You don't need to have your entire life planned out to make things work. Start with what needs to be done right now. What is it you want in this now? What do you need to do to make it work? Write it down. Can it be done, is it realistic? Write it all down.

I'll do my best to stir this away from being just another SMART goal post. I do recommend making sure your goals are SMART, so they are achievable. My goal here is brevity and I'm writing a post that I would read. I remember searching for anything I could find on planning and positioning myself for success. Suffice to say, I didn't find what I was looking for, it was all a bunch of generic write-ups.

And so this post was born.

What Are Goals? Really?

You need to understand that 'goal' is a very broad term with a lot to work with. As I write this, I am learning and working alongside you to both create and put our plan in motion.

Here’s what you need to understand about ‘goal’. When asked ‘what’s your goal?’ Here’s what I glean:

• What’s your long term goal?
• What’s your short term goal?
• What’s your immediate goal?

Short Term Goals

Within this scope, we consider what we need to do to achieve our ‘ultimate’ goal. What goes into establishing a career as a social media specialist? What’s the process of buying a house? What do we need to consider when relocating to Asia? Here’s the part where we map out what needs to be done and using the SMART goal method here really helps things along.

If you’d like a post on creating SMART goals, let me know in the comment section.

To simplify, we'll run with the ‘buying a house’ goal. I believe these are some fundamental factors we need to consider when purchasing a house.

• Down payment
• Neighbourhood
• Steady source of income
• Proper documents

You get what your STG should look like now, don’t you? Map out everything you will need to achieve your goal and be thorough with it. Do your research and your due diligence as accuracy affects how everything turns out.

Truth is, we can plan and plan and plan, and still not get what we want. But preparation is the mother of good fortune.

Your Immediate Goal

This comes off fancier than I intended but I'll run with it. So we know what we want and what to do to get what we want, right? Well, here’s the ‘how and when’ of it.

You see those Short Term goals? We achieve them through this. If you’ve used the SMART goal method, everything on your STG list is set up according to priority and necessity, i.e. what needs to be done first.

Bottom line is you know your starting point so run with that.

Alright, so let's say we need a down payment of $15,000. How do we get that money? How long will it take to get that money? Is there another way to get it faster? We run through all the scenarios and settle on what we can achieve.

Here’s why I call it an immediate goal. We need to raise $15,000. That’s our top STG, and we’ve settled on how to do this. We currently have a drop-shipping website in addition to our job as a collections' agent. Our job provides a steady flow of income (that takes care of one of our STG), and we can save $800 a month from that towards our $15,000 goal. Now we have to work towards making $1500 or more monthly on our site, so we can put a total of $2000 aside towards our $15,000.

We now have an immediate goal: $20,000 in about 9 months, now we work on the plan. Advertising our shop shamelessly, using Google Analytics and word of mouth to drive traffic and attract the right customers. If we need to learn marketing, we will. We have a goal to achieve.

That’s how we work towards achieving our goal. Break it down and work your way up. This way, you’re doing something every day that takes you a step closer to what you want.

By breaking your STGs down into actionable pieces, you’re able to work towards your LTG. Bear in mind that you need patience (as with everything), perseverance and consistency to achieve anything, especially a GOAL.

When it feels like it’s too much work, do the simple things, pursue the simplest tasks. When things look like they aren’t working, take a deep calming breath: it’s just your ever active inner critic. You can do this, keep at it.

This is where I leave you: Things take time, be patience, be diligent, be consistent.