The Important Step in Making Progress-Goal Setting

Goal Setting

The most important thing to remember when it comes to goal setting is that you need to differentiate between tasks, steps, and goals. These are not the same things and unfortunately, a lot of business owners interchange them, to their own determent.

• Goals are big picture projects. They consist of components and can be broken down into steps and then into actionable tasks.
• Steps are components of goals that support the goal and get you closer to achieving it
• Tasks are actionable. They start with an action word and they are something you can achieve and check off the list in daily operations.

The best way to explain this is through an example. An example of a goal is launch the website. That’s not a step and not a task.  Let’s break it down.

• Goal: Launch Website

• Steps:
  • Create Budget
  • Organize photo shoot
  • Write website copy
  • Create a blog plan
  • Decide on an email sign up incentive

• Tasks
  • Review sale projections
  • Decide on total marketing budget
  • Review other marketing initiatives and assign budget to each
  • Research photographers in my area, ask colleagues for referrals
  • Email 3 photographers for quotes
  • Research courses for writing effective copy
  • Research the costs of professional copy writers
  • Decide whether to hire a copywriter or write it myself
  • Research “effective email incentives”
  • Write copy for email incentive
  • Send email incentive to graphic designer to make it look great

Do you see how each task can be checked off, which supports the step it’s associated with, and then ultimately gets you closer to your goal? The impact that checking off tasks has on progress, is massive.  It flips that switch from feeling like everything is taking so long to reminding you that you are doing things every single day to make progress.