Every year, in January, people look at their previous year and see missed opportunities and goals they didn’t manage to achieve. So they resolve to do better and set new workplace goals and personal goals. New Year’s resolutions have become a joke for this reason that most people fail in their new goals in just a few weeks. Just like all the previous years, you will fail to reach your workplace goals unless you have systems to achieve them.
What are Systems and How Do Systems Help You Reach Goals?
Goal setting is easy. Achieving goals is hard! Here is a very simple process to actually help you achieve goals.
- Set Goals: Using the SMART goal-setting framework
- Plan: Create a step-by-plan to achieve your goals
- Systems: Put systems in place, including dedicated time blocks, tasks, delegation, etc. to implement the plan in step 2.
Most people just set goals, but don’t have a plan or systems to achieve the goals. A very few people do come up with a plan to reach their goals, but almost everyone fails Step 3: putting systems in place to move you closer to your goal each week.
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Make the goal as specific as possible. IE, instead of “Generate more income” use a goal to “Generate $500,000 in revenue while maintaining a profit margin of 65%.”
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How will you measure and track your success?
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Is the goal achievable with your current skills, people you can bring in, and your monetary and time budgets?
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How is the goal relevant to your overall plan?
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Create a timeline and milestones for activities to achieve your goal
Now that you have had a look at the SMART goals format, let’s try a sample goal – to write and publish a book.
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Write and self-publish a new book “The Time Management Success Formula”
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Write 2,000 words per week until I reach approximately 30,000 words in total
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Resources and Support:
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Allocate 4 hours per week for writing and research.
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Utilize existing content from workshops and courses as a foundation.
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Engage with a graphic designer for the book cover by Apr 30, 2025.
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Hire a professional editor by May 31, 2025.
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Create a marketing plan for the book once it is published.
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Alignment with Goals:
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Enhance your brand as “Captain Time” by sharing your expertise in time management.
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Provide value to your audience by offering a comprehensive guide based on your coaching principles.
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Expand your reach and influence in the time management and productivity space.
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Complete the book outline by Jan 31, 2025.
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Write a minimum of 2000 words per week.
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Engage with a graphic designer for the book cover by Apr 30, 2025.
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Hire a professional editor by May 31, 2025.
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Finish the first draft by June 30, 2025.
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Complete editing and revisions by July 31, 2025.
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Self-publish on Amazon by Dec 31, 2025
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Commence marketing of the book on Jan 2, 2026 based on the marketing plan created
Workplace Goals – Systems to Achieve Them
You can already see how much more likely we are to achieve our goals using this template. By adding a measure of our progress and milestones, and a step-by-step plan, we have already greatly improved the likelihood of achieving our goal.
But the third and most important step is still missing – Creating Systems to achieve the goals.
The system is hinted at in the goal setting template. Writing 2,000 words per week, allocating 4 hours per week of writing and research time. We have only 4 things left to do:
- Task List: We now need to create all the tasks involved in achieving the goal and add them to our task management system under a project like “Publishing” or “Time Management Success Formula Book” along with deadlines and due dates. Many of these tasks are already listed such as creating the outline, hiring a book cover graphic designer, writing every week, etc.
- Time Blocks: We need to set weekly dedicated time blocks for writing and publishing. In this example, we had suggested 4 hours each week, so for example, we could set aside 2 hours each on Tues and Thurs afternoons or perhaps 4 hours on Friday afternoons. See my previous article on Time Blocking Using Google Calendar for tips on how to set up your weekly time blocks.
- Measure: Each week, we need to our progress by measuring how many words we have written and our progress towards the milestones.
- Execute: Now that we have the task list, time blocks, and measurement system, we need to make sure we have fully executed our systems to achieve our goal by honoring our time blocks and keeping this writing and publishing time sacred. If you write 2,000 words without fail every week, you will reach your goal of 30,000 words in only 15 weeks!
Workplace Goals Setting using xTiles.
Here is a nifty little free tool called xTiles I have found to let you quickly set up “tiles” for goal setting, planning, and brainstorming. And here is a link to the goal-setting template I showed in the image above so you can copy it to your own free xTiles account.
Need help setting and achieving your workplace goals or personal goals? Let’s do a productivity breakthrough call.