If you’re about to sit down and write some goals for the new year, there are a few things you should consider.

First, understand that the purpose of goal setting is to gain clarity about what’s important to you, and thus worthy of your focus and commitment. You have limited time and resources so limit your goals to no more than three. One is better. One big goal for the year, the achievement of which will make everything else easier or better.

Second, goal setting isn’t done until you determine what you need to do to achieve the goal and you commit to doing it.

You can’t control outcomes, you can only control your behavior. What activities will you do to achieve your goal? What new habits will you acquire? What will you give up so you have the time and energy to do what’s needed?

Finally, make sure your goal is something you truly want, not something you think you should want or something someone else wants for you.

When you think about the goal and imagine having achieved it, you should feel excited. As you imagine yourself doing the daily work needed to achieve your goal, you should be just as excited.

The right goal will pull you forward. When you wake up each day, your first thoughts will naturally be about your goal and the work you are doing to achieve it, and you will feel good about that. You’ll want to run to your desk and get to work. You’ll want to stay up late reading, making notes, writing down ideas.

If it’s the right goal, you will, as Napoleon Hill said, have a burning desire to achieve it. You will be single-minded in your devotion to it. You will be like a successful friend of mine who describes himself as, “a monomaniac on a mission”.

Examine the goal you have chosen and see how you feel about it. If it feels good, you won’t struggle to achieve it. Yes, you’ll work hard but the time will pass quickly, and if you fall short, you won’t mind that much because you’ll know where you’re going and you’ll know you’ll get there.

This will help you set and achieve your marketing goals

My daughter and her husband are in town and have been going with me on some of my walks. I learned from them that I don’t need a wearable device to measure the number of steps I take in a day, I can do that with an app. And so now I’m tracking my steps.

But that damn app is mocking me. Granted, it’s only been a couple of days (over Christmas), but it’s telling me I’m nowhere near the 10,000 steps it sets as the default.

I’ve been walking six days a week now for several months and it’s going well. I’m losing weight and getting stronger and it’s a habit I know I can keep. But I’m so far from the goal it’s not motivating me, it’s doing just the opposite.

What to do?

Do I lower the goal from 10,000 steps for now and increase it once I hit it?

Do I leave the goal at 10,000 steps and work harder?

Or do I give it a week, see how it’s going, then decide?

You might have a similar process to go through in your goal setting for the coming year.

Let’s say you would like to gross one million dollars in 2018. You know that’s unlikely but not impossible. You also know that if you get to the middle of the year and you’re not even close to the pace you need to be, you’ll probably get discouraged and tell yourself “next year”. (You know this because that’s what happened last year.)

I have a suggestion. Something I’ve written about before (and done). It’s a way to set goals that you never fail to achieve.

That’s because instead of setting a singular goal, you set three versions of the goal.

Version one is your “dream” goal. Let’s say that’s $1,000,000 gross. You know you probably won’t hit it but just thinking about it gets you excited and motivated to explore new ideas and increase your activity level.

Version two is your “target” goal, something you know will take significant effort but is not out of reach. If you grossed $500,000 this year, your target goal for next year might be $600,000. You know you will have to work hard to get there but you see that this is something you can probably accomplish without herculean effort.

The third version of your goal is your “minimum”. It’s something you absolutely know you can do without much in the way of extra effort. You keep doing what you’ve been doing, and a little more, and you’re almost certain to get there. Your minimum goal might be $550,000.

Breaking up your goals this way all but ensures that you’ll accomplish one of them. You are thus continually hitting goals, feeling good about it, and inspired to reach higher.

If I apply this to walking, my dream goal is 10,000 steps, 5,000 is my target, and 4,000 is my minimum.

And, yippy skippy, I see I’m already close to hitting my minimum for the day.

What are the three versions of your marketing goals?