Whether we’re aware of it or not, we make goals every day. Maybe you wake up and make it a goal to study/clean the house/go shopping. Or maybe there’s something you’re slowly working towards like saving for a holiday. These bigger goals can feel difficult to manage and work towards when you can’t see the progress you’re making.

In this blog, I want to help you identify important goals, learn how to break them down, and ultimately achieve them!

Recommended Supplies:

• Archer and Olive Journal – The lovely and thick pages have no bleeding or ghosting, so you get a clean start for every spread! Also, it means you can decorate the spread without worrying about it.
• Pencil – To carefully plan out your ideas so you can make sure your spread has everything you need.
• Fineliners – My favourites are the Unipin fineliners as they’re waterproof, affordable and have a strong nib.
• Decorative Touch (optional) – This could be anything from washi to watercolour, or of course, nothing! I usually like to adda personal touch to my spreads so they’re more fun to use and look at.

Types of Goals

Picking Goals

First of all, when you’re picking goals to focus on, it’s really important that you’re picking them for the right reasons. It’s really easy to focus on goals you ‘think’ you should be achieving because of other people’s perception of us. So for this I want you focus on those true goals you really want to achieve for yourself.

Simple, Short-Term and Long-term Goals

I personally sort goals into three types: simple, short-term and long-term.

Simple Goals would be those common everyday tasks you’re putting off such as cleaning the house and laundry. These tasks may turn into goals as they can take quite a bit of time, and you may put them off for days/weeks.

Short-Term Goals I define as those that you want or need to be completed in a few months or less. An example of this could be getting a month ahead on your bullet journal.

Finally, Long-Term Goals are the hardest to achieve. These are the big goals that take a great amount of time and work, for example starting your own business or saving for a holiday.

When writing down goals, I believe it is extremely beneficial to make a variety of these three types. This is because if you’re just working towards long-term goals, you can start to feel like it’s a waste of time and you’re not achieving anything, as they take a lot of work and time to complete. By having shorter-term goals alongside these, you can feel accomplished for ticking them off, and it will keep you motivated for those longer-term goals!

Area of Life

You can make goals for all areas of your life. For example, personal goals, work goals and even creative goals. I also think it is important to choose a mix of goals in different areas so you don’t get burnt out in one area of your life.

Splitting Goals Into Manageable Steps

So now I want you to pick approximately five goals. I want you to pick the goals you really want to achieve, and try pick one long-term, and the others short term, in a variety of the areas of your life.

When you’ve done this, write them down, and don’t worry if it feels daunting. Looking at a goal written down, and especially the long-term ones can seem impossible to achieve in this moment, so I’m going to show you how to break them into smaller, manageable steps.

Lets look at you long-term goal, as these are the hardest to split. Lets say your goal is to start your own business, you want to break this up into parts, and then split it up further by making manageable steps for each part

So for starting a business, you need a logo, website, products and social media. There’s definitely more, but lets start here. Now you need to break each part up into steps you could manage in one sitting. For example, for building your own website you need: a domain, server, images, welcome page, about page and etcetera. Breaking it up into steps is so important. It’s much easier to get going when you know the next step, rather than sitting down for an hour to work on your goal of starting a business, and spending the whole hour figuring out what you need to do.

I have included a printable below to write all this down:

DOWNLOAD HERE

On this sheet, you can see how there is a separate section for your long-term and short-term goals. The short-term goals should only need a row each where you state the goal, break down into steps, and make your deadline. For the Long-Term goal, I have given room for breaking the goal into parts, and their individual plans to achieve them.

Here’s how I would fill it out:

Integrating Goal Setting Into Your Bullet Journal

The best way to keep these goals in the forefront of your mind is to include them in your journal. As well as including a spread in a layout like the printable I’ve supplied, there are some other ways to integrate them into your journal:

Goals Spread In Front Pages

The first way is to simply list all your goals for the year in the front. This is a great activity to do at the beginning of the year to think about everything you want to achieve in the coming months.

Dedicated Spread Each Month

Another way is to give your goals its own spread each month where you can include a list of the broken down steps you want to achieve that month.

Integrate Into Weeklies

Finally, just including a few steps of your goals in your weekly spread to focus on that specific week can really help you keep on top of your goals! I simply do this by including a to-do list in my weekly.

Hopefully I’ve given you some help and inspiration to start working on your goals! I know it can be difficult to find the time to work on your goals sometimes, but by breaking them down, I hope you can see which parts you can work on those times you get a spare hour. If my printable has helped, I would love to see, so tag me on Instagram (@hayleyremdeart) and use #hayleyremdeinspired to get the chance to get your creations featured in my stories!