How to Set Monthly Goals
Life can be overwhelming at times. Each day our to-do lists and schedules fill up with endless tasks and commitments; from meeting deadlines at work, to picking up groceries, to dropping kids off at sports and activities, and just trying to find some free time for ourselves. As women, we sometimes find our personal goals get pushed to the backburner when we start a family. While we still need to find time to do all. the. things, we also need to find time to meet our personal goals.
My Story
Like I said, sometimes our personal goals get pushed to the backburner when we start a family.
For me personally, about a year after the birth of my second son, I began to feel an overwhelming sense of emptiness that made me feel guilty. My youngest was moving out of the baby stage. My older son was becoming an increasingly independent toddler. My husband had received a promotion at work and was working longer hours. I was also working. My corporate job paid me well, but didn’t fill a void I was beginning to feel in regards to my own sense of accomplishment. At the same time, I was becoming overwhelmed with day to day to-do’s. There was laundry and cooking and cleaning and weekend trips to Costco and potty training, and so on, and so on.
My feelings of lacking personal fulfillment worsened, until I realized one day that while I had been very goal focused during high school, college, my military career, and later my corporate career (pre-babies), I had stopped setting challenging goals for myself basically as soon as I found out I was pregnant with my first son. For over 3 years, I had been focused on nothing other than pregnancy and motherhood. Now, with my youngest moving out of babyhood, and no plans for other children, my depression made sense.
I began to think about what I really wanted to do. I had always wanted to start my own business. While I had no intention of leaving my corporate job, maybe a side hustle would help me fill my need to be creative.
When I made up my mind that was going to be my goal, I committed to breaking down the overall goal into smaller action steps. Those became my monthly goals, which when broken down even further led me to my daily action steps.
Because I was still a working mother, I had to prioritize my goals so that my goals weren’t getting lost in the daily to-do list. I committed to taking my daily action steps first thing in the morning, before I had to start packing lunches and get my kids ready for daycare and myself ready for work. Even if my ‘action step’ was working on my webpage for 20 minutes, or posting one social media post, I still made progress. Month after month I finally made progress on a goal that mattered to me. And this sense of accomplishment benefited my family, as I was happier and felt more personally fulfilled.
Since then, I’ve replicated this simple process month after month, year after year, to accomplish goals ranging from personal health and wellness, to corporate career goals, to financial goals, to personal development. In short, this simple daily practice has become the key to me achieving my dreams.
Monthly Goals > Annual Goals
When setting annual goals, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed. Imagine your goal is to lose 50 pounds. You won’t lose 50 pounds overnight; achieving this goal will take a fair amount of time. Focusing on losing 50 pounds can make the goal seem impossible. Imagine if everyday, you wake up and tell yourself ‘I need to lose 50 pounds’. It can make that goal seem like such a challenge that you give up before you’ve even started. But what if you focused just on losing 4 pounds in a month? That seems immediately doable. You can probably create a list of action steps that will lead you to lose 4 pounds in a month. With an actionable goal, you can take daily action steps that will help you make real progress over the course of a month. And by the end of the year, the result could be 48 pounds lost.
The same example holds true whether your goal is to write a book, start a business, earn an advanced degree, or whatever other goal lights you up, excites you, or personally fulfill you. Monthly goals and daily consistent action steps are the key to achieving your goals.
A daily goal will keep you motivated by making the tasks you need to accomplish achievable. Today you will commit to getting 10,000 steps, or tracking your food intake, or trying out a new class at the gym. Suddenly, your goal seems achievable.
Setting monthly goals is the key to accomplishing annual goals.
What is your deepest desire? You may want to go back to school, start working out more often or finally write that novel that’s been on your mind for years. When you start wishing and dreaming about what you want to accomplish, it can become overwhelming trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B. Especially when you’re looking at a long range goal that can’t be accomplished overnight: Lose 50 Pounds. Earn a Degree. Write a Novel.
5 steps to achieving monthly goals
- Start by identifying 3 Goals you want to Accomplish this Month. If you’re unsure of how to set goals and need some inspiration, download our free Goal Setting Workbook.
- Write out your 3 Goals as individual statements, using the SMART format for Goals Setting. Examples: I will lose 5 pounds by October 1st, 2021.
- Every day of the month, write out your 3 goals again (don’t cheat on this – – there is power to writing out your goals daily!). Writing your goals daily reinforces your commitment to achieving those goals.
- Commit to at least one daily action for each of your three goals that will support you achieving that goal. Write it out and check if off when you accomplish the action. Example: I will walk 10,000 steps and track all my macros today.
- At the end of the month, evaluate whether you achieved or didn’t achieve your goal. Let this guide you on setting goals for next month.
Questions to Ask Yourself at the end of the month
Before you set goals for the following month, it’s helpful to do a quick evaluation of how this month’s goals turned out.
If you didn’t achieve your goal, why?
- Is this truly a goal that matters to you? It’s OK if you decide that this goal isn’t something that truly matters to you!
- Were your action steps sufficient to help you achieve that goal in a month’s timeframe?
If you achieved your goal early, why?
- Was the goal too easy?
- Should you increase the goal this coming month, to push you towards more action?
Setting 3 goals every month is the key to achieving annual goals. Whether you are looking to lose weight, write a book, start a business, or achieve some other huge goal in your life, you need to write out your monthly goal every day, and then commit to taking action every day. If you follow these steps for a month, I guarantee you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish!
Click here to see the Daily Planning Page that I use Every. Single. Day. This simplified daily planner can be used either as a printable or digitally through an App such as Goodnotes. With room to write out your 3 Goals for the Month (again, you should write them out DAILY!) and room to commit to your actions for that day, this Daily Planning Page places your Goals at the top (Priorities!) and your Schedule and To-Do list below. There’s also room for Notes and for Gratitude – – I challenge myself to fill up the Gratitude section first thing in the morning.
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