How to Simplify Your Goals So You Can Achieve Them Easily - Life's Little Pleasures and Struggles

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It’s so important to simplify our goals and keep it manageable so we can achieve them easily. Research suggests that most people give up their New Year’s resolutions by February. The same is true to goals set at any other times of the year. Within a few weeks, the motivation wears off, and people are back to living their same old lives.

Did you know that, according to Forbes, only 30% of people keep their New Year’s resolutions for even a month? And that only 8% accomplish them at all?

Many of us have tons of goals in life that keep us busy with things that are not truly important and meaningful. Also, it’s a lot harder to accomplish things when you have more goals than what you can manage to achieve. That can complicate your life, and make you feel overwhelmed, frustrated, and unhappy.

In this article, I am sharing how I have simplified my goal-setting process so it can prevent overwhelm, and I am more likely to follow through on my goals and achieve them.

Why Having Goals Are Important:

Having goals allow you to be more intentional about your life and what you want to do with it. Goals motivate and makes life interesting. Without goals, most people feel lost and feel like their life has no meaning.

“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” ~ Jim Rohn

Setting goals gives you clarity. It is a conscious process and a very effective and efficient means when it comes to increasing productivity and motivation. Without a goal we would just stand around in the field of life not knowing which way to go.

Do remember – setting goals is a process that changes over time. The goals you set in your twenties will most likely be very different from the goals you set in your forties. That’s why, you need to continually revisit your important life goals at different stages of your life and work to update them.

Why You Need to Simplify Your Goals:

When you have too many life-goals, you easily lose focus on what truly matters most. It can be confusing and overwhelming. Having too many goals distracts you and you lose effectiveness, accountability, and attention faster than you would like. That sets you up for failure, and you feel worse than before you set the goals because you failed in accomplishing those.

Too many people set too many impossible goals in the beginning of a new year only to find themselves disappointed and frustrated within just two months of setting their goals because they feel overwhelmed and totally burnt out! That’s why, you need to simplify your goals so you can accomplish them and not give up easily.

How You Can Simplify Your Goals:

Set Fewer Goals:

Looking at a massive list of things you need to work on over the course of a year gets overwhelming fast. When you set fewer goals – that are important and meaningful to you, you will be able to spend more time and energy on accomplishing those. You can focus more on your goals and their progress when you are not overwhelmed or distracted by too many goals.

Take a few minutes every day or every week to think about your core values and priorities. Then ask yourself how your schedule, your budget, and even your home reflect this vision. Go through your priority list, remove those that are not aligned with your current values and principles, and only focus on those goals that are truly important.

By reducing the number of goals that you are striving to accomplish in your life, you will improve your focus and your overall success rate.

Focus on One Goal At a Time:

While you may need to set goals on more than one area of your life, try to focus on one of them at a time. When we try to accomplish too many goals and work on making progress toward more than one thing, often we end up doing nothing significant.

That’s why, it’s always better to focus on one thing or goal at a time. You can be more efficient and productive that way, and your success rate increases when you don’t allow other things to distract you so you can give your best to it. Don’t feel the need to change everything in your life at once because that’s nearly impossible.

Focus on the goal that is most important and meaningful to you right now. Make it a priority. By identifying what matters most, you will be simplifying your goals as you work toward achieving them.

Set SMART Goals:

Setting goals is essential for achieving great things. It’s what keeps us going, and motivates us. Once your goals are clearly defined and preferably written down, you can start moving forward with a clearer focus on what needs to be done to add value to your life. But it’s important that your goals are not vague because vague goals are confusing.

Setting SMART goals is essential. Part of simplifying your goals is adding clarity. Smart goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. They are also significant, meaningful, action-oriented, rewarding, and trackable. When you take the time to set SMART goals that can add value to your life, you will be more likely to achieve those.

For example, instead of having “to save more money” as a goal, it’s more powerful to use the SMART goal “To have saved $3,000 in emergency fund by December 31, 2021.” Obviously, this will only be attainable if other necessary preparation has been completed beforehand!

Understand that everything being a priority actually means nothing is a priority. By simplifying your goals, you will simplify your life and live intentionally.

Most people usually set their goals in the beginning of the year. That’s quite okay but not necessary. There is actually no right time or wrong time for setting goals. But the best time to set goals is always now. It is helpful to revisit them seasonally to track the progress.

Break them Down into Small Steps and Make Them Easier:

Once you set fewer SMART goals, break them down into small, actionable steps. That will make things easier for you to accomplish. Overwhelm sets in without a clear, specific action plan.

When you accomplish little things – one step at a time, that makes the big accomplishments possible by giving you more drive and motivation. Every time you take an action, it takes you one step closer to your goal. Each small success you achieve helps you build a winning mindset.

You may also like to read: 20 Ways to Simplify Your Life in 2021 and Live Intentionally

Final Thoughts:

Setting fewer SMART goals and working to achieving them helps us define what we truly value and want in life. They help us prioritize things that are meaningful and important. When you simplify your goals, you can avoid overwhelm and focus more on what matters most to you. By simplifying, your chances of achieving those important goals increase, and you become happier, too.

Having said that, we don’t have to live every single moment of our lives carefully planned out because we all need those days when we can’t act carefree and relax. However, those who have clearly defined SMART goals might just enjoy their downtime even more than those who don’t simplify their goals and priorities.