How Is Your Goal Like An Elephant?

Is Your Goal Like An Elephant?

All your leaders say you have to have goals. And they are right because without having a goal how would you know what direction to go. If you are like me you have many goals. And as you list them it becomes so big that your “goal is like an elephant”?

Establishing your goals can be a difficult task but it is something that needs to be done. There are terms that may cause confusion when discussing goals. Many people use the terms resolutions, intentions, and goals interchangeably. So, to eliminate some of the confusion I have provided definitions of the three words.

The following are definitions according to Webster

• Goal – something that you are trying to achieve
• Resolution – the act of finding an answer or solution
• Intention – a determination to act in a certain way: resolve

As you can see, all the definitions are similar but not identical, so will use the word “Goal”.

Issues with creating goals

There are a couple issues I have when creating my goals:

• What do you do with previous goals that have not been completed?
• What do you do with goals that are the same as the previous year?

Existing goals

My thoughts are review the existing goals and determine if you are on target. As you come across completed goals (which we hope there are some),  archive them along with the results. Now is a good time to review those excuses that are keeping you from getting them done.

New Goals

Some goals may need a little tweaking and you may have new goals to add. It is also a good idea to prioritize your goals. You can base the priority of simplicity, time to complete, and so forth.

Goal Completed? Yes, Reward Yourself!

Another thought is, rather than wait a year to review the goals, why not review them every 90 days, which is equivalent to once a quarter. A big reason for doing this is that you can monitor the status of each goal, and if it is not proceeding as planned, make needed adjustments. If you wait a year review, then most likely you will not accomplish some of your goals. Another reason for this review is so you can clear completed goals off the list. Again, you do this by archiving the goals and accomplishments. One last reason for doing this is that you can pat yourself on the back and have a little celebration for completing that goal. Rewarding yourself several times a year can be a big motivator to break through excuses that keep you from completing your goals.

When creating your goals we have to agree that each goal has to be realistic and obtainable.  I would also label or categorize the goals are for home, life, and work. The reason behind this is eventually you will need to review your team goals and some of your work goals may relate to or be the same as your team goals.

Is your goal an elephant?

When creating a goal you have to put a time-frame on it, there is a saying I tell myself when I work on my goals, and that is “you cannot eat the entire elephant in one sitting. It must be done in little bites or chunks”. You may have a similar saying but you can get the gist of what I mean. What we can do here is examine the goal and divide it into mini goals and put a time frame when it needs to be completed.

Examples of changing that elephant to small bites

Example 1

To explain a little farther about dividing the goal into mini goals let us walk through this example. Say your goal is to make $48,000 for the year. We know at this time that most of us do not make that in one day so let us take and divide that $48,000 into how much we need to make in smaller time frames. .

Month

That would be $48,000 divided by 12 or $4,000.

Week

If we divide that again into weeks we would divide the $4000 by 4 (number of weeks in a month) and the result is $1000 per week.

Day

If we go one step farther and say we are working five days per week we can divide the $1000 by 5 (number of working days) and the result is that we need to earn $200 per day.

Summary of Example 1

To reach our major goal of $48,000 for the year. That $200.00 per day sounds more realistic and a goal that is more obtainable. The question now becomes how to earn that $200.00 day which I will provide a hypothetical example.

Example 2

Facts

Another example has to with the number of people you have to talk with to make a sale. Let us establish some facts.

• Fact 1: For each sale you earn $50.00.
• Fact 2: On an average you make one sale out of every ten leads you receive.
• Fact 3: From example 1, you want to make $200.00 per day

To get the first sale

So, from the facts to make that first sale you had to talk with at least ten people. There is a strong possibility that you spoke with many more than that to get that one sale. You have to consider the number of rejections that may occur.

To Make the Day’s Goal

In order to make the goal for the day you will need to make four sales. Take the goal 0f $200.00 and divide it by what you make per sale which is $50.00. ($200.00 divided by $50.00 = 4). This means you will have to get 40 leads per day (10 leads per sale times 4 sales = 40 leads per day).

Knowing the minimum number of leads per day to make your goal of $200.00 per day will cause you to do a little more homework. You will need to review what it takes to get one lead. A question may be, how many advertisements do I need to get those leads? You might need to know when and where to post those ads as well. It all works together. So, another goal may be to send out a certain amount of ads on a particular day and time to a certain locale.

You now have an idea of how to create a goal and the steps on how to divide it so it can be realistic and attainable to you. You also know that intentions, goals, and resolutions are similar but unique. I wish you the best when you are creating your own goals, determining your resolutions, and acting on your intentions.

If you got something out of this post or if you just want to engage (network), leave me a comment. All comments are welcome and greatly appreciated.