Goal setting is common practice in January when we are enthusiastic about the New Year ahead and ready to take on the world. However, for many people, those January goals are long forgotten by July. It’s important to realize that if we really want to accomplish our goals, we must check in on our progress and adjust our expectations throughout the year.
If it’s been a while since you pulled out your list of goals for 2018, now is a great time to do a checkup. Look at your goals, and measure your progress. You should be at about the halfway mark by now, so it’s a great time to adjust expectations if need be.
If you aren’t yet halfway to the goals, you set for the year, determine your best course of action. Determine if it’s still feasible to make the goals by adjusting your monthly expectations. If not, then it’s time to set a new goal based on what it’s reasonable to accomplish in the second half of the year. Be sure to have some stretch goals, however. Goals that are too easily reached don’t develop you the way stretch goals can.
If you’ve accomplished a lot, and are further ahead on your goals than expected, you may also want to make some adjustments. Maybe you can increase your goals, or maybe you’d just prefer to give yourself a little extra time off this year, knowing that you’ll accomplish what you set out to do.
If you find that you have to do some catching up to reach the goals you originally set, be sure to take the time to list the activities you need to perform to reach your goals. Consider ways to increase productivity, add extra resources, or put in extra time to ensure you can make up for slower progress. Put on paper the exact numbers required to meet your old or new goals, so that you know exactly what you need to do. If appropriate, share the results with your team and get their buy-in on how you can reach this year’s goals. If you’re on track, take the time to celebrate!
Tracking your goals is a great way to measure your accomplishments, but it’s also a great way to renew your motivation for meeting the goals you determined were important at the beginning of the year.