How to set a 100 day goal and stick to it!

If you’re feeling all New Year-y and thinking about setting goals, this really is the BEST way to set a goal and stick to it!

 

The 100 Day Goal

One of the problems with annual goals is that a year is a VERY long time. While most of us feel super- enthusiastic about our goals in the first few days of January it all goes a bit downhill from there. YES?!

So what’s a girl to do?

Well, if you want to achieve something fabulous you need to pick a shorter time frame. 100 days to be precise. Long enough to achieve big things yet short enough to feel some urgency!

How to pick your 100 Day Goal

It’s super-important to think hard about what you want your 100 day goal to be. This is the thing you’re going to be focussing a lot of your energy on. You want to pick the right one, yes?

Here are some tips:

1. Make it something you REALLY want to achieve
2. Make it something EXCITING
3. Make it something MEASURABLE – you want to know whether you’ve achieved it or not!
4. DON’T make it so big it terrifies you
5. Make it something that’s an OUTCOME not an input. For example sales are an outcome ( a result of your work), making cold calls (yuk!) are an input, they are the thing you do to get the outcome
6. Make it something that’s USEFUL to your business. Don’t get sucked into ‘vanity’ metrics (eg the number of Facebook Fans you have) unless you can see how that is going to turn into something worthwhile, like sales.
7. Number of Sales is a GOOD 100 day goal but is not the only one! Pick something that feels right to YOU!

On making it measurable!

You want your 100 day goal to be very measurable. Meaning that you can measure it OFTEN and EASILY not just at the end! Why? So you can see your progress! It’s very hard to keep going with a goal when you can’t tell how you’re going!

So if you’ve got a goal that’s kinda just a win/lose at the finish line think how you can reframe it so you can measure as you go.

What is reframing?

The classic example of ‘reframing’ is weight loss. None of us really care what we weigh, it’s more about what size clothes we wear. But we track weight ‘cos it’s easier to measure (with a quick hop on the scales) than our hip statistics. The ‘diet’ goal might be a size 10 but we reframe it as 60kg (or whatever!).

There are some ideas on measuring business numbers over here if you’re goal is that way inclined.

Tell people about your goal or not?!

If you are the private type feel free to keep your goals to yourself. There’s plenty of evidence to say that keeping your goals quiet WORKS!

On the other hand, some of us work harder to achieve our goals if we tell people about them. It makes us feel accountable…. we don’t want to lose face.

To share or not to share?! The choice is yours!

Keep a journal

This really is the magic that makes the 100 Day Goal happen, and it’s achingly simple: just keep a daily journal of your progress! Honestly, just knowing that you have to write your daily Actions down MAKES YOU DO THEM!

There is no better way in the world (other than desperation or a very nagging partner) to make stuff happen than keeping a journal.

Ready to give it a try?!

Tips for keeping your 100 Day Journal

1Buy a book or a journal which you can write in every day for 100 days. The pages don’t need to be big. You’re not going to write much but you ARE going to write every day!

2 Write your 100 Day goal in the front of your journal, sometimes I re-write it on EVERY page, just to keep me super- focussed!

3 EVERY day (Every day! Every day!) write down three actions you’ve taken towards achieving your  goal.

4 Actions are things that work directly towards achieving the goal. So if your goal is to sell 10 dresses, actions are the tasks that actually result in the sales! Lots more stuff about Actions here if you’re interested!

5 On the days when you’re not working ( I hope you have a few!) it’s still super-useful to to be thinking about your 100 day goal. On those days just write down your thoughts or ideas (these are motions rather than actions but that’s ok ‘cos you’re not working, right!). The commitment to DAILY writing in your journal helps your subconscious to keep working on your goals and it helps you to keep in the flow. Also, once you’ve kept your journal for a few weeks, you won’t want to break the chain and miss a day. That, in itself, will keep you working daily towards your goal as you’ll ALWAYS need to have something to write about!

6 Write down your progress. This is the FAB thing about having a measurable goal: you can write down your daily progress! If you’re going well towards your goal it’s very motivating to see the numbers climb. If you’re going a bit slow., well it kinda forces you to try some new activities to reach your goal. Although the latter is painful, it’s a GOOD thing!

Do it with US!

Here’s a fact about your 100 day goal and 100 day journal: it’s very exciting to start but is tricky to keep going! You’ve gotta remember to do it……and that requires a bit of discipline!

So here’s something you might like!

The January 100 Day goal is closed (we’re on Day 70 something!) but we’ll do it again SOON! If you think you might like to join us pop your name in here and we’ll let you know when we’re doing it!

I’m going to send you a little daily reminder to everyone who wants one! Why? Well I need reminding too so it kinda helps us both! This is totally FREE. Just pop your details in here and from Thursday 1 January 2015* you’ll get your daily (or daily-ish) reminder to do your 100 day journal! I might include some other tips and stuff too. We’ll see! Fancy that?!

*you don’t HAVE to actually start on 1 January. If you’re feeling a bit the worse for wear you could just have a five minute think in the shower and write down your thoughts!

PS If you are serious about making a Healthy Income from your solo, boutique, homebased, homemade or other small business you might like ourHealthy Income Program! We start it again later in the year but you can reserve a spot now and we’ll tell you when it’s open! 

 

 

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