This is a guest post from UDLAB Products, a designer of unique and innovative productivity products for the home and office.
It’s nearly the end of February. How are you feeling about your 2024 goals? It’s not uncommon for people to set ambitious goals at the beginning of the year and then feel overwhelmed as they try to achieve them. Here are some suggestions to help you manage them and get back on track.
Are your goals realistic?
Are your goals realistic and achievable in the time frame you’ve set? Do you have clear objectives? It’s essential to set realistic expectations for yourself. Perfectionism and the desire to accomplish everything at once can contribute to burnout. Accept that it’s okay not to achieve everything instantly.
Example
One goal is to reduce customer service calls by 20 percent. Is that realistic? If you already have excellent online help and FAQs, your customer service calls may already be relatively low because buyers are using the tools available to them. In that case, reducing calls by 20 percent may be difficult: you can only change human behavior so much, and some people simply prefer to talk to a person about a problem. However, if your customer service calls are so numerous that your call center can’t keep up, then it’s probably a reasonable goal. One of your first steps may be to improve your online help tools.
Are your goals measurable?
It’s tempting to create nebulous goals like, “I will increase my ROI” or “I will blog more often.” But those are not measurable statements. By how much do you want to increase your department’s ROI? 15 percent? 50 percent? How often will you blog? Weekly? Bi-weekly? The only way you will truly see progress is by creating measurable goals that allow you to say, “Hey, we increased our ROI by 10 percent this quarter. That’s great!” Or “My monthly blog has turned into a weekly blog and people are noticing. Cool!” Measurable goals help you see progress, motivating you to keep going.
Example
One of your goals is “My blog will be better this year.” What does that mean? Are you improving your vocabulary, writing more often, hiring someone to edit your work? That statement is just not measurable. Do you want to focus on how often you blog, or maybe your topics? Perhaps you want to update older posts more often so they continue to be relevant. Do you want to increase traffic to your blog by improving SEO or sharing links on social media? You might want to do all of these or only one – whatever it is, make sure it is measurable: “I will post an average of two blog posts per week and update an older post an average of once per week.” That is a statement you can easily track and measure.
Did you set too many goals?
If your initial goal schedule is too demanding, consider adjusting it. Find a balance that allows you to make progress on your goals without sacrificing quality or your sanity. Prioritize your goals based on their importance and urgency, focusing on the most critical tasks first. I know, all your goals are important, but think about what is essential for you to accomplish this year and plan accordingly. It’s OK to have several goals, but you need to decide if you’d rather make a little progress on several goals or significant progress on a few goals.
Example
In addition to decreasing customer service calls by 20 percent, you also want to decrease call times by 30 percent and increase customer satisfaction scores by 25 percent. All three of these goals may be too much for one year and may even contradict each other; if customer service reps try too hard to get people off the phone quickly, it may decrease customer satisfaction scores. Discuss with both the call center team and the leadership team to understand which of these three goals are the most important and update the goals to match.
Do you need to further break down your goals?
You broke down your goals into mini-goals when you set them, but do you need to make those mini-goals even smaller? Do you look at those mini-goals and freeze because they still seem big and you aren’t sure where to start? It’s time to break them down a bit more so you can see what comes next. This is where whittling things down into steps helps tremendously.
Example
You were hired to replace a wonderful bookkeeper who retired after 30 years with the company. They were nearly perfect in everything they did, but they also never threw anything away. The office has wall-to-wall file cabinets stuffed with information, and there is a drawer full of organized but ancient floppy disks that may not even be readable. Part of your job is to purge what is not needed. If your goal is “Purge old files from the office,” it is intimidating and you might break out in hives every time you see it written. It’s time to break that goal into smaller steps. Perhaps you can make it more manageable by changing the goal to “Go through a file drawer every week to determine what to keep.” You can make that even smaller by adding steps regarding how you will safely dispose of the information, who will recycle the papers, and how you are going to determine what’s on the floppies when no computer in the office reads them. You may decide the floppies are so old that you are just securely disposing of them, but that is also part of your step-by-step plan.
When we think about progress, we often imagine how good it feels to achieve a long-term goal or experience a major breakthrough. These big wins are great—but they are relatively rare. The good news is that even small wins can boost inner work life tremendously. Many of the progress events our research participants reported represented only minor steps forward. Yet they often evoked outsize positive reactions.
Reflect on progress
If you’re like me, you finish one task and move on to the next without thinking about what you’ve accomplished. We tend to have so much to do in such little time that taking a break to reflect on our progress sometime can seem like a waste of time. It’s not! Try using a few minutes every week to ponder what you achieved in the past seven days. By thinking about what you accomplished in the last week, or even month, you will see progress, helping you stay motivated. This can be particularly helpful in jobs where individuals tend to do the same thing every day, only to come back and do it again the next day. It can be difficult to see progress in these circumstances, so remembering what went well is key to success. Celebrate small victories and acknowledge your efforts.
Example
You are a member of a restaurant’s wait staff and one of your goals is to increase customer satisfaction by 10 percent. You do the same thing every day and it’s difficult for you to see that you are making a difference. At the end of the week, think about any comments you receive. Did people smile a lot when talking with you? Did you deliver hot meals on time? If food was subpar, did you ask the kitchen staff to fix it before presenting it to your customers? Think about how you are helping the restaurant improve customer satisfaction.
Discuss with your leadership team
If you are supervised by other people, talk to them about your concerns. They will help you decide how to update your goals so that they are more manageable. The leadership team has a high-level view of the company’s goals and how everyone’s individual goals feed into them. They know what kind of work is coming down the pike and how it will affect your workload. It’s better to rethink problematic goals now than near the end of the year when you’ve struggled for months to achieve goals that may not have been completely understood when they were set.
Example
You and your manager set SMART goals in December for 2024. Everything was on track until someone in your department quit at the last minute. Guess who is doing both jobs until a replacement is found and trained? Yep, that would be you. Those goals that seemed somewhat difficult but achievable a few months ago may not now be realistic, depending on how long it takes to onboard a new person. Talk it over with your manager to determine if you should update your goals now – especially if you have quarterly goals. Your manager may decide to keep them as they are for now but update them later depending on variables that are out of your control.
Final Thoughts
Setting realistic and measurable goals is essential for personal and professional growth. It’s imperative to evaluate whether your goals are achievable within the timeframe you’ve set and whether they align with your individual and company’s priorities. By breaking down larger goals into smaller, manageable steps and regularly reflecting on your progress, you can stay motivated and track your achievements effectively. Moreover, open communication with your leadership team is crucial for reassessing goals in light of changing circumstances or unexpected challenges. Remember, it’s okay to adjust your goals as needed to ensure they remain relevant and attainable. Ultimately, by setting clear, measurable, and prioritized goals, you can increase your chances of success while avoiding burnout and maximizing productivity.
Related Blogs
Year-End Reflection and Setting Professional Goals for the New Year
Solving Problems Strategically: Using a SWOT Analysis
Getting Stuff Done Over the Holidays: Practical and Fun Strategies
Resources
Amabile, Teresa M. and Steven J. Kramer. “The Power of Small Wins.” Harvard Business Review. May, 2011. Accessed 2/14/24. https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins
