First consider what you want to achieve, and then commit to it. Set SMART (specific, measureable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) goals that motivate you and write them down to make them feel tangible. Then plan the steps you must take to realize your goal, and cross off each one as you work through them.

In the chaos of everyday life, it can be a struggle to keep your goals at the forefront, to feel like you are making forward progress on them and sometimes it’s hard to even start the work to make your goals into a reality. Regardless of whether your goal is small (i.e. you want to have breakfast away from a phone or computer screen) or your goal is big (i.e. you want to turn your hobby job into your full-time gig), I’m a firm believer that you need a plan! You need a roadmap and you need to set the direction for how you are going to move from Point A where you dream about your goals, to Point B where you actually live your goals!

There are absolutely times when you might get thrown a curve ball that takes you off the course you originally set for yourself but that is even more reason to establish your game plan and have a foundation to come back to when you start to feel lost.

The real question becomes HOW?

How do you take all these ideas that you have, all these goals swimming around in your head every day and make them come to life? It’s so easy to say “I wish…” but it’s so much harder to actually do! That struggle is real and so we wanted to share with you our secret weapon: The Goal Funnel! It’s how you take any goal and break it down into manageable, actionable steps so that you’re no longer wishing but you are actually doing!

The Goal Funnel works for any goal, big or small. It helps you carve out a path for yourself to make something that seems overwhelming and unattainable quickly become a realistic goal or idea, allowing you to start to find that voice in your head that says: “YES I CAN!” The Goal Funnel is broken down into yearly, monthly, weekly and daily goals and for each goal you need to write down a date! I know! You hate to write down an actual date in fear that you won’t reach it and then the minute you don’t reach it, you then fear that everything will unravel!

False! You hold yourself accountable with a date but the date does not make or break you!

Think of it like a check-in and a time to evaluate where you’re at by the date you set. You either put a giant check mark next to the goal or you adjust accordingly. Notice, throwing in the towel wasn’t one of the options!
Let’s break down The Goal Funnel so that you can make it work for you and start tackling those big dreams of yours!

Yearly (or 6 month) Goals:

Take a moment to really think about what you want to accomplish this year or in the next 6 months. Think about the different aspects of your life and think of goals that will help you grow in different areas. Find that thing that makes you a little nervous and requires you to reach beyond your comfort zone into something amazing. But then also recognize that you don’t need to fill your year or next 6 months with only big-ticket items, either. Making goals to travel more, check social media less, carve out time to laugh more with friends and read more stories with the kiddos are just as important as checking off the big work project. It’s about finding YOUR balance and doing things that bring you true happiness.
And remember you don’t need to have a crazy amount of goals to make your work significant: it’s always quality over quantity!

Monthly Goals:

Break your yearly or 6 month goals down into parts because very few are going to be goals that can be achieved overnight. That’s why you listed them as yearly or 6 month goals in the first place! Look back at your yearly or 6 month goal list and decide what you will do this month to work your way toward accomplishing one, two or a few of those goals. Here’s an example: Maybe your 6 month goal is start blogging consistently 3-4 times a week. Your first monthly goal could be to have a list of 50-100 blog post ideas by the end of the month. That’s the first step toward your big goal and doesn’t that feel more achievable than to simply “start blogging”? When you leave your goals big and lofty, the leap from dreaming and doing is too big.
Break the goals down, map out the steps and think of your monthly goals as individual stepping stones.

At the end of every month evaluate! You might find that you were over ambitious one month (happens to me all the time); don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have each item checked off. Simply move it to the next month and go after it again. It’s all about forward progress!

Weekly Goals:

Monthly goals are great for keeping the big picture in mind, but weekly goals are where you get your hands dirty. This is where you take a good look at your monthly goals and you decide the when and the how of checking those goals off. This is the place where you take control over what could be stressful and chaotic and you decide what takes priority and when.

Going back to our example of starting to blog consistently, your weekly goals could be:

• Write 3 of those blog post ideas 
• Take photos for 3 blog post ideas 
• Edit blog posts 
• Edit photos 
• Publish blog posts
  

Weekly goals allow you to break a monthly goal down into its individual parts and the best part is that you have control over those parts!

Daily Goals:

If weekly goals are where you get your hands dirty, your daily goals are the bread and butter! Fill out your weekly goals on Sunday night and start to move the individual tasks to specific days throughout the week. This is you deciding on the when for your weekly goals and giving yourself a game plan for the week. You might find that you need and/or want to break some of your weekly goals down into even smaller parts and your daily to-do’s are the prefect place to do that. For example, let’s break down the task of taking photos for your blog posts:

• Find inspiration for styled blog photos 
• Decide on props for photos 
• Buy and/or organize props for photos 
• Style photos 
• Take photos
  

Break each weekly goal down into however many steps you need. Even if you need to make your daily goal “Wake Up. Take Shower.”, go ahead and write that down. There is something empowering about checking things off a list and the true purpose of breaking goals down in this way is to allow you to feel completely organized (and balanced!) to OWN the week and not let the week own you!

Use the goal funnel and dive head first into the wild and crazy dreams of yours and remember that even with all the to do lists, you’ve got everything you need within yourself to make any of your dreams your new reality!

It's important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (for example, employers, parents, media, or society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions.

It's also possible to set goals that are too difficult because you might not appreciate either the obstacles in the way, or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.