Setting goals for yourself is one of the most effective tools that you can use to make positive changes in life. However, even then there are certain things you can do to either improve that tool or make it worse. In addition, goals can be completed in a very efficient way, or they can, as it often happens, be completely abandoned. Fortunately, the latter can be avoided if approached in a smart way.

Below you will find the 10 steps to achieve goals faster and with better results (the order of the steps makes no difference).

1. Set meaningful goals

The first step to achieve goals with better results requires you to brainstorm.

Instead of just blindly coming up with a number of goals to reach, think of reasons why a certain goal would be important to you. So for example, instead of just saying that “I want to lose so and so many pounds/kilos”, ask yourself, why it is important that you lose that weight. Maybe it’s a health issue, maybe you want to fit into your favorite dress or maybe it’s something else.

When you create goals that really matter to you, the chances of you accomplishing them increase significantly. Goals should always be about quality, not quantity.

2. Accountability

Accountability is a very powerful tool when it comes to taking steps to achieve goals more effectively.

When we promise to ourselves to work on a goal, we often later come up with an excuse to not do it. People are very good at self-deceiving.

To overcome this, you can make a promise in front of others and ask them to hold you accountable for your actions. So if you want to lose weight, you can share your plan to do so in front of friends or family members. This way, you will be more inclined to complete what you have planned to do.

Those people that don’t want to involve their friends or family, often hire professional coaches to hold them accountable. This isn’t the cheapest option, but it’s very powerful.

There are also cheaper options in the form of online programs, such as the 100 Day Challenge. This is an example of a program that helps people get through their goals in a 100 days. It’s loaded with motivational content, but it also has a community that can hold you accountable. The program is a good alternative to one-on-one coaching that I personally recommend.

3. Break it up

Complicated goals with clear deadlines need to be present in your life at all times. But it is also crucial to create many smaller goals leading up to those bigger goals.

For example, your goal is to drop 60 pounds in the next eight months. If that is the only goal you create, then you might find yourself with only one month left to go and 40 pounds remaining to lose.

A better solution would be to divide the 60 pounds into eight equal parts so that you can focus on one month at a time. If you fail to lose the needed weight in the first month, you will at least know that you need to do better the next month.

With smaller goals not set, you will have a hard time evaluating your overall progress. It may even feel as if you are not moving forward simply because you have no good way to measure what you have done so far.

4. Keep working on the mindset

The fourth step to achieve goals faster and with better results concerns your mindset.

It is often said that your success is 20% skill and 80% mindset. I hold this to be true as well, as it has always been the mindset that has either pushed me to take action or held me back.

There will be times when working on your goals will feel very difficult. Maybe it’s too much work, too much suffering or maybe your motivation is gone. This happens a lot, since we can’t be 100% of the time inspired to work hard.

To avoid having a weak mindset, I suggest you start every day with at least 15 minutes of feeding your brain with motivational content. I like to listen to a podcast or read a book, but watching a quick video on YouTube about taking action can be just as effective. Keep working on the mindset every single day, no matter what.

Your success is 20% skill and 80% mindset.”

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5. Positive reinforcement

Positive reinforcement is also one of the very important steps to achieve goals faster and with better results.

When you use positive reinforcement in the context of goal setting, it means that you are rewarding yourself for the challenges that you overcome.

It’s easy to just keep working on your goals and leave no time for yourself. I know this because I am guilty of it. In the past, this kind of non-stop hard work mode has led me to burnouts, which are no fun at all, trust me.

To avoid burnouts, make sure you have enough breaks from work. I would recommend having at least one full day a week of relaxation. But to make it even better, reward yourself for the hard work you put in. Go out and buy something nice for yourself or find other ways to enjoy yourself.

By using positive reinforcement, you are linking hard work to the pleasure of rewarding yourself. In addition, you are doing your best to not burn out and have even more motivation to keep working towards accomplishing your goals and living the life of your dreams.

6. Write it down

They say that a goal becomes a goal only once it is written on a piece of paper. Personally, I agree with this a 100%.

Whenever we write goals down, something special goes on in our brain, making them a lot more meaningful to us.

I have many times made goals by only saying them out loud. And while that was ok in some cases, most of the times I forgot about the goals or pretended that I never said them. When something is way too hard, it’s easy to just “forget” about it.

The easiest way to make sure that your goals are solidified in your brain is to write them in your journal, the same place where you note down your progress. You can use a basic diary for this, but you can also use a productivity journal made for this purpose. From experience, they are the most effective.

7. Put aside the unnecessary

When you are in the process of actively working on your goals, you will inevitably have less free time to do other things, which is why you have to prioritize. Doing everything all at once and squeezing your new goals in without removing anything else is a recipe for failure. Look at what currently is least important to you, and leave it off until later.

To help yourself with prioritizing tasks, use the Eisenhower’s urgent important principle, which is illustrated below.

Is your problem not important and not urgent? If so, forget about it.

Is your problem urgent, but not important? If so, either also forget about it or delegate it to someone else.

Is your problem important, but not urgent? In this case, you better start working on it soon, or otherwise, it will become important and urgent!

Finally, is your problem important and urgent? If the answer is yes, then this is the first problem that you should tackle before beginning to work on your goals.

8. Affirmations

Affirmations are a great tool when it comes to reaching your goals faster. Why? Because using affirmations allows you to stay motivated and optimistic.

Affirmations can be very different, but you can repeat something along the lines of: I will succeed. Nothing and nobody can stop me. I am constantly working hard on my goals, which means that I am coming closer to my dreams. My dreams are going to become a reality.

Using affirmations should be something you do on a daily basis. That way they will have an effect.

Recommended: What Is the Law of Attraction and How to Use It to Achieve Anything You Desire

9. Modify goals if necessary

The ninth step to achieve goals with better results says that you can modify your goals if needed.

Please don’t think that your goals are set in stone. If you really need to change your goal or deadline a bit in order to maximize your results, then, by all means, do it.

Things in this world change rapidly, especially when it comes to technology. So if you, for example, have a business that is connected in some way to the internet, you may quickly find something that worked yesterday no longer working today. If this is the case, you should be able to modify your goal to fit the new needs.

Being flexible with goals will help you attain more success than you would otherwise.

10. Enjoy the process

Finally, the last but not least of the important steps to achieve goals with better results concerns the process of getting from point A to point Z.

From experience, I can say that working on goals can sometimes be very painful. This is caused by the fact that you want what you see at point Z, such as weighing a certain number of pounds/kilos, but you don’t yet have it. Moreover, being at point A and trying to get to point Z means a lot of hard work, consistency, dedication and even adversity.

All of this has led me to understand that if you don’t learn to enjoy the process of working towards your goal, you will most likely burn out and won’t be able to accomplish what you planned.

The road can be bumpy, especially at the beginning of the journey. It may feel like you aren’t making any progress or even standing completely still. But that’s ok. This is how it often feels at first. All you have to do is keep working through this and not give up. Sooner or later, progress will come. It always does. Besides, this is exactly the reason why you break up your large goals into smaller ones – to feel that you are moving towards your final goal instead of being stuck on one spot.

Hopefully, you found these 10 steps to achieve goals faster useful. They come through my personal experience and the experience of many others. If you apply them in your life, I can guarantee that you will be able to make massive positive changes in your life as well.

Thank you for stopping by and good luck!

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