Make your goals measurable and with a timeline.
Once you’ve identified your personal feelings, and you have your general goals set, we’re going to tighten everything up and make it all super-specific.
There are two ways you can do this, depending on what the goal is.
A) Super-specific outcome goals.
These goals tend to be more popular with people. They’re goals where you have very tightly defined aims and deadlines, such as:
• Be earning $5k in passive income every month by next year
• Sign up ten clients in 60 days
• Make $1000 with my new Kindle book
• Lose 10 pounds in 45 days
• These goals add a little more pressure on you.
You might use them in a back-against-the-wall situation, where you need to earn a degree of money in a particular time or fit into a dress by your high school reunion.
The disadvantage to this type of goal is that it often puts people in a “take every possible action and see what sticks” mindset, versus making long-term, lasting change.
Also, the goals are often arbitrary numbers. And if they’re not reached, people feel like failures - no matter how hard they worked or if external circumstances got in their way.
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For example, you might have a goal to earn $5k in a month, but then a death in the family details you for a week. Or maybe you have a goal to lose 10 pounds, but no matter how hard you work, your body just won’t release the weight.
The best way to use this type of goal is if you have plenty of time to create great habits AND course correct if things aren’t working. For example, if you want to be making $5k a month by a year from now, you can spend a majority of the time building up the right habits for yourself. But if you find yourself in month 6 and you aren’t where you planned you’d be (which we’ll cover more in-depth later on in this book), you can course correct and try something else.
B) “Take-the-right-action” goals.
These are goals where you’re taking steps to get to where you ultimately desire to be. For example:
• Eat greens with at least 50 meals this month
• Drink 80 oz of water each day
• Post on Twitter 2 times a day all month
• Write two books in a year
• Go for a walk three times a week
• Write a love letter to my partner once a month
When to make these kinds of goals: These are the goals to concentrate on when you want to build up healthy habits. For example, let’s say you want to feel healthier.
We all know that when you make sure you get in enough greens and water, you start becoming healthier.
And so creating goals around getting more of both on a constant basis helps ensure you feel better.
These are goals that are a bit more spacious. You’re trusting that the right habits will accrue results over time, and so you’re making lifestyle goals instead of short-term crash diet plans such as “lose 10 pounds in a month.”
It is also for goals that you can’t make specific guidelines around. For example, you can’t say “I want to improve my marriage by 500%”.
You can say, though, that you want your marriage to get better - and then create specific things you can do with them, such as write love letters, plan out romantic dates, or do the laundry three times a month because your partner appreciates it.
I prefer these types of goals most of the time. Building up the right kinds of habits gives you a long-term edge and creates a more solid foundation for who you want to become.
Before you move on from this section, choose a goal or two from your list if you haven’t already, and set clear timelines as appropriate.
Ensure you’ve worded your goals, so they are distinct and MEASURABLE. I want you to know exactly what you’re working towards and the timeline in which you’re going to be doing it.
Remember this isn’t about setting your deadlines in stone, but rather about being specific. You’ll be able to course correct if you find you are not making the progress you’d like.
