How to reach your goals

Have you ever set a goal for yourself…set up the steps to accomplish it—the milestones and timeline? After working on it for a while, you review your progress, and it hits you…“I can get this done so much more quickly than I’d thought. I just need to be done with this. I need to destroy this goal. ”  Sometimes it becomes necessary to destroy your goals.

Or, maybe you’re on someone else’s schedule

Maybe you didn’t set the goal. Maybe it was set by someone else. It could have been a teacher. “Final papers are due in four weeks.” You know the required routine: research/notes due in two weeks, outline and rough draft in three, the finished paper in four. Ok…you have the goal, the milestones and the timeline. You may have to turn in the required work on a schedule, but—maybe—you can work ahead. This project might not have to be your “life” for the next four weeks. Maybe you’ll have time for something else.

Maybe your spouse wants you to paint the kid’s room before her parents arrive in a few of weeks. (“It needs to be painted,” or “Mom and Dad are going to sleep in there,” or “You know what they said about it the last time they were here.” (You sigh.) You know that painting a room is more than just changing the color. Everything in it has to be moved out or protected somehow. There’s patching, taping, priming, and then painting (which can be more than a one step process). On top of that, do you have the paint already, or will it need to be picked out (that can bring on a debate!), and purchased. And on top of that, your kid doesn’t particularly want his room disturbed. (That could derail the project.) Nope…painting your kid’s room is not your goal. “This needs to become a family goal. By breaking this down into several small projects and working together, we can get done this weekend, and we can all recover and be happy again before Mom and Dad get here.”

Maybe you have a loan, and the bank has given you x number of months to pay it off. After making a few payments, you review your budget and see a way to double up. You’ll pay the loan off early and save money on the interest.

The list of goals we set for ourselves or that are set for us by others is endless. But, there is often a way to “destroy” them, to reach them more quickly. That obviously involves time, and time may equate to any number of things including (but not limited to), “free” time, wellbeing, and money.

The thing about goals

If set up correctly, all goals have a completion date. I’ve posted an article on how to set goals. This would be a good time to read it.

Speaking of time

When it comes to time, there isn’t much you can do about it. There are 60 seconds in a minute and 7 days in a week. You can’t change that. You do, however, have control over what you do with your time. That means you’ll probably need to invest something more than just time to “destroy your goals.”

The thing about goals

All goals require that you do something. That something is spend (invest) your resources. Be it time, money, or effort of some kind. To reach your goals you have to put something into them, and since I advocate being frugal , I’m going to say that you need to manage all of your resources carefully as you pursue your goals. Whether it’s time, or money, or something else, maximize the return on your investment. (That’s the point of the examples I used at the beginning of this post.) You know, I’m glad to have goals, and I don’t mind making them, but once I have a goal I hate having it hang over my head.

Destroy your  goals

I’ve learned that in most cases I can accomplish my goals faster than I originally thought. I do frequent reviews to find (frugal) ways to speed up the process. I want to get it done. I want to “destroy the goal” whether I’ve set it or it has been imposed, and I’m willing to commit more resources to that end, if doing so is a frugal move. That means I have to benefit somehow. Frequently, what I gain is a savings in money or time. (If you’re frugal, you know that time often translates into money, but it could be something like peace of mind which can reduce frantic behavior, which can lead to frugal decisions, which can lead to saving money.) How about you? What are you willing to invest in order to “destroy your goals?”

A few examples

Here’s the first one: Let’s say you have a goal of learning 10 new words in 20 days. Every other day your write a new word and it’s meaning on a 3×5 card, and look at it periodically throughout the day. Practice saying the word and learn the meaning.

Your milestones are the days you learn the word. Your schedule would look something like this:

Just after you begin, you look at the goal and you determine it will take too long. I don’t need to take 20 days on this goal. I can be done sooner. So, you decide to learn a new word every day. Your new goal instead of being 20 days and 10 words is now 10 words in 10 days. All you needed to do to destroy the first goal is move the milestones one day closer to each other and you complete the task of learning the 10 words 10 days earlier. Of course decreasing the number of days to accomplish your goal will require you to intensify your efforts. However, assuming this project is not open-ended, you’ll eventually gain time that can be employed in different effort.

Here’s another example:

You have an hour to travel three miles by foot.

You could stroll, stop and look at the flowers, and talk to other people you meet along the way. Doing this, you can make your three mile goal, but it will take most of the hour. (You might even be late!)

Or
You could walk briskly and ignore the flowers and other pedestrians. You’ll definitely reach your goal sooner than you would at a strolling pace—probably in about 45 minutes.
Or

You could jog and get there even faster. (When I do this it takes about 20 minutes.) Talk about how to destroy your goal!
OK, I admit a three mile goal might not seem like much, but what if like me you have a couple of grandchildren, and they’re waiting for you at the end of those three miles. At a jog you’d gain 40 minutes of extra time with them. I think it’d make destroying the goal of arriving in an hour worthwhile.

Think of it like this

It’s not a question of can you accomplish your goals. The real question is what are you willing to do to accomplish them faster—or better? Are you willing to destroy a goal for a better one?

Final example: Your goal is to save the equivalent of one year’s income; you earn $40,000 a year.

If you save 1% of your check each year it will take you 100 years to save the money.

If you save 10% of your check it will take you 10 years.

If you save 20% of your check it will take you 5 years.

If you save 30% of your check it will take you 3.3 years.

If you save 50% of your check it will take you 2 years.

So how long will it take you? Well, the first goal is super impractical. Most of us would probably pick the second; it equates to less than $80/week. You might even opt for a 15 year goal; that’s about $53/week. But, $40,000 would make for a good emergency fund (or you might have another purpose in mind). It would require planning and extra effort, but it would be great to destroy the long-term goal and get the money together in a few years. An emergency fund like that could take a load off your mind.

Some of you are saying that you live hand to mouth now

There are things you can do to change that!!!

Starting with your spending journal look for waste, and save that money.

Look at your budget. How accurate is it? Could you cut something from your budget? This is a good time to update it.

You may need to get a side gig or part-time job. Would it surprise you to learn that many people have part-time jobs for the sole purpose of saving the money?

It’s all up to you

I can’t tell you there are no limitations, and I won’t tell you that you can (or even should) destroy every goal. I will tell you that you can accomplish more than you ever thought possible if you stay focused and are willing to increase your effort when you have the opportunity. (Or, how about, when you make the opportunity?)

What are you willing to do to destroy your goals?

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