The Six Crucial Steps for Your 2020 Goals

2020 is right around the corner and successful people all over the world are starting to think through their personal and professional goals for this upcoming new year. There are many different ways to prepare yourself to have a great year... and there is a lot of misinformation that surrounds this topic as well. Let's review some of the most reliable and progressive ways to prepare for a breakthrough year in 2020.

Step One: Understand the Power of Goal Setting

Intentional goal setting is a secret for almost all high achievers. Only 3% of people have written goals, and I'll bet you can guess who those 3% are. They are the people who are living the life they want by being deliberate in their planning. A year is a BIG chunk of time, you don't want to enter a new one just hoping for the best. Will 2020 be a breakthrough year for you? Will it be a year that moves you closer to being the person you really want to be? If you want the answer to those questions to be "Yes", you need to start with goal setting.

Step Two: The December 31st Question

Top achievers understand the power of retrospection. The "December 31st question" puts you in the mind frame of someone who has had a great year. So let's fast-forward to the end of the year. It is Tuesday, December 31st, 2020 and here's the question: what would have had to have happened during the year for you to feel great about the year? Said another way... what results would you need in your life or work to think of 2020 as a true breakthrough year? The answer to this question will help set meaningful important goals for yourself in this important new year.

Step Three: Filter Your List

I would recommend no more than 3-5 serious goals for 2020. Why so few? A couple of reasons. First, we can become diffused if we have too many goals. Each goal can begin to diminish and add risk to the others. Second, if we can't accomplish our three or four most important goals in 2020, we're certainly not going to accomplish nine or ten. We go deep on this topic in the Exceptional Leaders Lab Masterclass, if you want some additional coaching on goal setting . The bottom line: Keep your goals narrowed and focused, you can always add more later in the year.

Step Four: Turn Your Goals into Specific Actions

This is the step that separates serious goal setters from the wish-list makers. Top achievers think through exactly what they are going to accomplish in 2020, then they figure what the action steps will need to be to make them happen. They think about their leading indicators, key habits, and monthly, weekly and daily activities. This step begins to eliminate the "chance" from your goals. You will hit your targets because you are systematically eliminating the risks. Which brings us to step four...

Step Five: Get a Sanity Check

You have some smart people in your life. You may even know someone who has done some of the things you are wanting to accomplish in this new year. Ask these people to "sanity check" your goals and plans for 2020. Ask them if they make sense, ask them if they believe that the action plans you have associated with each goal will get you there. This step further eliminates risk from your goals for the new year.

Step Six: Bolt Them Down

This final step is where you build accountability and consistent review opportunities into your goals for the new year. You are "bolting them down" so that you can be 100% confident in your plans to accomplish them. You will want to think through a solid review plan for each goal. Some of your goals may require a weekly review, some you will want to look at on a monthly basis, and for some kinds of targets a quarterly review will suffice. Actually schedule your review times in your 2020 calendar, this extra formal step will give you a sense of momentum before the year even starts.

So there you have it! Those are The Six Crucial Steps for Your 2020 Goals. Take your time with these, a year a big chunk of time and you want to get them right. Going through these formal steps will virtually guarantee that 2020 will be a breakthrough year for you. Congratulations on taking serious and deliberate steps towards 2020, you're going to have a great year!

Tracy Spears | November 19, 2019

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