
There are three basic types of goal achievers, named for the underlying attitude:
All or Nothing Goal Achiever
You take your lists of steps toward your goals very seriously. If you don't accomplish everything on the list, it's as if you didn't accomplish anything. You never settle for 99% of anything - it's 100% or it's a failure.
The problem here is that if you make a list of, say, 10 actions to accomplish on Monday for your weekly goals, and you only manage 9 of them, you become upset. Stress depletes energy; low energy slows momentum; slow movement decreases motivation...and soon you've abandoned yet another list of steps you need to take for achieving your goals.
Keep two lists of goals. One is a short list of steps you know you'll be able to achieve in the given time, with hardly any effort at all.
The second list is of "extra steps" - just in case you accomplish the first list and have time left over.
Think of it as Extra Credit. Remember grade school? When you could go home with 110% on an exam?
To succeed as an All-or-Nothing Goal Achiever, set yourself up for that success. You have to have a long row of small accomplishments to reach the big, long-distance goals. This is what creates the energy that fuels the process for the five- and ten-year lifetime goals.
Shrug Your Shoulders Goal Achiever
This goal setting personality style takes things as they come. They go with the flow, adapting and making the best of any situation. Whether something great happens or something not-so-great happens, they respond with a shrug of the shoulders and move on the next task on the list.
While this style verges on the Zen of Goal Achievement, it doesn't produce much usable energy. And to achieve your dreams, you need not only to have energy but to maintain energy.
You need to acknowledge your accomplishments and enjoy them. That creates the energy which fuels momentum. Movement forward in turn fuels motivation, which is what keeps you going when life moves slowly (or gets stuck).
What shoulder-shrugging goal achievers need most is a way to produce that energy when they accomplish the tasks they set.
Now is a good time to have a chat with your Inner Child. Children aren't shoulder-shruggers. They get excited at even the smallest things; they find wonder in the everyday; they jump and dance and yell and sing at the slightest provocation. Let your Inner Child guide you in finding a way to energize the daily steps you take in pursuing your long-term goals. It might be as simple as adding gold star stickers to your To-Do chart.
Yay-I-Did-It Goal Achiever
You have an extremely positive attitude, you let yourself off the hook easily, you get excited by small achievements, and you tend to feel good at the end of the day when things are done. In addition, you have a healthy sense of pride, which fuels your energy, speeds up your momentum, and provides great motivation to achieve the steps to your goals.
So what happens? The Yay-I-Did-It goal achiever often gets so carried away that they overwhelm themselves with long lists of possibility. While they may start out easily moving unfinished tasks from extensive daily to-do lists to new and even more extensive daily lists, they eventually use all their energy in reorganizing and realigning their tasks.
While a stretch outside the comfort zone is important in achieving goals don't go so far that you start drowning in having so much to do you can't prioritize.
A great solution is to prioritize your to-do lists. Keep an A list separate from a B list, and if you're really determined, keep a third C list. They'll be easier to move from one week to the next just in case you don't get it all done!