The American Psychological Association list achieving goals daily as one of the 10 most important factors for building resilience. Specifically they state:
Like building a muscle, increasing your resilience takes time and intentionality…To increase your capacity for resilience…use these strategies…
…Move toward your goals. Develop some realistic goals. Do something regularly — even if it seems like a small accomplishment — that enables you to move toward your goals. Instead of focusing on tasks that seem unachievable, ask yourself, “What’s one thing I know I can accomplish today that helps me move in the direction I want to go?”
In addition to building resilience, I’m a firm believer that achieving goals daily is also the key to achieving long term goals. As a result of these two benefits, defining multiple small attainable daily goals that represent the elements of measurable progress for your long term goals should be a top priority. In order to do this, I recommend a 6 step process.
- Break down the activities or skills required to progress towards your long term goal into 3 or 4 essentials.
- Identify the things that correlate directly with these essentials that come easy to you because you either enjoy it or because it’s effortless (your strengths).
- Identify the activities or skills that correlate directly with these essentials that don’t come easy to you because you don’t enjoy it or because you find it difficult (your weaknesses).
- Create a daily routine that incorporates one or more of your strengths from #2.
- Create three different weekly routines to be done on three different days that leverage your strengths from #2 in a way that helps your overcome the most essential weakness from #3.
- Finally, create a monthly routine to measure progress, get feedback from outside mentors, and make adjustments.