How To Plan And Succeed At Your 2018 Goals

How to plan and succeed at your 2018 goals. It's time to put the previous year behind us and start to plan what you want to achieve in the year ahead!

Folks, Happy New Year and welcome to day 1 of 2018. Now is the time to plan so you can succeed at your 2018 goals.

Today is traditionally the day of New Year's resolutions. Wikipedia explains these as being where a person resolves to change an undesired trait or behavior, or to accomplish a personal goal or otherwise improve their life.

Too many people fail their New Year's resolutions or goals because they set themselves up for failure by being unrealistic.

The thing to do is to set realistic and achievable goals, and if you achieve those then that's great. If you overachieve the goals then that's an added bonus!

Let me help by explaining further how I use the planning skills I've learned from my full time day job (IT Project Manager) to ensure that I successfully plan so that I can succeed at the personal goals I've set myself for the year ahead.

For example, when we have a new piece of hardware to roll out to the firm (new telephones for example) or a new software package (an HR records system for example) there is no way we could just go right ahead and start implementing those things in straight away. Can you image the uproar? The way everyone is used to working would change overnight. There would be mayhem and possibly the firm might grind to a halt as colleagues grapple with the new ways of working, software and changes.

Well, it's exactly the same when it comes to planning and succeeding at your own personal goals. It's never going to happen all at once. Trying to do it all at once is just building yourself up for failure and that will lead no where except to self loathing and disappointment.

So, what we do in the firm is take each project and break it down between a proposed start and an end date into days, weeks and months of when particular delivery of the components/deliverables of that project should take place and we make a plan to get there.

We try and stick to that plan as much as possible, working through daily objectives. However, we're completely realistic and know that due to any number of unknown things happening, things do not always go to plan. This results in re-planning to a different date or outcome.

Do we beat ourselves up when we don't meet the original plan? Absolutely not. We sit right back down and re-plan. That's life. The thing is to fix your mind on the desired outcome NOT the dates having to be set in stone.

In a similar way, to plan and achieve a personal goal you create an appropriate daily ritual. You work through small daily steps, celebrate your achievements and in time you will get the results that you desire. It is the law of attraction.

Tips To Succeed At Your 2018 Goals

Here are my top 10 tips to help you succeed at your 2018 goals.

1. First of all if you're not prepared to take action to make the changes and achieve your desired outcomes forget it now. You must have the desire, belief and expectation of hitting your goals. Do nothing. Get nothing.
2. Next, you need to be determined to achieve those goals. To make those changes and achieve the life you want. You need to visualise yourself in that life that you want.
3. Write your goals down. It's no good just having your goals in your head you need to focus on them and remember them. Have them written down somewhere you can refer to them daily. Such as on your phone or in a notebook that you carry around with you.
4. Make your goals SMART goals. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound. List your goals, how will you know you're achieving them, how will you achieve them (plan)? Finally of course they need to be achievable goals, ideally in a set time frame.
5. Plan. Every goal needs a plan of how you're going to get there. It does not have to be a perfect plan. You learn and tweak the plan on your journey. If you fall down you get yourself right back up again, dust yourself off, tweek the plan and carry on.
6. Start. Every goal starts somewhere so you need to set a date and commit to it. Stop wasting time. You only have one life. Don't get to the end of it and regret not trying.
7. Work through your plan on a daily basis. Take small daily steps. Remain focussed. You may not know all the steps required ahead but placing your mind in a state of requiring it to help us achieve a goal means our minds are constantly looking for ways to achieve that goal. The answers will come to you in due course, don't worry about it. Keep going.
8. Review progress towards your plan periodically.
9. Get a mentor or join a support group. Make your goals known within these circles so that you become accountable for achieving them. Tell the people that matter. The people that matter, the ones that you want in your life are the ones that will support you and help push you on until you achieve your goals no matter what stage you're at.
10. Celebrate your successes towards achiveing your goals. Every step that results in a positive outcome towards that new goal is a step forward. Well done. YOU are in the 8% of people who achieve their goals. 92% of people do not.

Here are my personal goals for 2018 and how I'm working towards them based on the above. Some of these might give you ideas for helping you to set and succeed at your 2018 goals.

1. Gradually replace the income I'm receiving from my full time job. This is my main goal in life at the moment. I plan to do this by creating other forms of income. I've mentioned this before in several recipes, I've just never alluded to how I'm doing it! I want to do it to make myself recession proof, not reliant on an income from an employer and to be able to do my blog full time and in my own time. I have a date set on paper that I want to achieve this by. But I'm keeping that to myself for now!
2. Buy another property to rent out. At the end of last year I completed the purchase of my second buy-to-let property. The rent I receive is what will eventually help to replace the income from my full time job. I'd love to buy two properties next year, but realistically it'll be one, planned for April / May time.
3. Increase the Page Views of Neil's Healthy Meals by another 40% in 2018. In 2017 I saw a 40% increase in Page Views from the previous year. It was very hard work to achieve that but I feel I turned the corner in March 2017 when I was accepted by Mediavine to become one of their advertising partners. I wrote about that in the One Pot Mediterranean Chicken recipe.  Increasing Page Views will help me earn more advertising revenue, another form of income towards my main goal.
4. Increase the returning visitor numbers to 25% on Neil's Healthy Meals. In 2017 that was 19.5%, 2% up on 2016. But it will also mean I work at building up my relationship with the readership and ensure I provide value to visitors spending their time here.
5. Get better at Food Photography and Food Videos. When I compare my original archived photographs in 2014 to what I can do now I am amazed at my progress. This will continue through lots of practice and more recipes. Video photography requires more time, which I am trying to create as in 1) above. So far I have completed one recipe video in the No Bake Amond Oat Bars recipe and practiced using the Adobe Premier Pro editing software producing short videos from our Hadrian's Wall Path walk in September. I aim for 12 more Food Video recipes in 2018.
6. More Quick Healthy Meals and Budget Recipes. You'll be seeing a lot more budget healthy recipes on the blog. I plan to continue producing lots more budget recipes of all kinds with the aim of saving more money towards my 2) above. as well as still going on amazing holidays with my good lady! That is challenging, but it's all about the balance, living frugally and not buying any uneccessary crap. 😉
7. Spend more time with Lady Lynne. I plan to make sure Lady Lynne and I spend at least one weekend per month in 2018 going away for a short budget break, or at least doing something together. I'm very lucky she understands I am trying to create an income from blogging so she puts up with me (and helps with my photograph food styling too) spending my weekends doing that. It could even be that sometime this year if plans 1), 2) and 3 bring that income in, that I can find a part time job and schedule photography during the week rather than the weekends. Thus freeing up the weekends completely!

What are your to-do's and how do you plan to succeed at your 2018 goals? Any tips for how to stick to them? I'd love to hear your comments below!

So folks, I hope that the above has inspired you to sit and write down what you plan to achieve looking ahead and that it will help you to succeed at your 2018 goals. I've been completely open and honest with you about my goals. I'll update you throughout the year and at the same time next year as to how I did.

If it's loosing weight and getting more in shape that you're particularly focusing on for 2018 then firstly I'd start by making sure you head on over to my free Simple Soups eCookbook post to get that and read all about how I shifted 2 stones in weight, Lady Lynne shifted 5 and we haven't put it back on since!

Then, check back here tomorrow when I'll be talking all about Meal Planning For The 80/20 Food Rule, how I do it for Lady Lynne and I, and show you how to go about it too. This will ensure you're all equipped to face the year ahead and achieve your weight goals. 🙂

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