The only thing that stays on track without a plan is time, it is going to continue regardless of how you use it. Everything else needs to be planned otherwise you are simply watching time fly by.

If you have no plans, no goals, no direction, you are where you are going to get and are simply waiting for your time to run out. If you feel like there should be more to life, could be more, then creating some goals, putting some plans in place and getting some direction in life will help you to greatly improve the quality of your life and the way you spend your time.

Setting goals, planning and taking action are not difficult, the biggest challenge is getting over the mental side of it, if you are not used to planning and setting goals. For example when you don’t have a “to do list” it is easy to decide you’ve done everything important and then relax. When you do have a list you can easily see if you have done everything and if not, you have to consciously make the choice to either move it forward or just not do it. This is one of the ways that setting goals works, it makes what you want to achieve a reality, and something you can work towards, and your planning gives you the steps you need to follow in order to achieve that goal. But it also means you will easily see when you are just being lazy or avoiding doing things and this does not give you a good feeling. If  you can commit to achieving your goals and you do, that is a fantastic feeling and well worth the sacrifice of being lazy and just lolling about.

If you think about it, every single job that is filled by someone is a position that needs to be filled. Every laborer, cleaner, plumber, electrician, builder, manager, assistant, CEO, business owner, among many others, are all required to keep our society functioning and growing.

Now with that in mind, if you are a cleaner with a dream of being a manager, You can work very hard at your job, get very good at your job, but that is not going to help you accomplish your dream. You would already be streets ahead of people in a similar position but who have no dream. But you would only be able to accomplish that dream if you did the required steps. Learn what you need to in order to get that position. You can work your way up but only if you are willing to learn your way up. A cleaner that stays with a company for 20 years does not automatically get promoted to manager.

This is where goals go a long way to helping you achieve what you want in life. You look at where you are, where you want to be, and then you plan how you can get there. And this can be done by anyone, and everyone.

There are goal setting methods that you can use such as the SMART Method, the SMARTER Method, the P.R.I.M.E.R Method and various other ones. It is worth looking into them to find which one you think will work best for you and try it out, maybe even try a couple to see which gives you the best results.

Personally I think even without using a specific method you can get started and achieve results. The methods have been created because they tend to give better results than not using a method, but even by doing simple lists without a method you will get better results than doing nothing.

The principles of setting goals are identifying what you want to achieve, planning how you can achieve them and then putting those plans into steps and following the steps.

For example if you want to retire at 65, that would be your goal. Next you need to plan for that, so you need to work out how much money you will need to have saved by then in order to not have to work. Lets say that figure comes to $1 million. You would then work out how much time you have until you are 65, lets say you are 30 years old now, that gives you 35 years to save $1 million.

You break down that $1 million into years, months and weeks (depending on how you receive money). So per year you need to save $28,571, per month you need to save $2,381 and per week $585 (working on a 4 week month).

Just by looking at those figures broken down you should already be able to start seeing how you can make that a reality. When you say “I need to save $1 million,” that sounds like a dream, almost impossible. When you say you need to save $2,381 per month, that suddenly sounds a lot more possible than saving $1 million. Nothing has changed about the amount, you have just looked into it more and broken it down into more manageable pieces.

Now if you work that out and realize you cannot save that amount every month, that is not a reason to give up on that goal. You now know what you need to accomplish and you can start finding ways to achieve that. For example if you break that figure down into days, say 20 working days per month, you would need to save $119 per day. Is there something you could do to earn that amount every day? Can you make something you can sell? can you offer freelance services? Can you offer training classes? what can you do to bring in that extra money.

Once you have your goal, and you know what you need to do in order to achieve that goal, you can start working towards achieving it.

If saving $119 per day is not possible, you cannot find a way to do that, find out how much you can save per day and start there. As you progress you can either start finding more ways to save money, and if you only manage to save $20 per day at least when you are 65 you will have more than if you hadn’t saved at all.

The reality though is when you know what you are working towards and what you need to do in order to achieve it you start to find more opportunities that will help get you there. How often have you just suddenly found the T.V. you want to buy when you don’t need a T.V. and didn’t think of buying a new one? But let you think at some point “I should get a new T.V.,” all of a sudden you start noticing T.V’s for sale, you start noticing the prices, seeing them in shops, nothing has changed other than you made a mental note that you are interested in a T.V. and the same thing works with goals. When you have set a goal, planned it and worked out the steps, you know exactly what you need and why you need it and you start finding ways to achieve it.

So if you are ready to start improving you life, then start setting goals and working towards achieving them.