Milestones: Your Secret Weapon to Achieving Big Goals
Setting the Goal Doesn't Guarantee You'll Achieve It
You've created a SMART goal. As you look at it, you recognize it as a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal, a BHAG.
You feel good about your ambition. Then, you begin to worry. It's one thing to say you'll achieve it. It's a different matter to actually get there.
Create Milestones Along the Way
A Milestone Event is a major accomplishment on the road to achieving your goal. If your goal was to build a house by June 1st, these could be milestone events:
- Complete the excavating and grading by January 31
- Complete the foundation by February 15
- Complete the framing by February 28
When you have achieved all of the milestones on the way, you have automatically achieved your goal.
Determine Your Milestones Today
Here is an easy way you can create the milestones that lead to your goal:
- Write the goal, its deliverable, its due date and it's accountable person.
- Write up to three milestone events that are critical to achieving your goal.
- For each milestone, write the deliverable, the due date and the accountable person.
- If one milestone must be completed before another can begin, adjust your milestone due dates accordingly.
As you can see, achieving one milestone at a time is much easier than trying to achieve the entire goal at once.
Make it easy to achieve big goals. Break them into milestones.
