Setting Goals for 2024 - Achieving Yearly Goals Through Daily Actions

Ever felt like your New Year's resolutions dissolve faster than sugar in hot coffee? Join us as we transform those ephemeral promises into concrete victories. This isn't your run-of-the-mill pep talk; it's a tactical playbook for owning 2024, one SMART goal at a time. From chiseling down a daunting 10-kilo weight loss goal to daily manageable tasks, learn how specific, incremental actions can lead to your ultimate triumph. By embracing a business-like strategy, including quarterly progress reviews, we're not just chasing dreams—we're systematically catching them.

In our latest episode, the journey is just as crucial as the destination when it comes to achieving your goals. We discuss the power of focusing on the everyday steps that create the pathway to long-term success. Sure, aim for the stars, but don't forget it's the small, daily efforts that launch you into orbit. And because we're all about community, we invite you to join the conversation with @wahaboriginalz on Twitter and Instagram. Let's rally around these practical, motivating methods for goal-setting, proving that every step, no matter how small, is a leap towards our aspirations.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Welcome to talk mode. In today's episode, we're going to talk about New Year's resolutions, setting objectives for 2024 and how we go about achieving them. Today we're talking about, as I mentioned in the intro, talking about 2024 objectives and goals. Now, if you listen to the last couple of episodes maybe two episodes ago we talked a little bit about, instead of setting new year's resolutions. At that point we reflected on the previous years New year's resolutions, how we did against them, whether we achieved them or not, etc. Etc. And we examined some of the reasons why I might not have achieved some things. So today I'm going to go through some of the goals I'm setting for myself this year, the way I'm setting them and how I feel is the right way to go about to achieve them, and hopefully some of that can help you go ahead and achieve your goals. So let's first, before I even get into what my goals are personally, let's talk a little bit about how we can go about achieving our goals for 2024, or objectives, whatever you want to call them. People call them new year's resolutions, etc. Etc. I believe you can start them at any time, but new year's is a great time to start thinking about these things. So fair enough. So in this particular case, let's say we call them our 2024 goals. How do we go about achieving them?

Speaker 1: 2:11

Now, if we think of our business, I've kind of used the business before as an example of setting new year's resolutions a few years ago, when I did setting smart objectives. That's specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time bound I believe it is. I might be getting that slightly wrong, but essentially we're talking about doing smart objectives and I thought, well, let's apply other elements of how a business goes about achieving its goals and see if we can extrapolate that into our yearly goals. So let's break it down. A business would review its results quarterly, wouldn't just wait for the whole year to finish and then see, oh yeah, we didn't achieve this goal. You'd review it in shorter increments maybe quarterly would be a start to say, oh well, how far are we this quarter towards our main goal? We've not got there yet, alright, so we need to amend something for the next quarter and realign ourselves so that we hit that goal that we want to hit at the end of the year. So, although it's important to set an overall goal I would set myself. Well, this year I'm going to set myself smaller goals. So that might be quarterly.

Speaker 1: 3:34

Then we can even break it down even further if we really want to and set ourselves some mini goals that could be monthly. So we could like a business some of the business will review their performance monthly, or might review an employee's performance monthly. Well, why can't we do that for ourselves, against our own goals in life? Yeah, for the year. You could break it down even further if you want to and what you need to do. The question would be what do you need to do to achieve that monthly goal? And you could break it down to a weekly goal or even a daily goal, and then you can. If you've got a daily goal or you've got a weekly goal, you've got something you can actually take action towards on a daily or weekly basis and follow that result through till you got to your month and then your quarter and then your end of year goal.

Speaker 1: 4:28

So let me use one of my goals that is a running goal I've had for quite a while now is to lose weight, and this particular year I want to lose weight by about 10 kilos, right, so let's use that as an example of how I'd break it down. So if I want to lose weight. I will lose 10 kilos. That is my goal for 2024. Let's break it down to a quarterly goal. So we divide that by four. Four quarters that means the first quarter. I want to lose two and a half kilos. I feel a little bit more manageable, right? We've got three months to lose two and a half kilos.

Speaker 1: 5:12

Well, let's break it down even further. If I want to break it down to a month, how many, how many grams do I need to lose in a month to lose two and a half kilos in the third and first quarter, and I'll be 833 grams a month. That sounds like nothing. I should be able to lose a lot more than that in that amount of time. But let's be conservative. Let's say we give myself a whole year to lose 10 kilos. In that first month I'll lose 833 grams.

Speaker 1: 5:47

Well, now the question is how do I lose the 833 grams a month? I could break it down further and say I've got to lose. It means I've got to lose around 210 grams a week, which again sounds like nothing, right? 210 grams a week is what I need to lose. So let's talk about what kind of things I can do daily to achieve that. I could take daily walks, which is which is one of my objectives for this year. So I'll spend more time outside, take daily walks, and that will help me lose the 210 grams I'm aiming to lose in a week. Other thing I could do for the week is have at least five home cooked meals. So make sure I'm eating at home five times a week and and it's healthier to eat at home stuff you know what's going in there. So if I do that, maybe that'll help to lose that extra 210 grams I'll lose. Maybe I don't drink any fizzy pot, which again is something that I'm trying to do now and and that will help me lose the 210 gram. Maybe I do all of those things and then also put myself in a calorie deficit or do whatever, to then go ahead and achieve that goal. But 210 grams in a week sounds so achievable compared to saying I want to lose 10 kilos this year. It's two very different things, and that's how I feel it is the right way to go about achieving your goals.

Speaker 1: 7:18

You're breaking it down. You're breaking it down to the lowest level, to the current time a lot of people focus so much on all. This is my five-year plan. This is my plan by the end of this year. I want to be here, I want to be there, but no one's actually thinking about you. Know how can I actually achieve that? What actions do I need to take on a daily basis to get to that point? And by breaking it down, and breaking that goal down from a year to a quarter, to a month, to a week, to even a day, if that works for you. For me that'll be a bit too much. So I'm breaking it down to a week, but if you're gonna break it down to a day, you could do that. And and I am breaking it down today, I'm just not putting a weight on it, I'm just putting right what, what I need to do every day this week to get to my goal of what I want to achieve by the end of the week, which is 210 grams in this example. And then, if I do that for four weeks, I should be able to achieve my Objectively losing 833 grams by the end of the month. And if I achieve that every month for three months, I'll get to my two and a half kilos for the end of the quarter. And if I achieve that for every quarter to the end of the year I'll get to my ten kilos that I wanted to get off.

Speaker 1: 8:29

Now let's break it down a little bit. But I'll pull it back a little bit and say let's say we've got into month one. Yeah, month one is done and I've only lost 500 grams. Yeah, I'm give a small numbers, but let's say I'm only lost 500 grams. Well, that means well, local.

Speaker 1: 8:48

Month one we reviewed our performance. We lost 500 grams. It's not quite good. We did some things right because we lost some weight, but there's other things we clearly didn't do right because the target would set us I wasn't too large, right? So we should have been able to lose 833 grams in a month, but we didn't. So that means there's something we're doing wrong and we need to amend something. So this would sit there. Month one review. Maybe let's change some habits, let me do something different, and hopefully month two will yield bad results. We get through to month two. End of month two be like right. This month we did lose our 800 a3 grams, so that means what we've done is correct. But we also lost an extra 100 grams, so we made up for some of the deficit from the last month. Right now means in month three we got to go a little bit harder so we can make up the rest of the deficit from that first month where you only go only lost 500 grams instead of 833. So we need to still cover another 233 grams extra to stay on task To achieve the end goal for the year.

Speaker 1: 9:50

Now, obviously you can cover that deficit over a longer period of time, but for me I want to achieve my quarterly goal. That's the aim right now. Yeah, forget the yearly goal. I just want to achieve my quarterly goal and to achieve that I need to Cover the deficit from that first month. And that's how I would, or how I'm intending to, go about my goals this year. So now that I've gone through how I'm looking to achieve them, I hope some of that helps you out and you can try and use those techniques to help you achieve yours.

Speaker 1: 10:19

Let's talk a little bit about some of my goals this year and how I've gone about putting them down and Identifying them. You know, previously when I've had goals I've just like oh yeah, you know, I'd love to be able to I don't know fly around the world by the end of the year. I'm just making one up, but let's say that, or the one one of the ones I had last year. Oh, I'd love to. You know I have. I'd love to Make an episode a week Of the podcast. And those are fine goals is nothing wrong with them. But recently I've been doing a lot research or Watching a lot of videos and reading a lot of different books and stuff like that and who talks about the psychology of goals in how you need to manifest stuff and all of that. And I'm not so much into that world of things, but I kind of like the way this was Put to me, this was presented. I like the way this was presented and therefore I'm kind of adopting this into my, into my goal setting Structure right. So they do.

Speaker 1: 11:29

Everyone's always said write down your goals, right. That's always been a thing. I don't necessarily always do it. I normally just, you know, I have it in my head somewhere or it's roughly informed by the stuff I put in my calendar or wherever right. But this time I actually sat down and wrote my goals down and I'm gonna give you a couple of examples and explain why I've written them the way I've written them. So, first of all, I actually got the pen and paper write it down. Yeah, I wrote, instead of writing my goals in a oh yeah, I want to lose 10 kilos this year. I've written I have lost 10 kilos. Yeah, I have spent more time outside, I no longer rely on a vape and I've not bought anything just because I felt like it.

Speaker 1: 12:19

Yeah, so if you see the, the change in direction here is I'm not writing stuff I I hope to achieve, I'm writing stuff I have achieved. And I'm writing in that past tense, present tense way, because that manifests itself right when I read this part at some point, whether it's at the end of the quarter, when I'm reviewing where I am against my goals, or I'm reading at the end of the year and I read it back and I'm like, oh, I have lost 10 kilos, is that true or not? And I will know at the time, right, so I can take it or cross it or be like nope, I didn't, I didn't manage to do that, or I've not done that. It's a lie, or wherever it is. I don't know man, I don't know if it'll work all right, but when I've read it back to myself, I feel better about the way it's written, because I'm like no, I'm stating that now, because that's where I'll be at the end of this year. That's the aim, right?

Speaker 1: 13:17

So that's how I've written my goals down and, like I said, I'm breaking everything down. I'm breaking all of these goals down into quarterly goals and breaking them down into monthly goals and then trying to identify what I could do within that month, maybe even break it down to a weekly, but identify what I can do within the month, within the week, to achieve that end goal that I'm looking to achieve. So that is the way I'm doing things this year. I hope some of that was useful to you and informed you, and maybe it will help you set your goals and, more importantly, help you figure out a actionable way to achieve those goals in smaller steps.

Speaker 1: 14:01

Yeah, we always again, like I said, we always think about the bigger goal and but everyone keeps forgetting well, how are we gonna actually get there? Let's plan that out first. Yeah, everyone's so focused on what's happening in a year's time they're not looking at what's happening today in front of you and every day you're gonna be stepping in that right direction. So that's what I'm trying to do this year. I hope that was helpful. Thank you very much for listening. If you want to contact me. Contact me at Lava originals on Twitter and Instagram. Take care, goodbye.