forbes, people do a much better job and perform better when they have a clear picture of their goals than people who don’t. The article says that writing down your goals gives you an edge for achieving them…
“It’s a nice edge to have and, when you write down your goal, you get to access the “generation effect” twice: first, when you generate the goal (create a picture in your mind), and second, when you write it down because you’re essentially reprocessing or regenerating that image.”
And this is why you want to write down your goals.
3. Create an actionable plan
The third step you need to take to plan your goals for 2022 is to create an actionable plan. Most people have goals, but they don’t have an actionable plan.
In most cases, goals are outcome-based. Meaning, they are the results you want to achieve. And that means they are not actionable.
For example, your goal could be something like, “I want to lose 10 pounds by March 2022”, but this isn’t actionable.
You need to create an action plan for the goal you want to achieve so that you tell your mind exactly what you want it to do.
Losing 10 pounds is not something actionable, but working out in the gym for an hour every Wednesday at 3 PM is something actionable.
Do you see the difference now?
Read this guide: How to Turn Your Goals into Actionable Plans
When you have an actionable plan, it makes you proactive. You will make things happen rather than wait for things to happen.
When you lack an actionable plan, you will never know what you need to get done. And guess what, you will then become reactive and wait for things to come to you.
Do you get that? This is why having an actionable plan is important. It is like setting yourself up to win.
With an action plan, you are telling your mind what you want it to do and by when. It becomes a prompt or a trigger that gets things done.
4. Take action and work on your 2022 plan
You cannot reap without sowing. You will only achieve your goals and make 2022 your best year ever IF you work on it.
The problem with most people is that they don’t act. They set goals and they make plans, but they don’t act.
Without action, there will be no result. This is straightforward common sense.
If you want something, you need to work for it.
So, how do you put yourself into action so that you will achieve your 2022 goals? Here are a couple of techniques…
#1 – Time block
Use the time-blocking technique to block off a certain time to make sure an action or task gets done. For instance, if you are a blogger, you could time-block 9 to 11 AM every Monday and Wednesday for content creation. During these periods, you will do nothing except creating content for your blog. This will ensure the work gets done.
#2 – Apply the Rule of 5
I learned the Rule of 5 from Jack Canfield, the best-selling author of The Success Principles, which by the way, is a great book to read. What you need to do is to take 5 little actions every day.
If you do just 5 things that will move you forward to your goal, in a week, you will have accomplished 35 small wins. In a month, you will have achieved 150 wins, and in a year, you will have achieved 1,825 wins. And these small wins will accumulate and give you big success by the end of the year.
Read this guide: How To Achieve Anything By Using The Rule Of Five
#3 – Start small
To make sure you take action and don’t procrastinate, just start small. Lower the resistance and start small to build the action habit. Starting small is one of the most underrated success principles most people overlook. Read: Why Start Small? The 5 Important Benefits of Starting Small
5. Commit and build better and more productive habits
Next, you want to commit and build better productive habits to help you achieve your goals in 2022. Some actions are one-time, but most are repeatable. And for repeatable action steps, you want to turn them into habits.
Do you know why most people fail to achieve their goals? Well, the simple answer is this – they lack commitment.
If you are serious about achieving your goals in 2022, then you must make sure you are 100% committed to making it happen.
And how do you increase your level of commitment? One simple trick is to get yourself an accountability partner. When someone is watching you and monitoring your progress, you are more likely to follow through and stick to your plan.
This is why getting a partner to exercise together is more effective than trying to do it all by yourself. When you know someone is waiting for you in the gym, you are more likely to hit the gym and exercise together.
The next thing you want to do is to build better habits. There are many books about building habits, and one of the must-reads is this…
Once you get yourself an accountability partner and you turn your actions into habits, you will greatly increase your chances of success.
6. Review your goals and evaluate your progress
This is what most people don’t do – they don’t review their progress and results.
Here’s why you want to evaluate and review your progress – it tells you what went wrong so that you can change your plan, and it tells you went right so that you can do more of it to create more success.
Hence, you want to make sure you review your progress at least once every week. You want to know what you have done right and what you have done wrong.
The more you understand what is working and what is not, the better you can plan and become more effective in reaching your goals.
Peter Drucker once said:
“What gets measured gets managed.”
If you cannot measure your progress or result, then there is no way you can improve your performance.
Besides, when you track your progress, you will know if you are moving in the right direction or going backward.
Most people don’t track their progress and they don’t review their results, and this is why they are stuck at where they are.
You should check out this guide: How to Evaluate and Review Your Goals
7. Celebrate your wins and progress
Lastly, you want to celebrate your wins and progress. Why? Because celebration makes you feel good. And when you feel good, you will want to do more of it. Just like what Oprah Winfrey said:
“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”
Imagine you worked day and night for weeks, but all you get is more work and there’s no holiday or celebration. How does that make you feel? Not good, right?
This is why you should take a break and have a Kit-Kat. You cannot work 24 hours, you are not a machine.
And since you charge your phone every day, why don’t you take a break and charge yourself so that you can go further and stay longer?
According to this article from LifeHack.org, the key to success is realizing that your big goals aren’t going to happen overnight, and this is why small steps that you take every day are important. And you want to make sure you celebrate and acknowledge small wins.
“Acknowledging small wins sparks the reward circuits of our brains and releases chemicals that give us a feeling of pride and a happiness factor, making us want to go further towards our next achievement.”
Celebration isn’t just about having fun, it is about acknowledging your progress and hard work. It is about giving yourself credit for what you have done so that you will want to do more of it.
I suggest you read this guide to discover more about rewarding yourself for your hard work: 13 Ways How to Celebrate Small Victories and Make Progress
Conclusion
These are the 7 steps on how you can plan for your 2022 goals. Follow these steps and make 2022 your best year ever. Do you like what you read? And how do you plan your year? Leave your comment below and let me know.