How To Make A Plan To Reach Your Goals -

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how to make a plan to reach your goals

Planning is an essential part of achieving any goal,

planning isn’t only about doing the yearly planning of a goal

(I talked about how to do reverse goal setting here)

but how to spread out your actions/steps/tasks throughout the year and how to add details to make them more tangible, clear, and specific

then assess your progress toward the goal

planning your goals is about how you can break your goals into

even smaller steps/actions that you can do daily

It makes it easy to follow through with your goal and keep track of it

You can’t just create a to-do list and follow it because a to-do list alone is lacking

To pursue your goal you need a system

That’s where the multiple-scale planning (the name taken from Carel Newport) came

this post is the 4th in start the year Strong series

link to all the series at the end of the post

What’ll learn

What is multiple-scale planning
Why using one or none isn’t effective
What you need to get started

Multiple scale planning system to reach your goals

What is multiple-scale planning:

Is using multi-system planning based on a different time scale

It includes quarterly, monthly, and weekly planning and review

Dividing your goal into different timezones to make it easy to reach and track

It’s about putting your yearly planning into action by dividing it into different time scales

Why using one or none isn’t effective

Doing one of these isn’t effective because it’s a compounding system based on each other to complete

hence, if you use one you lose the ability to see the full picture of the goal

and to make it easier to reach the goal

To-do lists, time blocking, planners all these are tools that help you do this kind of system but are not something to use on their own

What you need to get started (tools)

Digital calendar(recommend Google Calendar, it’s free and easy to use)

Notebook (digital or physical)(for digital I recommend notion, it’s free

Multiple scale planning in details

Let’s understand this planning system and what it consists of then how to begin doing/using it in an effective way to reap results

1- quarterly planning

It is dividing your goal and action you take into quarters by choosing milestones

Achieving each milestone will get you closer to your goal that will help you get closer to your goal

In the annual plan, you’d had to think about the actual steps, actions, and milestones you need to do to reach your goal but you didn’t decide when you will do it or where you will do that

why to do it

it makes it easier to reach your goal because you are not only focusing on the big goal but on the next step to get it which is the milestone that you can measure quarterly

it helps you celebrate and see the progress you’ve made which will boost your dopamine

which in turn will lead you to keep going

through the quarterly review that you’ll do at the end of the quarter

Here is how you will do it

if you’ve missed some action steps from the annual planning here where will you add them

Of course, you’ll do a corresponding review at the end of each quarter to reflect and celebrate progress

The complete rundown on how to do it here

2- monthly planning

Taking your quarter milestone further by dividing it into months (3 per quarter) to make the steps and actions more clear, and specific

also, you’ll do a monthly review at the end of each month to reflect and celebrate progress

why need to do it

to see your progress and make changes if it needs to

breaking your milestone into months to make it easy to achieve your goal

Here is how you can do it

with each monthly plan, you’ll do a monthly review at the end of each month to reflect on and celebrate your progress

here is an article on how to do it

The complete how-to you can find it in this article

3-weekly planning

Here you’ll take your monthly plan further into smaller, specific actions, with day and time specific that will do

You will use a digital calendar

and to do that you’ll do through time blocking here is how to do time-blocking

why need to do it

this is your to-do list for the day-to-day, you will know exactly what you will do on each day of the week, and will let you focus on the work and

not waste your mental energy on deciding what to do on Monday morning

make it easier to reach your goals and have tangible things to track

how can you start doing it correctly

you can find out about it here

before you go get the free multiple planning system workbook

Download the complete how-to workbook here

It has everything you need to set up and start this planning system

this post is part of start the year Strong series

All of these posts have an aim to help you prepare for the new year and start the year strong

here is the list of all the articles at start the year Strong series

Happy achieving your goals

Wafaa