How to Evaluate and Review Your Goals

When was the last time you review your goals? Or have you forgotten about the goals you have set for this year?

One of the most common reasons people fail to achieve their goals is the lack of review. They thought that all they need to do is to just write down their goals for once, and that’s it.

No, goal setting is NOT a one-time process. It is something you must do consistently.

The key to achieving your goals depends on how often you review your goals.

Read: 55 Useful Tips How To Set Goals And Achieve Them

It’s common sense. When something is not in your mind, you will quickly forget it and do nothing about it.

When you don’t think about your goals, you will quickly get them out of your mind. This is especially true in today’s world where there are so many distractions around us.

And when we forget, we don’t do it. And if you don’t take any action, you will never get the results you want.

This is why it is important to constantly evaluate and review your goals.

Why It is Important to Evaluate and Review Your Goals

As I said above, when your goals are out of your mind, you will never do them.

Think about it, what happened to your goals or projects in the past? Do they slowly sink into nothingness because either you’re too busy or you didn’t do any follow up on them?

The answer is clear, isn’t it?

When we first set goals, we’re all excited about them. We imagine ourselves achieving the success we want. But the next day when everything goes back to normal, we don’t feel so emotionally driven by our goals anymore.

And if you don’t review them and forget about them, you will quickly lose your drive and never act on them.

Eventually, our goals sink in silence. We forget about them. And of course, we fail to achieve our goals.

Hence, make it a habit to review your goals consistently. Below are the reasons why it is important to do so…

1. To know your progress

You can’t tell your progress whether you are moving forward or backward if you don’t review your goals. How can you tell if you are making progress? You can’t unless you track your results and evaluate your goals.

As what the legendary management consultant Peter Drucker once said:

What gets measured gets managed.

Peter Drucker

You can’t improve something you can’t measure. How do you improve your sales? Unless you have a way to measure it, you can’t improve or manage it.

Read: How to Use the Lead and Lag Measures to Achieve Your Goals

2. To make sure you’re in the right direction

Yes, are you going in the right direction? When it comes to actions and direction, a lot of people say one thing and do another.

Let me give you an example that happened to me. I’m a blogger and I want to build a blog with quality content to inspire people. I understand that for people to follow me on my blog, I need to publish great quality content.

But, when I first started, I focused too much on making a profit. I jammed my blog with advertisements and whenever people pay me to sponsor a post, I accepted it.

After some time down the road, I noticed that I’m not going in the right direction. I reviewed my goals and decided to get rid of most of the ads on my blog. I started to focus on creating content and getting people to read my articles again.

This can happen to you too. And this is why you must constantly review your goals to make sure you’re on the right track.

3. To reengage with your goals

Another key reason you want to evaluate your goals regularly is that you want to always engage with them.

Have you downloaded and read my guidebook, Reach Your Goals? If you did, you’ll understand the importance of having an active goal. You want your goals to be part of your life.

When you are not engaged with your goals, you will quickly forget them and do nothing about them.

4. To improve your strategy and action plan

Yes, you want to constantly improve your strategy and action plan. When you review your goals, you know what is working and what isn’t. Hence, you can tweak your plan, do more of what’s working and get rid of what’s not working.

Remember, life is a continuous learning process. If you want to achieve your goals, live your dreams, and become successful, you need to strive for what Tony Robbins called “CANI”, constant-and-never-ending-improvement.

5. To get motivated

Finally, talking, thinking, and dreaming about your goals can motivate you. If your goals don’t motivate you when you think about them, perhaps, you’ve set the wrong goals.

Your goals are supposed to drive you and spark your motivation. This is why you want to review them regularly so that you will get motivated and maintain your motivation.

Read: Why Motivation is Important and 10 Ways How to Get More of It

How to Evaluate and Review Your Goals

Now that you understand the importance of reviewing your goals, it is time to learn how to do it.

I believe that there is no right or wrong way to review your goals. You can do it your way, but if possible, do it consistently.

Try your best to at least review your goals at least once a week. And do it on the same day, time, and place if possible.

For example, you can choose to review your goals every Friday at 3 PM. And you can choose to do it in your favorite café as a reward. And you want to stick to your schedule and it every week.

This is to help you form the habit. Besides, when you schedule it and do it at the same time and place, you are indirectly telling your subconscious mind that reviewing your goals is important. That’s why you schedule it.

In short, make it like a meeting with yourself.

It is an important meeting because it is a session you use to create the future you want.

So, here are 7 tips on how to evaluate and review your goals…

1. Review your goals

Start with your goals. What you can do is to read out your goals or write them down on paper again. You want to remind yourself of your objectives and targets.

There is no harm in writing down your goals again, right? Do you know that daily goal setting is a powerful method that can greatly increase your goal achievement rate?

Thus, to kick-start your goals review session, write down your goals again. You want to focus your mind on your goals.

2. Track your progress

You should have a tracking system for your goals. If you don’t, read these 2 guides below and create one right now:

• How to Track Your Goals: 5 Fabulous Ways You Should Consider
• How to Measure Your Progress to Effectively Achieve Your Goals

In this step, you want to know your performance. If you are reviewing your goals every week, this step will tell you your progress and performance for the last week.

You want to know how far you are from your goals and what have you done correctly to create the right results.

If you have a good tracking system, you can also update your system to know your numbers.

For example, if you are a blogger, you can track some of these metrics below:

• # of articles published
• # of new email subscribers
• # of sales made
• # of guest articles published
• Etc.

3. Perform a success/failure analysis

A very simple idea to analyze your success/failure is to ask yourself these 3 questions:

1. What went well last week?
2. What didn’t go according to plan?
3. What did I learn?

Asking yourself these 3 questions above give you an insight of how you performed in the previous week. You will know what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what have you learned and where to improve.

You can also choose to write down your answers in your journal.

4. Update your action plan

Another thing you should do in your review session is to update your action plan. In fact, this is the main reason you review your goals in the first place.

If you don’t update your action plan, you will do the same thing again next week and you will get back the same old results.

For things to change, you need to change. If you continue to do the same thing, don’t expect to get a different result.

Now that you have gone through the 3 questions, you know what is working and what is not. Therefore, you can create a better action plan for the following week.

And if you do this every week, you’re going to improve a lot by the end of the year. Even if you just improve and do it 1% better, by the end of the year, you will experience exponential growth.

You need to have action plans for your goals. Regardless of whether it is a complicated one or as simple as a to-do list, you need to tell yourself consciously what you need to get done. The more specific, the better.

Below are 2 additional resources to help you in creating an effective action plan:

• 10 Effective Action Plan Templates You Can Use Now
• How to Turn Your Goals into Actionable Plans

5. Evaluate your resources

Here’s an additional step I recommend you do – evaluate your resources. For instance, you want to know if your time, capital, knowledge, and skills are enough to help you achieve your goals.

If your goal is to get back in shape and you want to start an exercise plan, but if you don’t have the time to do it, it is going to be a roadblock stopping you from reaching your goal.

Hence, find out what are the challenges, obstacles, or roadblocks that you’re going to encounter, and find the solutions.

Maybe your goal is to build an e-commerce website, but if you don’t have the technical knowledge to do it, it will become a major obstacle stopping you from reaching your goal.

So, evaluate your resources. Find out what are the problems you may encounter and come up with a solution plan.

You want to make the journey as bumpy-less as possible so that you won’t trip over.

6. Visualize your success

You may want to include this step into your review session. Spend a few minutes to daydream the success you want. Here’s a good article you should read:

The Importance of Visualizing Your Goals

Visualization has been scientifically proven to improve and increase the chances of your success. Thus, it is a good idea to imagine yourself living your dream life.

7. Evaluate your goals

Finally, you want to check if your goals are still attainable and relevant. And depending on your goals’ deadlines, some goals may become unattainable unless you come up with a different strategy.

And sometimes the circumstances may change, and you will need to update your goals or change them according to your situation.

Of course, try your best not to change your goals as much. You are encouraged to change and improve your strategy, but not your goals.

When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.

Alexandra Den Heijer

Conclusion

Remember, goal setting is not a one-time work. You need to do it regularly. You don’t have to review your goals every day, but at least do it once a week.

When you review your goals, you are re-engaging yourself with your goals. You re-program your goals into your subconscious mind. The more you do it, the more deeply ingrained your goals into your mind.

So, are you going to review your goals from now on? I hope you do.