Setting goals is an important part of life, especially when you’re in business. The ability to set small, regular goals can make your business a success as long as you’re meeting them. It’s easier said than done.

Plenty of people make lots of goals and end up not meeting them or forgetting about them. Usually this is because of a few common mistakes:

You’re setting too many

Being ambitious is all well and good but if you’ve set yourself tons of goals, it’s going to make you less likely to achieve any of them because you’re so busy and stressed. Sometimes it’s best to focus on one thing at a time.

You don’t care about them

If you’re setting goals you don’t really care about then how are you going to motivate yourself to achieve them?

Make sure you’re making goals that are beneficial to you or your business. If you’ve got boring tasks to do, like all of us, then you should try to connect it to the larger goal that you care about.

So if you’ve got to email potential clients, remind yourself that if you do a set number of pitch emails a week, it will bring you closer to your goal. Your goal may be to make a success of your freelancing and become financially independent.

You don’t prioritise them

If you’re serious about achieving your goals you need to give them priority in your life. In some cases this means turning down things that are more fun or easier on occasion.

In order to get your head in the right frame of mind, visualise the end result. What will achieving your goals look like? Will it make life easier than it is now?

You also have to prioritise your goals and decide which ones are achievable in the short term and the long term.

You don’t have a plan

First of all, put your goals down in writing it’ll make them seem more real. The next step is to write down your plan.

How are you going to achieve your goals? Saying you’re going to add two more clients by the end of the month is good but not specific enough. What are you doing to make that happen? Maybe you could give yourself a set number of pitches to send out each day. If you can quantify your efforts and your goals, they may appear more achievable.

Do you have any more tips to share for setting goals? What helps you stay on track? Let us know what you think!

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About The Author

Kara Copple

An experienced business and finance writer, sometimes moonlighting as a fiction writer and blogger.

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