Learn how to set business goals for 2020 that you’ll stick to. Good goals align with your priorities and can be broken down so you can hit your weekly, monthly, and quarterly targets.
Wherever you are in your journey as an entrepreneur or creator, you’ll always have new goals to achieve. But, it’s all too easy to start comparing yourself to the countless success stories around you instead of focusing on your own journey. So, how can you refocus that energy towards excitement for your future?
For me, setting clear, measurable goals that I can break down into manageable steps sets me back on the right path. Sure, I still have my insecurities about my path (for example, I feel like I’m navigating my way through the business world slower and more cautiously than I’d hoped). But hitting my targets, however small, is a great reminder that I’m only in trouble when I give up.
For many of us, the new year is a time for introspection. As 2020 approaches, think about what you want to achieve and improve upon over the next year and decade.
In this post, you’ll learn how to:
- Set priorities in your life and business to help you achieve balance.
- Define SMART goals for the year, quarter, and month that keep you on track.
- Schedule your big releases, launches, and events so you can get a picture of the year ahead.
- Create a day-to-day process that helps you stay mindful and motivated.
- Create space for all the goals in your life (including rest).
Prioritize Your Life
If you’ve been here before, you probably guessed my recommended first step: the brain dump. The brain dump lets you empty your brain of all the ideas, worries, and potential next steps so that you can work through whatever’s on your mind.
Prioritizing your life is about figuring out what you want, in all aspects of your life, then figuring out what’s most important to you. So… What do you want to achieve in your life and business? What would make 2020 a success? What about 2019 are you hoping to keep, and what are you hoping to let go of? Where do you hope to be in 2029?
Other helpful tools I use are listing my top values and writing a mission statement. These can help you figure out what drives you, which makes it easier to make key business decisions. For example, if one of your values is integrity, and you’re offered a partnership with a company you don’t know much about, it’s best to learn more or decline the offer. Or, if part of your mission statement is about helping others succeed, you might choose to create an online course or a podcast instead of refreshing your website when you’re strapped for time.
After some deep soul-searching, prioritize everything you want to achieve. Define clear goals for 2020 from your brain dump, then prioritize them according to your values or mission statement.
Set SMART Goals
Let’s talk about goal-setting. Coming up with a list of what you want to do is one thing, but making that list useful and actionable separates you from everyone who gives up on their resolutions by February. Goals become useful when they’re SMART.
SMART is an acronym that helps you set goals that you can actually work with. For example, saying “I want to write a book” doesn’t give you anything tangible to work with. What kind of book? How long is the book? How long do you have to write it, and when will you make the time to write? Why do you want to write it?
“I want to write a book” on its own is a wish, not a goal.
Let’s talk about what makes a goal SMART…
Specific: The goal is detailed and states exactly what you want to accomplish.
Measurable: The goal is quantifiable so you can track your success.
Attainable: The goal is realistic, as you have the resources and tools to achieve it.
Relevant: The goal is in line with your big-picture plan (your mission, values, or vision).
Time-based: The goal has a deadline. Milestone deadlines can be useful, too.
When you set SMART goals, you’re turning a wish into a goal because you’re giving yourself all the information you need to make progress.
So let’s make “I want to write a book” SMART. We’ll pretend that I’m a marriage counselor looking to write a book for couples who have been together a long time and are encountering problems in their marriage.
I want to write a book:
Specific: I want to write a book that helps long-time couples manage problems in their marriage.
Measurable: The book will be 80,000 words.
Attainable: I’m qualified to write on this subject because I’ve developed a series of questions and exercises in my career as a marriage counselor. 80,000 words is the standard for books in my field, and it’s doable because I’m starting with a documented process and many notes and stories to teach each lesson. I have more than enough time to write because my schedule is appointment-based, meaning I can keep my mornings available for writing.
Relevant: I’ve helped thousands of couples with this process and I know that I can reach more couples by capturing my process in a book. I’m driven by helping people. A book is also a great tool for my business because it attracts clients and will help me book speaking engagements.
Time-based: I will finish the manuscript by September 1, 2020. September 1 is a reasonable deadline because I have time to write every morning before my first appointment (usually 10am).
Now, you aren’t simply wishing for a book to happen to you. You’re looking at a plan to get it done.
Go through this process with each of your 2020 goals. What do you want to achieve and when? What does each goal mean for your business?
Find Your Process
Setting SMART goals that you can break down is a great start, but all this work means nothing if you don’t fit those pieces into your life. Evaluate your current process for your business: how do you make time for your business? How much time are you scheduling each day or week? Are you working too much or not enough?
For me, it’s super important to break up my big goals into tasks that are so small that I’m excited to take them on. When you cross off a task, that little step of momentum gives you a rush of dopamine that helps you feel accomplished. Consistently giving yourself that feeling helps you stay motivated.
Find the best way to add your goals to your quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily planning. Using the marriage counseling book example, you can set targets that work in your day-to-day life that build up to your larger goals.
By September 1, I will write an 80,000-word book that helps long-time couples manage problems in their marriage.
- Quarterly: I will reach 30,000 words in quarters 1 and 2.
- Monthly: I will hit 10,000 words per month. I usually write 500-700 words in 2 hours, and I’m willing to schedule 40 hours each month to write.
- Weekly: I will write 2,500 words per week to keep up with my goal. I will schedule writing time at the beginning of each week to keep myself on track. I will avoid scheduling early-morning appointments with clients so I have time to write.
- Daily: I will write every weekday morning before my first appointment. I will schedule writing time in 2-hour increments with a target of 500 words per session. When I skip a day, I will move that session to another time or extend my next writing session. I will never skip more than one day at a time.
Breaking down your goals gives you incremental milestones to work up to. A weekly goal gives you small milestones to check off your list. Breaking it down to a daily goal (even if you’re not going to work on it every single day) gives you a game-plan that you can act on right now.
Put It On the Calendar
With all your time-based goals and broken-down steps in hand, set up your 2020 calendar to get the high-level view of your year. Seeing your big projects on your calendar is a great motivator to keep going because it makes the end result more tangible. Plus, you can get a quick overview of where you need to be to hit your business targets.
For each big project, think about the milestones along the way and set some dates. When will you finish working, when will you share it with your audience, and when will it launch? Can you schedule anything now, like planning relevant content leading up to your launch, creating new social media accounts, releasing teaser clips, or booking guest posts or podcast spots?
Keep in mind: Make these deadlines reasonable. If you’re written zero words, don’t plan to have a book done and launched by March. And if you’re working on a book, a podcast, a course launch, and regular blog content, for example (um… hi!), then you should build in even more buffer time.
With all that in mind, it can help to have a little external pressure. Publicize your goals, talk about it with a friend or trusted advisor, or join a mastermind group. (In 2019, my boyfriend and I had quarterly meetings to catch up on our goals. It was adorable and effective.) Or make it so someone is waiting for you—if you’re planning to have a book draft done by September 1, book an editor for September 15. Then you have a person waiting and money on the line.
But I’ll say this again and again, forever: These tips only work if your goal is reasonable. We want pressure, not torture.
Create Space for Life, Rest, and Celebration
It’s easy to plan a bunch of goals for your future self that seem doable on paper but don’t work out once you get started. A pitfall that I’ve fallen into many times is that I imagine my future self stripped of the stress and concerns of my regular life. This makes me plan way too aggressively and I burn myself out trying to keep up.
And, inevitably, life gets in the way of your plans, and that’s OK. It happens to all of us. In fact, that about sums up my 2019—whenever I made progress with my self-care and business, my recurring knee injury or family issues popped up to remind me that nothing’s guaranteed, especially my time. It’s hard to scale back without feeling like a failure, but you must, because life will continue to change your plans whether you’re ready for it or not.
Rest is an important part of your journey. Your goals need to include rest and joy. Build in days off so you can veg out on the couch for an afternoon once in a while. Give yourself time for activities like crafting, video games, drawing, and other hobbies that make you happy but aren’t necessarily “productive.”
As part of my 2020 business goals, I’m trying a new system for myself called “focus weeks,” where I cycle through a set of 8 weeks that each focus on a particular type of task or project. It’s like batching but on a much larger scale than I’ve tried before. Out of these 8 weeks, 4 of them give me space from the exhausting upkeep so I can have some breathing room and connect with myself. (I’m happy to talk about this system more on this blog once I get started, just let me know!)
Celebration is another amazing motivator. What can you do for yourself or give yourself when you hit milestones? I have a list of goals from all areas of my life: my business, my blogs, my YouTube channel, exercise and fitness, home maintenance, hobbies, etc. With each goal, I’ve chosen something that I want to buy or do for myself that scales based on how big the goal is. Make sure that with each achievement, you’re taking a moment to recognize your hard work and celebrate.
No one is a machine. Regardless of how incredible your action plan is, your humanity will come into play, and sometimes a break from the grind is the only way to get back to a positive and motivated mindset. So, give yourself a break!
Make—And Keep—Your Business Goals
To set business goals that you’ll stick with, first get all the ideas out and prioritize them. When setting your goals, make them SMART, incorporate them into your day-to-day process, and get them on the calendar. Then, make sure you’re giving yourself space for rest when life changes your plans, and make time to stop and celebrate your success along the way.
What are your business goals for 2020? If you’re looking for some non-biased (and free) advice, join my email list and shoot me a message with the subject line “2020 GOALS”. I’m happy to help!