Planning actions is important…2 ways are S.M.A.R.T. and V.O.S.T.
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SMART – when planning goals, make sure they are smart:
SPECIFIC – make sure you have a specific goal in mind, try and be as specific as possible, quantify everything, make sure you can visualise everything you want to achieve.
MEASURABLE – how will you know you have achieved this goal, can you measure it? What is the calculation that you will use to measure how far you are progressing with this goal?
ATTAINABLE – how ambitious is this goal? Is it achievable? Who will be assigned to this task? Who will action it? Does it align with the overall vision? If the goal is highly ambitious, then you may want to break this down to smaller smarter goals.
RELEVANT – is it relevant and realistic? Why is this goal important to you? Does the goal align with your situation? Can you cope now? What do you need to do to get to higher goals?
TIME BOUND – get specific on dates of when you will achieve such specific goals and milestones. Set yourself a deadline. Set an ambitious deadline, but also set a realistic deadline that is attainable. Let this deadline be a motivation for when you must achieve this goal. The key is to break down large bigger picture goals into smaller digestible simple achievable single goals that you can easily visualise and achieve. Ticking off bite size goals will keep you motivated for the next one. Don’t try to jump to the top in a lazy way without learning to climb every step. It takes hard work and persistent consistent actions. Iterate each step and your next step will become better each time.
VOST – This stands for: Vision, Objective, Strategy, Tactics. A VOST can be used to incorporate the top level vision of what you want to achieve. However, this vision will likely involve many moving parts, so you can split each smaller vision into individual ones and apply the same method to each vision.
VISION – what is the ultimate end goal? What is the ultimate vision of what you want to achieve? What is the mission and values you want to attain? Can you picture it? What does it look like? Write it down. Do you want to live a healthy life? Do you want to travel the world? Do you want to be financially free? Write your vision down and make it plain.
OBJECTIVE – let’s take the health vision for example, the objective is to reach a healthy body and maintain it. The objective could be specific to a weight or size figure. Maybe you want a certain look. Let’s take finance objectives for example, this could be that you want to earn a certain figure per day, month or a certain amount in the bank.
STRATEGY – what are the strategies that will help you achieve this objective? This is the top level instrument you will use to achieve this objective. For example, going to the gym, diet, seeking advice from others who have achieved this goal. For finance, this could be career, job, salary, real estate, stock market, business, investing.
TACTICS – what are the specific actions and tactics you can take to achieve this objective using the strategies you have highlighted? This could be running a number of miles per day using a set time bound calendar. This could be doing specific exercises at certain times with a growth plan to help you progress to that objective. A less obvious one could be keeping to a strict diet, this is because it has become routine and programmed into our minds, however, with gradual changes to the diet, you can start to affect and change your body. Financially, this could be saving X amount per month. It could also be utilising a set amount a certain way to achieve a certain goal in mind.