Goal Planning Broken Down into the Easiest Steps Ever

When I say I need goal planning to be broken down into the easiest steps possible, I mean that whole-heartedly.

I have always loved goal setting and planning, but I’ve had to work on breaking it down into tiny steps as I have gotten older and have so many responsibilities as a parent. I need every cheat sheet in the world.

What I want to share today is how I break down a goal into tiny more achievable tasks.

What we all need to turn our goals into reality is a solid, doable plan. I spent a large amount of 2022 studying up on how to break down goals into workable steps, and I am excited to talk about it.

The strategies I use are a conglomeration of what I have learned over the past few years from letsreachsucces.com and moneysavingmom.com

Both of these gals teach the importance of breaking your goals into very doable steps, and that hit home with me big time.

I love a good plan, don’t you?

In fact, planning is half of the fun. They say your brain rewards you with happy feelings of accomplishment just from planning out what you are going to do, without even actually doing the thing. Ha!

My goal this year feels big, daunting, and to be completely honest, I am not sure I can actually do it. But we fail 100% of what we do not attempt, so who cares. I am going for it, and I am going to share with you exactly how I am planning this all out.

So let’s get started on this goal planning! Let’s do this.

Step 1: Decide what exactly your goal is and write it down.

Your goal needs to be highly specific. “Lose weight” is not a goal. Instead, your goal should read something more like, “I will lose 20 pounds by December.”

Whatever your goal is, it needs to be measurable. If you say, “I want to grow a successful blog,” that is so subjective you may not even be sure when or not you reach your goal. That is why it must be measurable.

Pray about this.

Make sure this goal is God’s plan for you. If it isn’t, find a new goal that is in line with God’s will for your life. I have made the mistake of pursuing a path that was not any part of God’s plan for me, and it was about as successful as stepping on a rake.

Step 2: Write down your why!!! Why is this goal important?

You have prayed it up and decided what you want. Now, while it is still fresh on your mind, write down all the reasons why this goal is important. Later this will be your reminder for WHY to not quit!

Step 3: Focus on HOW you can achieve that goal. What needs to happen?

This is just the beginning of goal planning.

Define all the things that need to happen in order to reach your goal, and write each step down.

A change has to take place to see different results. What will you change? Write down exactly what changes you will make to reach your goal. This is a serious planning meeting you get to have with yourself.

I found this useful goal planning worksheet at the printablesfairy.com.

This is a pack of several extremely useful goal planning pages. They are all full color too, but I have a black and white only printer. It saves money and time replacing ink cartridges.

The funny thing is these printable worksheets are made “for kids.” But I guess that is the level I am on because I thought they were PERFECT, and I sifted through a ton of different goal planning worksheets online before I found these.

My main goal this year is to turn this website into a profitable business. To be more specific I gave myself a deadline and a dollar amount of money I want to make. I have a long way to go, but now I have a plan, and the worksheets helped me focus.

I am also a stickler about realistic goals so I do not get too discouraged. So my goal looks small, but it is a starting point.

My hope is to have a way bigger monetary goal next year. This one is just to get the ball rolling. I still need to work on the “believing in myself” part of the goal process, but maybe this year will help me get there.

Step 4: Look at the steps you wrote for what you need to do to achieve your end goal. Now take the first step and break it down into smaller steps.

If “walk every day” was your first step, now you could write, “Walk today for 45 minutes.” Also, assign a time for when you are going to do this. What time today? Do you need to wear anything special? Write it all down. Then get out there and do it!

Step 5: Do that same breaking the steps down process until you have a task so simple you can do it right away.

Step 6: Identify your obstacles. Write them down. Write all of the things that make your goal hard to imagine or hard to reach?

You may think this is a whole lot of extra, but think how much more prepared you will be if you have thought through how to handle the obstacles.

Also, remember there will always be problems to overcome. If you wait for perfect timing, you will never get started because perfect timing rarely comes.

Pray about the obstacles!!

God has removed so many hard things from my path that were issues I had no idea how to fix. Thankfully, God knew exactly how to fix them and handled it for me. I cannot tell you how many problem people or tasks have just disappeared from my life.

Step 7: Now write down all of your solution ideas for these obstacles. How will you overcome them?

I loved this part. All the credit for this part goes to the lady at PrintablesFairy because I would not have thought of working through this on paper.

Step 8: Get going on those steps!

For a daily tracker idea, check out this post I wrote about keeping yourself accountable to do the things each day.

In summary, the best way to achieve your goals is to get working on them right away!

I made this little info graph to sum the whole process up.

Oh one last thing! Accountability is also helpful. If other people know about your goal, they will ask you about your progress. That helps you keep working. I would love for you to comment below what your goal is that you are working on.

Goals are dreams with their working clothes on. Let’s get to work.

(I say a lot of corny things like that when I am writing that I would never say in real life…)