The Secret to Achieving Your Goals: Turn Them into Habits

The following tips are from the e-book titled The Goal Book: Tips for Deciding Exactly What You Want Out of Work and Life, and Then Getting It written by David B. Bohl.  People that are very successful know how to turn their goals into habits.  Nobody is born with habits, habits become habit because they are first learned and then repeated.  Habits can be either good or bad.  In order to turn your goals into habits you must train your mind into engaging in the desired behavior on a regular basis; for example, you have an evaluation at work and you think you are going to do really well but those in charge of the evaluation don’t agree, so, in order to achieve your goal of doing better in the future you have to figure out where you went wrong and work as hard as possible to fix it- instead of wasting afternoons at work, as is your habit, you make a list of things that can be achieved in that time frame.  Write yourself reminders, tackle the most urgent tasks, and give yourself self reviews that honestly assess how well you are working on your tasks.  Make these steps habit and make yourself do them everyday.Following is an excerpt from my yet-to-be released eBook. It’s titled The Goal Book: Tips for Deciding Exactly What You Want Out of Work and Life, and Then Getting It. Check back here in a few days to learn more about the release.

The Secret to Achieving Your Goals: Turn Them into Habits

What are the biggest goals you’ve set for yourself? How are you planning to achieve those goals?

Do you want to know how? Let’s spend a few moments talking about integrating your goals into your everyday life.

Consider this:

Highly successful people know how to turn goals into habits.

You know what habits are. They’re activities we engage in without really thinking about them because “it’s just what we always do.” Nobody was born with habits ingrained in their psyche. Behavior is first learned, and then later becomes habitual.

Mostly, people talk about their “bad” habits, like needing to ‘take the edge off’ by over-consuming alcohol every work night, or procrastinating - leaving important issues to be dealt with at the last minute. But a habit can be either good or bad.

If you’re like most people, you’re into the habit of washing up and brushing your teeth in the morning, right? Or you habitually read the financial pages on the train to and from work. Or maybe you have a habit of being unusually kind to telemarketers because you’ve decided to appreciate the fact that they’re simply doing their jobs. These are all examples of good, encouraging habits.

So, how do you turn goals into habits? You must train your mind into engaging in the desired behavior on a regular basis.

Let’s say that you just received an evaluation at work, and you’re really down on yourself about what occurred. You thought you had earned that big raise and were ready for increasing levels of responsibility. Those in charge of making these observations and decisions, however, saw things differently than you did.

After you slowly accept the outcome, you begin looking more optimistically to the future, realizing that things aren’t bad as you initially perceived them to be. You then set a new goal: raise your level of productivity and increase your performance well in advance of your next assessment. Your ultimate, new goal is to get the promotion and a pay raise that you’ve worked so hard for.

So now what do you do? Clear your mind, take a deep breath and plunge into taking your inventory and self-introspection. This helps you to come to grips with where you “went wrong” the first time around, and, with that knowledge, you’re well-armed to correct what needs to be changed.

Once you do this – once you do the heavy lifting and dig deep - you realize that you have a “habit” of wasting your afternoons at work. You like to “pretend” that you’re busy, answering emails, making calls, searching for information. But secretly, you know that these are all just ways to avoid dealing with more pressing issues - situations where you need to use your brain for complex problem-solving.

What’s the best way to pull yourself out of this bad pattern? As you already know, knowledge alone won’t save the day. You need to formulate a strategy and take action.

1. Set a new goal for afternoon productivity. Maybe your new goal can be something like, “Each afternoon, examine where you are with your most pressing projects and then tackle the most urgent tasks.”

2. Write yourself a reminder that this is going to be your new ritual. Tape it up in your office someplace where it will be in your line of vision.

3. Each afternoon at 3 p.m., have a little “self-review” where you take an honest and objective look at how you’re making out with the Most Pressing Jobs itinerary.

4. Define the best possible course of action for the project in question.

5. Do it.

Check back here in a few days to learn more about The Goal Book: Tips for Deciding Exactly What You Want Out of Work and Life, and Then Getting It.

Thanks to Jenny and Erin of Jenny and Erin: a tongue-in-cheek quest for understanding… for including this post in their Habits Contest.

Thanks to Leo Babauta for including this post on the Zen Habits Tumbleblog.

Thanks to Gustav at success-is-in-you for including this post in the Blog Carnival for Success.

Thanks also to Alex Blackwell of the next 45 years for featuring this post in the Personal Development and Happiness Carnival, and toDavid V. Lorenzo for including this post in the Carnival of Career Intensity.

Thank you to Personal Development for the Book Smart for including this post in the Personal Development Carnival, and to Susan Velez for including this post in The Secret to Getting What You Desire Carnival.

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