ON PERSONAL GROWTH || Using Small Wins to Achieve Big Goals
If you are reading this, I assume that you have a ‘big goal’ you want to achieve.
At the start of a new year, I usually reflect on my goals (truthfully, all my 2020 goals went out the window with the Black Swan event that is the global pandemic) and set new ones for the coming year. I realize that in order to keep forging ahead, not only do I need to be ready for change, I also need to break down my goals into very small steps I can use to 1/ easily track progress and 2/ experience small wins that motivate me to keep going.
Below, I break down a few tangible ways to achieve financial, career and well-being goals.
SAVE $5000
What do I mean by that? At the most basic level, it's simply breaking down larger goals into bite-sized, achievable pieces. Let's say you want to save $5000 by the end of the year, how would you go about it with small wins?
If you simply cut back on the fancy $6 lattes that you have each day, that would already account for $2,190. To make sure that you save the $6 x 30 days per month, you can ask your bank to auto-deposit that amount into a separate saving account so you can watch it grow.
You also need to take a hard look at your credit card statement to see where useless subscriptions are eating away at your savings. Are you subscribed to 4 different video streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime TV, Disney+, or Apple TV+? Do you really need all 4? Are there any other monthly subscriptions like apps, magazines, food, gift boxes, that you mindlessly renew?
A $19.99 subscription may not seem like much on a monthly basis, but on an annual basis that’s another 5% of your savings goal. Remember this: it all adds up.
Plan it out. You need to see what success looks like.
LAUNCH A SIDE HUSTLE
If you are trying to launch a side hustle in 6 months, break down each and every one of the tasks that need to happen each week for the next 6 months in order for you to get there. This planning process may seem tedious, but rest assured having the tasks all laid out ahead of you makes it easier to follow your progress. Without your tasks laid out, it’s similar to trying to go on a road trip with no map — it will definitely take much longer for you to reach your destination (IF you reach it that is).
Imagine knowing that in the first week you need to:
Narrow down to 3 options for your company name
Conduct a name search for your proposed company name
Research the costs associated with setting up a company (business registration costs, legal costs, cost to reserve a company name, etc.
Research your industry trends to understand what’s working or not, to help define your business model
Knowing what you need to achieve gets you over the hurdle for a lot of excuses I hear when starting a new business — “I just don’t know where to start”.
Although technology now makes it extremely easy for you to set up a website and start selling things, there are many, many more steps to running and growing a business. What needs to happen to you to get to where you want to be? Map it out. The devil is in the details.
If you can’t put in the work to define what you want and how you are going to get there, then it’s only fair to say that you should not be expecting favorable results.
MEDITATE EVERYDAY
This is an easy one relative to the other two goals above because there are apps like Calm that remind you to meditate each day, and also show you how many sessions you completed in the week or in the month, to motivate you to continue pursuing your goal to meditate daily. Essentially, you are outsourcing and automating your tracking efforts to an app (just make sure you don’t disable the reminder!)
The first few weeks you are working through your plan and hitting these micro milestones it may not seem like much, but as you really hit your stride, you will feel much more confident in your ability to reach your goal. If you are a hiker, you would understand this feeling, where you are staring at the massive mountain soaring above you, only to conquer it after hours of climbing up and up and up. I once hiked the Sea to Sky in British Columbia and I thought to myself “I did that?” when I looked back upon the path I hiked from the top of the mountain. Little by little, step by step.
If tracking things with pen and paper isn’t your thing, then use an app like Strides or Productive — the point is, you need to measure progress to visualize your progress.
