Break Down Your Long-Term Goals Into Discrete Steps
Setting a long-term goal is a simple, albeit vague, way of planning your life. You know you want to lose weight or pay off debt. However, if you really want to achieve these goals, you will need separate steps to achieve them.
As explained in the Medium CEO applications to improve performance Handle Chris Gellchi, goal a bit like the decision to climb the mountain. You know you want to get to the top, but that’s pretty much all you have. If you want to reach that peak, you need concrete steps to help you reach that peak. Once you have chosen a goal, plan the specific steps you need to take to achieve it. Once you have a plan, the only goal that matters is the next step:
When you start working on a task that aims to achieve a broader goal, focus only on that task. Don’t check your email for a minute or check to see if there is anything interesting on the main Reddit page, these are ways to quickly waste your time and throw you off the hook. You can complete tasks much faster and make more progress towards your goal if you set a timer to work on the task and avoid context switching while the timer is running.
Once you get started, the plan becomes much easier. For most of us, it is not difficult to set a goal because it is easy to imagine what we want out of life. On the other hand, planning is the hardest part. However, once you have a plan, you can break down your goals into tasks that you can manage every day.