Top tips for setting effective daily goals

Setting yourself smaller daily goals allows you to see progress, build your momentum, and fight procrastination. These goals allow you to control your day and prioritise what needs to be done, which can be helpful whilst in lockdown. If you don’t feel uplifted at the thought of focusing on your goals, you might as well not do them today. Here are some top tips to setting yourself some effective daily goals.

Know your long term targets

You can’t have daily goals if you do not know what your overall aim is. If you know the destination you can plan the journey along the way. Your daily goals can change but the end goal will always stay the same.

Write your goals down

Each morning take a pen and paper and write down 3-4 goals that you would like to achieve by the end of the day. By writing these down you have jumpstarted your day, you will have creative outlook and be programmed to complete them. You can start to see which goal is the most important and focus on this.

Plan your day

After you have written down your daily goals have a look at your day. See what is achievable within in 24 hours. Some goals may need to be split into smaller goals for example writing a 2000 word essay may not be achievable in one day, yet will be over a few weeks. Set yourself a goal of fewer words which once completed will give you a confidence boost.

Prioritise

Prioritising your day allows you to schedule the tasks that will help push you closest to your long-term goals.  Dream big to achieve your goals, however, make sure that you prioritise what needs to be done not what you want.

With all goal setting and work in general, it is important to sit down at the end of the day or a project and analyse what went well and what didn’t. Did you follow all of them? Did you get distracted and miss some? We gain perspective to be able to re-plan for tomorrow and have a productive day.