Creating a Success Plan

Creating a success plan that will help you achieve your goals and overcome barriers is important. Understanding how to create a success plan that works is more important. Not all goals are created equal.

What does that mean?

This article is the third part of a four-part series on Goal Setting & Tracking. Welcome back if you have been following this series! If you are a new reader to the series you can find the other series here:

Rediscovering Your Passions | Goal Setting and Tracking Series
Barriers Challenging Your Success | Goal Setting and Tracking Series
Creating a Success Plan | Goal Setting and Tracking Series (this one)
Tracking the Success Plan | Goal Setting and Tracking Series

Now that I’ve explained the series, I should continue explaining how people typically set themselves up for failure when they are goal setting.

Most people set goals that have outcomes out of their control. These are outcomes that rely on an outside influence saying “yes” to your plan.

For example, someone setting the goal of losing 50 lbs. this year. To most people that seems reasonable and may appear to be in your control. So they break the 50 lbs into monthly and weekly weight loss goals.

However, the body is highly complex and is affected by changes to diet, water amounts, stress, sleep, anxiety, hormones, gut health, and much more. Understanding those potential barriers and practicing self-awareness will help you with this next step, creating a success plan.

Here’s another example that most businesses set, revenue goals. Those are typically broken into monthly and weekly goals as well. These seem reasonable on the surface.

However, you need clients to walk in the door and make the decision to purchase. Understanding the process of making those two actions successful will help you with this next step, creating a success plan.

We started this Goal Setting & Tracking Series by rediscovering your passion and setting your long-term goals. You downloaded The Ultimate Life Goal Journal and used the worksheets to help you figure out what you’d like to do to create the life you want.

Then last week we discussed barriers and how you need to identify potential barriers stopping or slowing down your progress towards the goals you have. Those should be listed on the worksheet found in the Goal Setting & Tracking Bundle as well.

Now, it’s time to take your 1-year goals and the barriers you identified and create a success plan that will work for you. These are mini-goals and actions that will help you break through the barriers and move towards your big goals.

Creating the 1-Year Success Plan

The 1-Year Success Plan will help you plan actions or mini-goals for each quarter (3-month period) for the next year. It is important to think about the life goals you want to focus on for this year and break them down with clear actions you can take.

Aligning the barriers and 1-year big goals with your 1-year success plan will keep the focus on the end picture, creating the life you want.

When you are using your barriers as part of this process you will quickly realize that there may be some personal development needed to get the ball running. Maybe you have a habit you need to break.

Maybe there are some hard relationship discussions that need to happen along with consistent actions you need to do to gain someone’s trust again. Not all barriers are going to be easy but they will need to be part of creating a success plan.

I personally have taken the time to lay out high-level actions and mini-goals for each quarter. I used my 1-year goals and the barriers to help plan out the year. Next, I started a quarterly plan that breaks the first quarter into specific actions by month.

Creating the Quarterly Success Plan

This step breaks the mini-goals into ACTIONS. The actions must be under YOUR control. They should never be reliant on outside influences.

What does this mean?

The quarterly success plan should be how you are going to achieve a goal, not what the goal is.

Let’s go back to the revenue goals for a business. The quarterly success plan needs to include the actions you need to take each month to make the revenue for the quarter. It needs to include specific actions to overcome barriers you have and a process (set of actions) for making the sales you need to reach that goal for the quarter.

Be specific and thoughtful for each planned activity. If the barriers are big then you may not know how to plan out more than one month’s activity. That is okay and it is nothing to stress about, trust me.

As you take action during the first month you will start to understand the barriers and be able to break them down into actionable steps. You have the freedom to use the planning worksheet to help keep it in one place.

My personal goals have some big barriers identified. These barriers require time to research best practices and then I need to figure out a plan. My quarterly success plan has actions planned for this month and next but after that, it is currently blank. I’ll be filling them in and possibly adjusting the 1-year plan once I understand the barriers and their impact on my goals.

I’ve also highlighted a barrier-breaking plan in my quarterly success plan so I understand how I’m addressing barriers through this quarter. This is a checklist to make sure I’m able to move forward. Next, I’ll break these monthly actions into a weekly success plan.

Creating a Weekly Success Plan

The weekly success plan is similar to the Quarterly plan in that it is actionable tasks that you have control over. The worksheet included in the Goal Setting & Tracking Bundle includes 4 main areas for your week: Top Priorities, Leading Actions, If Possible, and Don’t Forget.

The top priorities are the actions you have the pleasure of choosing to work on this week to make sure you are working towards the success plan for the month. Leading Actions are the actionable tasks that move you closer to your Life Goals.

Try not to be overzealous with the top priorities planned for the week. After all, you will have other activities required to maintain the status quo of your life right now; the leading actions of your life.

The Leading Actions are the actions you have complete control over and will help you maintain progress. If you were to stop doing these tasks then progress towards the goals wouldn’t matter because life would become more chaotic than before.

Why list them if you need to do them regularly?

There are a couple of reasons to list the must-do tasks:

Creating a list clears the brain from clutter and helps when learning new activities.
You might gain some insight on how to simplify life for you by creating that list.

The “if possible” list includes activities that aren’t a top priority or a must-do activity, but may become that down the road so they go on the list so they aren’t cluttering the brain. These activities only get looked at if you have time in the week.

They should never replace other important activities like building relationships with your loved ones or taking time for self-care.

Finally, the “don’t forget” list are the important dates or activities outside of your goal setting that can’t be forgotten. I include work functions, personal functions, and kid’s events that I can’t forget about. They are usually on a schedule as well, but having them listed with my weekly plan helps keep a visual in front of me.

What You Need for a Success Plan

When creating a success plan there are 3 important factors you need to consider:

Your 1-Year BIG Goals that you set for yourself.
The Potential Barriers that you identified, might stop or slow your progress.
Creating a Success Plan that has ACTIONS that YOU can control.

I recommend using The Ultimate Life Goal Journal to help you through this process. There are worksheets that help you through creating a success plan.

Then plan the first quarter by setting monthly actions to meet the first-quarter goals. Each action should be directly aligned with the BIG picture, moving you past the barriers and toward your goals.

Finally, plan the week with actions specific to the monthly plan, and include other actions that must be done, and not forgotten.

Please join me next week, when we will discuss tracking the success plan. This step provides accountability and when done correctly you will learn to figure out how to adjust the success plan when surprise barriers are slowing you down.

The Goal Setting & Tracking Series
1. Rediscovering Your Passions | Goal Setting and Tracking Series
2. Barriers Challenging Your Success | Goal Setting and Tracking Series
3. Creating a Success Plan | Goal Setting and Tracking Series (this one)
4. Tracking the Success Plan | Goal Setting and Tracking Series