Step 2: How to Work Out What You Need to Do to Achieve Your Targets

You now have a plan.

A person with clear goals wakes up every morning knowing exactly what he needs to do in order to grow his business.

He’s able to track his progress, learn from his mistakes and make improvements where necessary.

On the other, if you don’t have goals, every new day is full of anxiety and lots of wasted time.

Break the goals down into tasks. Work backwards. From big down to the tiniest task.

So if your goal is “To be living in a tropical island on Thailand by 2019”.

You need to work out how much money you need to do that.

What you’ll need to do to generate that money, i.e. “Have a business that’s already made $X and continues to make $Y every month”.

What things you’ll have to achieve on a monthly basis to make that money flow. i.e. “Selling X digital affiliate products every week priced at $Y”.

What tasks you’ll have to do week by week to make the monthly goals happen, i.e. “Drive X visitors to the affiliate web page”.

And what tasks you’ll do day to day to make the weekly stuff happen, i.e. “Website built, traffic coming from X, Y, Z, email list capturing X% of visitors emails, email with affiliate offer going out to the X number of subscribers”.

This way you know EXACTLY what needs to be done.

And you can easily do step 3.

Step 3: How to Set Realistic Deadlines on Your Goals

Your goals are now targets to hit. Goals without deadlines are just wishes.

A goal needs a deadline to work towards or it will never happen. Look at all the tasks you’ve defined in step 2.

Think about how long they will take you. Some you will have to absolutely guess at because you’ve not done them before.

Always assume a task will take 25% longer than you anticipate.

And leave a buffer zone at the end of each week and month for anything unexpected that you didn’t account for.

There will always be tasks you forgot about, or didn’t know about. And always “life stuff” going on that means some days you just can’t put the time in.

Assign each task an hourly time total. Then work out how much spare time you realistically have each day, week, or month.

And figure out by when you can REALISTICALLY get it done.

You should now have a date to aim for. This is your deadline.

Write it down. Tell the world about it so you’re committed to it. Set reminders on your calendar.

Not just for the date it’s self but in the weeks and months leading up to it.

So you know it’s approaching and how long you have left to achieve it.

I personally use Google Calendar to schedule out tasks for the following week at the times I plan to do them, that way there can be no confusion or distraction.

So all I have to do each week is open the calendar, and I can see at a glance what I’m doing and when, and build my life around those tasks.