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Learning how to set realistic goals can make progress in life feel less overwhelming. With so many obligations to juggle, setbacks are almost guaranteed. What you need is a plan to help you overcome these obstacles and increase your chances of success.
How do you ask? We will break that massive, smoking dumpster fire of a to-do list down into small, digestible tasks that are easily completed.
How to Set Realistic Goals: Turn a Mountain into a Molehill
I can say it is nice to do the reverse once in a while!
First things first: learning how to set realistic goals begins with understanding what you’re actually working with. Start by making a quick list. It doesn’t need to be pretty. This will become your master list, and because you’ll revise it repeatedly, it may get quite messy.
Write down everything that you need to accomplish in the immediate future. I like to give about a week’s time frame. This would include any reading or other studying activities that you also plan to do within that time. Keep your to-do list completely up to date to best plan your time.
Next to each task, add the date it absolutely has to be done.
We can worry about hopes and dreams later. This is just quick and dirty. If there are separate steps to a project, make sure you write each of those steps separately. You should start to see a ridiculously long list of mundane tasks. That’s good! That is what we want. Most importantly, you see next to that list when you actually need to finish things. Now we start to organize.
On a separate sheet of paper, list everything that absolutely must be completed over the next three days, organizing the tasks by day.
Expect a task to take about double the time you think it will. Do not add the entire string of instructions, just the project’s individual components. Now you can better handle the urgency of a task rather than that daunting list. Ideally, each of these tasks will take only 15 – 30 minutes to complete. If anything takes substantially longer than that, consider breaking it down further.
By breaking down big lists and projects into tiny pieces like this, you can feel a sense of accomplishment as you start crossing items off your list. Doing this reduces the likelihood of you stressing that you can’t get it all done.
As you complete small portions of the list, you’ll see why this shift matters. It is an important part of learning how to set realistic goals. Each success will give you the motivation and positivity to tackle more projects. You’ll also avoid wasting time and energy on tasks that don’t require your immediate attention.
It also gives you some flexibility to allow yourself to rotate tasks you don’t feel like doing, with others that may be easier or more entertaining. It will only be a few minutes until you are done. You can just push through it to the good stuff!
Every time you sit down to work on your list, add any new tasks that come up. You will start blowing through the list of tasks faster than due.
An important part of learning how to set realistic goals is making sure your task list is both manageable and achievable.
Positive reinforcement is the best motivation. Expecting yourself to pull off a miracle and do everything in one night is just setting yourself up for failure. You already have so much external pressure, you don’t need to put any extra on yourself. You know what is realistic to do, considering your own schedule.
Do NOT dogpile tasks on yourself. You will feel much better about how much you finish if you start tomorrow’s tasks early than if you have to complete today’s tasks tomorrow.
Be kind to yourself when things don’t go according to plan. It’s okay to admit you can’t do it all.
Forcing yourself to push through an impossibly large pile of work that you can never hope to accomplish on time will only slow you down like quicksand. Feeling successful in any task is considerably more motivating than failure. With that feeling of accomplishment, you can coast through more jobs in less time because positive reinforcement motivates your actions.
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