Active & life-loving people like to set and achieve goals, especially at the beginning of a new year. Some of us must have already made our goals or resolutions for 2024. Being the smart people that we are, we also know how to set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound) Goals. However, we often get disappointed with ourselves for not achieving our goals when the year ends. This is because it’s difficult to continuously pursue something that will give us the results many months later. It’s difficult to remain motivated and put in the required effort, day after day, to achieve the goal of reducing our weight by 10 kg by the end of the year, or, to learn to dance like a pro by 31st December.

Many times, the external factors leading to achieving our goals are not within our control and getting the desired results regardless of all our efforts may just not become possible. You may not be able to achieve your goal of doing x amount of sales or get the promotion that you are targeting despite doing everything required. And, this is where SMART Goal setting turns out to be disappointing for us. When we do not achieve our goals, it diminishes our self-worth and makes us feel discontented with life.

One of the reasons we do not achieve our goals is that we focus on the result but do not focus on the process. We give all the importance to the dreamy and courageous result we wish to achieve while not giving much importance to the process that will lead to achieving our goals. We should focus on accomplishing the everyday tasks that will ultimately lead to achieving our SMART goals. Ask yourself: “To achieve my goals this year, what should I do on an everyday basis?” For example, if my goal is to lose x kg of weight and have a flat tummy by 31st December 2024, I should ask myself ‘What should I do every day, so that it will surely lead to my desired state of body?’ The simple answer might be “exercise for 30 mins every day”. Now, if we make this task of exercising every day our everyday goal and track ourselves every day, it is more likely that we will achieve our goal in the end. We are shifting the focus from achieving a long-term goal to accomplishing something which is very much under our control. We can experience everyday victory by tracking our everyday habits and feeling happy with ourselves when we tick mark all the tasks that we need to do every day to reach our ultimate annual goals. 

Here is a sample weekly checklist of a friend who has 5 mighty goals to achieve by 31st December 2024:

  1. Reduce weight by 9 kg and reduce tummy.
  2. Participate in the Brahmatal Trek in May (build stamina and fitness for it).
  3. Complete reading 1 spiritual or productivity book every month.
  4. Do a saving of x amount by the end of 2024.
  5. Become a confident public speaker, and speak fluent English.

Based on my friend’s above goals, we created an everyday habits list that he is following and tracking religiously. I am sharing here a snap shot of his everyday habits tracking sheet with his permission:

We have deliberately kept the timespan for an activity less (20 minutes only) so that it could be easily done. However, in reality, my friend ended up spending more time doing a particular activity or reading more than 5 pages once he started doing it. (To accomplish his 4th goal we simply started a monthly auto debit SIP that would get debited on the 10th of every month and create the desired amount of savings by the end of the year). He felt inspired to accomplish all 5 habits every day and it gave him a mental high on getting 5 out of 5 on any day. Above all, he is already feeling and behaving like the person he wants to be by the end of 2024 – a sort of identity transformation.

The best thing about this simple system of tracking everyday habits is that you have the opportunity to experience victory on an everyday basis; you remain motivated to do all the tasks/ habits and tick-mark them. I will suggest that initially, you keep fewer tasks/ habits on your list that you would like to accomplish every day because you already have a busy schedule and a limited amount of energy and willpower to use throughout the day.

The byproduct of following this simple yet effective system is that you eventually end up achieving your annual goals or at least you are closer to them. And, in the process, you have also developed greater self-respect and self-love.

So now, let’s create our own everyday habits list based on our dreams and goals and track them every day so that we accomplish our 2024 goals. Let us together make 2024 the best year ever for all of us!