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3 Tips for Creating a Monthly Action Plan to Reach Your Goals

goal setting high performance

So, you’ve decided on your personal and business goals, and you have your bucket goals written out, and maybe you even have a vision board filled with photos, so now what?

Vividly describing what you want in life is certainly a wonderful high performance practice, but let’s not forget about making an action plan to fulfill those goals.

Here are 3 High Performance Tips for Creating a Monthly Action Plan to Reach Your Goals

1. Break Down Your Ultimate Goals Into Smaller Ones

Sure, you should dream big when envisioning the lifestyle you want or getting that key account you’ve been chasing, but if you set a goal of making seven figures this year when you haven’t reached the $500K mark, seven figures most likely won’t happen – at least not this year.

Businesses routinely fall into this trap, overestimating projections for upcoming earnings. This is especially true for newer business. So take care in setting your goals from the very beginning.

Start with your long term goal and reverse engineer it by breaking the large goal into smaller, more manageable and achievable goals. And to be clear, I’m not telling you to break your large goal into a smaller series of steps. Rather-and this is key-I’m telling you to set smaller goals that in alignment with your bigger one.

This can be especially true when it comes to your big life and business goals because clarity of purpose and outcome tend to get diluted as the size of the goal increases.

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There are two key reasons why breaking your big goal down into smaller ones is an effective strategy. First, is for simplicity. In working towards your goals, simplicity is your best friend.

In business, simplicity will make your goal easier to communicate, and that will make it easier for your term to get behind. That will also translate into your personal life as well. So aim to reduce the big goal down to micro-goals.

In addition to simplicity, breaking your big goals down into smaller ones helps to build momentum. As a recent Forbes article explained, you want to build momentum when you are working towards a bigger goal because it will carry you through the inevitable difficult obstacles and challenges that will arise.

You want to build momentum when you are working towards a bigger goal because it will carry you through the inevitable difficult obstacles and challenges that will arise.

Momentum is important to building confidence and willpower, which will stoke your determination to persist and keep moving forward. Without it, you’re dead in the water.

When Harvard’s Teresa Amabile looked into the daily habits of workers, she found that the most important thing that can boost mood and motivation during the workday is making progress on meaningful work. That can be an especially important if you’re in a leadership position because her study suggests that you may have a greater influence on your team’s well-being, motivation, and creative output that you ever than you may have previously realized. Indeed, knowing what supports and hampers your team’s progress towards your objectives is paramount to effectively managing people and their work.

Besides, accomplishing those small goals not only feels good, but seeing progress towards a big goal is a huge motivator. And nothing else builds momentum quite like getting a few wins under your belt.

When working with your big life goals, I coach clients to use a 90-day time frame as a good starting place; its far enough into the future that it's not too much pressure, but its also close enough to feel the fire under your pants of the upcoming deadline.

Consider the following three steps when you are breaking your big goals into smaller ones:

Begin with identifying the 2-3 quarterly markers that will lead you to your 90-day goal. I think these quarterly markers work best when they are tied to 30-day, monthly objectives or progress markers. Of course, the timing might change based on the nature of your process and goal, but you get the idea.
Once you have 90 and 30-day objectives in place, break your goals down into smaller and smaller objectives.
Create tasks along with sub-goals and subtasks. The more fine-tuned the steps are, the more successfully you can build the momentum needed to reach that goal.

You will know that you have a good action plan in place when you have obtainable weekly goals that are in alignment with your single big goal.

So, If you want to double your income, for instance, keep that big number in mind but break that big number down into quarterly and monthly income goals. If appropriate, break that down even further into weekly and daily goals. Knowing these smaller goals will help you focus on daily money-making tasks to earn those totals and ultimately reach that larger goal.

2. Track Your Progress

Certainly, small wins can be massive motivators, and high performers are masters at strategically checking in to measure their progress.

But the challenge is that t. And worse, as author Jocelyn K. Glei notes, we tend to ignore them. She says,

“Most of us make advances small and large every single day, but we fail to notice them because we lack a method for acknowledging our progress. This is a huge loss.”

In other words, if you fail to intentionally schedule in the time to actually measure your progress towards your goal, then setting the goal won’t benefit you much.

And so of course, setting a routine up for tracking your progress will serve you best, say at the start and end of each week. Then, use what you discover to make adjustments or iterations.

With a system for measuring progress in place, you’ll always know you’re moving in the right direction. No matter how big or complex the project is. The more you feel a sense of progress, the more motivated and productive you are. And the more you see progress...and so on.

Here are a few ideas to help you keep track of your progress towards your goals:

1. Set up a reward system for yourself. Maybe you choose something outside or time with the family but whatever you choose, keep the reward proportional to each milestone you accomplish. In so doing, setting up a reward system will help you to track your progress and to keep you motivated over the long run.

2. Be intentional and consistent with scheduling a specific time each week to review your progress. Using a time blocking system, reserve a specific time that you can dedicate to reviewing both your “small wins” and any setbacks on a weekly basis. I coach my clients to do this on a Sunday night or Monday morning, but choose a time that works for you and be consistent.

3. Do a monthly review of your progress. It’s amazing the clarity you can get from doing this activity, especially when it's done consistently over time. Simply seeing the progress you made on paper will add additional fuel to your motivation.

So, the takeaway here is not to wait until the end of the year or the quarter to evaluate if you’re meeting your smaller goals. From experience, weekly check-ins are best. If possible, start today!

Ask:

Did I reach my daily and monthly goals?
What worked and what didn't?
What's next?

3. Find A High Performance Coach Or Accountability Partner

Accountability is one of the key indicators of successful goal achievement. No wonder voicing your goals brings your goals to life - it forces you to do the work or risk the shame of being exposed for not meeting your goals.

Why is accountability so useful when it comes to sticking with and reaching goals?

Studies strongly show that a when a person sets a goal but doesn’t share it with anyone, they are far more likely to give up on the goal and choose the easier road.

But can an accountability partner help you to maximize your potential to achieve your goals in the future?

While an accountability partner can be anybody who you trust or admire, a high performance coach will help you to ensure your goal is in alignment with what your long term goals are in life and ensure what you are doing now is indeed the most valuable activity for growth.

A high performance coach will help you to ensure your goal is in alignment with what your long term goals are in life and ensure what you are doing now is indeed the most valuable activity for growth.

A high performance coach is invested in your success as much as you are. In other words, an accountability partner might hold your feet to the fire to help you reach an immediate goal, but a high performance coach will push you to find new perspectives and ensure that you only focus on what’s most important in your life and business.

You want to be happy at home and in your business, right?

The right high performance coach can help you do that.

And while it is true that both an accountability partner and a high performance coach can hold you accountable, the role of a high performance coach is meant to help you to stay focused, motivated and productive not only on the single goal, but in all the most critical areas of your life. As such, a high performance coach will push you in a way that can help get you to where you want to be much more quickly than if you were to do it on your own or focused on the wrong goal.

So, which is the right fit for you, the accountability partner or the high performance coach?

The answer is that it really depends on what your goal is.

If you’re wanting to focus on a mini-goal that doesn’t have a deep impact on the rest of your life if it accomplished or not, an accountability partner could be the best fit.

But if you want to have a more impactful approach as it relates to your long-term success across multiple areas of your life, if you want someone push you to level up and help you realize your full potential and accelerate your success, then a high performance coach might be your best asset.

However you choose to move forward is, of course, a personal choice and up to you. Just invest in having the right accountability in place for the right goals to help ensure you meet them.

Would you like some guidance and inspiration to create or update your bucket list?

If you would like some additional guidance and inspiration in creating or updating your bucket list, check out my ULTIMATE LIFE BUCKET LIST WORKBOOK. It's a complete, step-by-step professional workbook designed to help you to plan and prepare for new adventures and get impressive results.

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Look, we’re both serious about accomplishing your most important goals in life. Let’s make it official and work together.

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Damien Vanderburg is a certified high performance coach with a focus on personal development, high price-point sales and serial entrepreneurship. With more than 20 years experience teaching, training and developing high performers, Damien helps those who want to transform effectiveness, maximize potential and accelerate results. He is also the co-founder of Counterpoint Test Prep, a test prep and college app consulting company.

Go to www.damienvanderburg.com and learn more.

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