My 5 HACKS TO ACHIEVING GOALS FASTER (IN 2024)

How are you scoring your goals?

Every year, Individuals and organisations create goals and what we call new year resolutions.

In my work as a consultant with Alan&Grant, we work with organisations to design strategy retreats for the year and most of these organisations spend hours, days and millions of naira in retreats where employees and business leaders create plans for the new year.

The same applies to individuals, You and I. 

But research has shown that during the course of the year, more than 80% of those individual new year resolutions, goals and organisational strategy fail.

What could be the cause?

In my work I found out that one of the reasons is that “We try to DO who we ARE NOT”.

There is a popular quote that we use when we teach Leadership & Culture and the quote is by the renowned Management consultant Peter Drucker and it says “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”

To an organisation, what that quote means is that no matter how well-designed your goals, plans or strategies are, they will fall flat unless your team shares the appropriate culture.

But to you as an individual, what does it mean?

It means that the kind of person you are is more important than the goal you set for yourself.

Don’t get me wrong, goals are great. You should have goals but ultimately what shapes your life outcomes are more than goals. They are beliefs, habits, Identity – the kind of person you are!

It is difficult to get yourself to any point in life in reality, without being sponsored by an underlying corresponding belief.

If you say your goal is to make 1 billion naira this year for example, one question we always do not ask is: Am I the kind of person that can make 1 Billion this year?

That’s why today as a consultant, we do not just stop with designing strategy for businesses, we recommend that much more time is required to ensure that there is cultural alignment, else strategy may fail.

For you as an individual, If you want to achieve your goals this year, one major work to do is to install the right mental Image you have of yourself and set the right routines to achieve those goals, else your goals may end up becoming part of the 80% statistics that fail yearly.

These are my hacks:

1. I set fewer goals every year. I try to keep them at 3. It helps me focus. One goal achieved is better than 10 goals unachieved.
   
2. I write down my goals and I write them down in present tense. For example, I am coaching 1000 young leaders in 2024. NOT I will coach. I write it like it’s already happening.
   
3. I visualise my goals daily. I don’t just write my goals and keep them somewhere. I have a notepad for my goals and I look at it every day. Visualising your goals is giving a mental picture to where you say you will be by the end of the year. Visualisation is powerful, learn it.
   
4. I pray about my goals. I believe in prayers so I speak to God about it, then I confess my goals the way it is written down in present tense. The act of speaking your goals is installing them into your subconscious mind. When you do that daily, you are forcing your mind to generate ideas that should be implemented to achieve your goals.
   
5. I create routines or daily habits that help me achieve my goals. Your goals are not magic, it’s a destination and there are things you must do to achieve your goals. If you do not break your goals into a daily routine, you are not interested in achieving the goal.

That’s it. Which of these hacks are you implementing?