Writing down your goals means you can visually see them because the goals feel tangible.
When goals are written down you are more likely to intellectually engage and emotionally connect with the result of the goal you want to achieve.
If you start writing down your goals, your life will change. When you commit to achieving those written down goals daily, your life will transform.
When you commit to goal achievement first thing in the morning, every single day, and then review your performance goals at the end of each day, you’ll make real progress every day.
Many people, however, have no clear focus for their day.
They haven’t set goals and written down goals that are important to them .
They get distracted, rather than being clear and focused on goal achievement.
In this article I’m going to share the importance of goal setting and the power of writing down your goals, so you can set goals that move your business and life forward every day.
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Abraham Lincoln
How to set goals and achieve them
The best way to set goals and achieve them is to always write down your goals and then focus on goal achievement every day.
This simple goal focus will help you create a productive day every day and harness your time and energy focus to only the small number of activities that really matter..
Writing down your goals doesn’t need to take long, but should form an essential part of your morning routine.
So you are crystal clear on your daily goals and what achieving your goals can create in your live.
When you are crystal clear on your goals, you become emotionally engaged in goal achievement.
You visualise what it would feel like to achieve your goals.
This gives you the confidence, clarity and motivation to take the daily steps needed to achieve your personal goals and professional goals.
The result?
Your behaviour will be different. You’ll feel more abundant and experience a greater sense of gratitude.
Why should you write your goals down?
Writing down your goals helps create a vision in your mind of how you want to be in the future.
You can visually see the goal and understand the difference it will make in your life.
When we see something clearly it creates change in how we act as we have clarity and direction. We are then more likely to be productive and creative if we can identify how the goal achievement will transform our life.
Why is a written goal more powerful?
Studies show that goal setters achieve their goals.
People who write down their goals when goal setting are even more likely to have success getting to where they want to go.
There’s a brain-to-hand connection that comes into effect.
Writing down your goals down plants the goal in your brain, and once it’s there, it sticks.
Benefits of writing down your goals
Most people don’t bother to write down their goals.
Others have goals but they are more a wish, as they have no deadlines or measurements attached to setting a goal.
If you don’t have specific, measurable goals it’s easy to drift, feel scattered and lack motivation to take action.
Writing down your goals is the start of the process.
Committing to achieving goals, and taking action daily are essential, but writing down your goals is the first place to start.
The importance of writing down your goals
Here are 5 simple benefits of writing down your goals, that will help you achieve your goals.
1. It helps you get clear on what you want
Clarifying your future is an essential capability.
If you’re not clear what you want, or where you want to go, you’ll lack direction.
Lack of direction means lack of focus.
If you have no focus, it’s easy to get distracted and spend time on activities that simply aren’t important to you.
When you have no destination in mind, how do you know when you get there?
Writing down your goals narrows your focus.
It forces you to choose specific goals that are important to you and filter out things, activities and people that aren’t.
2. It helps you stay motivated
Writing down your goals, and making progress daily, helps you stay on track and feeling motivated.
But, if you just write down your goals and don’t action, you won’t get anywhere.
The reason?
The goals weren’t exciting and motivating enough for you to take action.
There was no intentionality behind achieving the goal.
You didn’t want to achieve the goal badly enough.
In order to stay motivated, it’s essential to set exciting goals and then take action.
Writing down your goals. reviewing progress and then laying out the next action step will help keep you motivated.
3. It helps narrow your focus
Goal setting helps narrow your focus.
We live in a world of opportunity meaning we have an abundance of choices.
Without clear goals we can jump from activity to activity and become easily distracted and scattered.
Rather than having a clear plan and path to follow, our time, energy and focus can get pulled off course unless we have clarity around our goals.
Having a small number of specific, measurable goals allows us to focus only on what is crucially important to us.
4. It gives you realistic time frames to work towards
When writing down your goals it’s essential to have a deadline to achieve the goal in.
This deadline increases focus and gives you something specific to work towards.
It also helps you manage time more effectively.
Without a deadline, there is nothing specific to shoot for.
When you set a deadline, your brain takes the goal seriously.
With a deadline, you can begin to break achieving the goal down into specific action steps.
When writing down your goals, make sure the goal and deadline is challenging and exciting, but also achievable.
5. It allows you to celebrate progress
When working towards your goals, it’s essential to measure, and celebrate, progress along the way.
If you don’t feel like you’re making the progress you want, start measuring progress backwards from where you started.
Even if the progress feels small, any improvement is progress towards your goals.
When you write down your goals and review progress daily or weekly, you will see how far you’ve come.
If you don’t, it may feel like no progress has been made.
The next time you set goals for your business and life, the first place to start is to write them down.
Conclusion
Writing down your goals helps you describe your goals vividly ensuring you intellectually engage and emotionally commit to achieving goals that are important to you.
The ability to write down your goals and focus on goal achievement every day is strongly associated with goal success.
Writing down your goals not only forces you to get crystal clear about what you want, the act of setting goals in written form increases your commitment and focus to actually achieving your goals.
Other goal setting articles
The importance of setting measurable goals
This article originally appeared at Lucemi Conusling.
About the Author
Mark Pettit is a small business coach to business owners who want to simplify their time, energy and focus so they can multiply their freedom, impact and results. Find out more here.
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