Whether your New Year's goal was to get a job or a promotion, pay off $10,000 of your student loans, or lose 20 pounds, July marks six months into 2017, and this is an ideal time to take stock of your goals for the year: Measure your progress, evaluate your approach and adjust your timeline. Here are the three steps to understanding how you achieve your goals and how you can refine your habits and tactics for the second half of the year:
Assess Progress
Which goals have you made progress on? Which goals are you struggling with? Only by measuring your progress will know how much farther you have to go, and what adjustments you need to make to reach your goal. Measuring your progress involves looking at the numbers. If your goal is to pay down your student loan, how much have you paid down thus far? How much do you have left? Which months were you able to pay more and why? Look at bank statements and calendars to see if there were events you had to spend extra money on, like weddings, birthday celebrations or if you took a vacation, etc. Take into account if it's recurring expenses preventing you from paying the loan down, or occasional events like a wedding or a birthday. If getting a job is your goal, how many interviews have you been called back for? How many jobs are you applying for every day and every week? Keeping track of what you're accomplishing, it will inform your progress, therefore help you achieve your goal.
Evaluate Techniques
Now that you know where you're succeeding and where you're struggling, think about why. If you're succeeding at your goal of packing lunch every week day, how have you met your goal? Likely because you've planned time to grocery shop, prepare and pack your lunches. You're able to anticipate exactly what you need to do to meal prep, and you're setting yourself up for success by allotting time for it. Now, how can you apply this to goals you're struggling with? If you're behind on your goal to pay off $10,000 of your students loans, and have only paid $4,000 thus far this year, examine the months you've met your student loan payment goal and the months you haven't. What is preventing you from meeting the goal? If it's recurring expenses, determine what you should cut back. If it's one time expenses, then think of ways you can anticipate those expenses, make a budget for it, and save in advance so you can attend the event and meet your student loan payment goal. Planning ahead and anticipating obstacles will leave you less blindsided by unanticipated expenses, and help you meet your goals more consistently. They key is evaluating what works, and why, and how you can apply it to other areas of your life.
What doesn't work is easy, you push it to the side, but there's value in asking why it failed. If your goal is to lose 15 pounds this year and so far you've only lost five, why do you think that is? Are you not going to the gym enough? Are you not eating as well as you'd like to? Are you eating out too often? Look at your bank statements, your diet, your workout routine and get to the bottom of it. If you're not going to the gym enough, what ensures you go to the gym? Is it a time of day? Or scheduling it? Not packing gym clothes? Or if your diet isn't as healthy as you'd like, when you do eat well what do you do? Is it grocery shopping? Is it planning ahead? Evaluate when you succeed and when you fail, and try to create circumstances when you usually succeed: schedule your gym session, pack your gym clothes the night before, schedule time to grocery shop and make that healthy meal you're always happy to make. Taking the time to evaluate your approaches to your individual goals and understand what works, will help you understand how you meet your goals, therefore help you meet all of them.
Adjust Your Timeline
Evaluating your goals incrementally, and adjusting your timeline accordingly (every quarter or bi-annually) is the most effective way to educate yourself about how you accomplish your goals, and to motivate you to to stay on track. By taking the time to assess your progress and your goals, you take what you learn from the first half of the year and apply it going forward. It can also make your goal less daunting. If you have paid $4,000 of your student loan and your goal is to pay $10,000 by the end of the year, your goal evolves to paying $6,000 in six months. Your goals are now subject to a six month timeline and not a year, a sense of urgency often provides clarity. A good assessment helps refine habits, which increases the odds of achieving your goals the second half of the year.
