Do you ever feel unproductive or distracted instead of getting the results you want? You want to aim high, but you don’t reach your goals. Your ambitions are only a hope instead of a plan.

Goals are tough to achieve. Sometimes your goals are too broad or unrealistic, or you struggle to put in the hours. This can have a lot of reasons, but mostly due the lack of time. The good news is you’re already ahead of a lot of people by settings goals. Weather they are achieved or not.

Here are five steps to get you going towards achieving your goals. Read them carefully and make it a habit to get the best results.

1. Make a habit of planning your week before you begin it

Ever experienced starting a week without a planning? The days go by, and you will easily get distracted because you miss direction. Direction towards your goals, which means you’ll miss direction to what you really want. Yogi Berra once said: “If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up someplace else”. He is one of the greatest catchers to ever play the game of baseball

A better approach to start your week is by planning what you will do. Here are some tips:

• Create a recurring event in your calendar to plan the next week.
• Do this after you have reflected the last week (more on reflection at step three).

2. Track time of how you spend each day

It’s not enough to plan your activities. You need to be sure you put in the hours to get to the results you desire. Many time trackers consider this their most important habit. If you’ve never tracked time before, you might be surprised to hear that.

Many people fail after planning. They plan and procrastinate, and don’t take responsibility of their time. When this happens, the planning become overwhelming. Planned events move ahead, it becomes too much, and hope is lost.

By taking responsibility of your time and tracking what you did, you’ll be more satisfied after you did the work. This magical feeling is exactly what you need. You need it to stop further procrastination and move straight towards your goals. The feeling that you can do it. You will become obsessed with putting in the hours and working towards your goals. And that is exactly what you need to succeed.

Here are some tips. Tips to avoid using dozens of different tools, and wasting time with micromanagement:

• Use your calendar. No new tool needed, and this already contains your planning from step one.
• Track a least of 15 minutes to avoid micromanagement.

3. Reflect your progress

“You cannot have a meaningful life without having self-reflection.” - Oprah Winfrey

She is one of the most successful global media leaders the world has ever known. And one of the most influential people of her time.

It may not be clear to those who don’t take responsibility of their time yet. But there are many benefits of self-reflection.

Working towards your goals enlightens you. Every goal you reach feels like a victory. Reflecting gives you the same feeling of a little victory. You get energized and your mindset will change from “want to” to “can do”. That takes you to the essential stage in reaching your goals: believing in yourself. Little victories are the fuel you need to keep keep the "can do" mindset.

But what if you are not heading towards your goal? You got distracted, procrastinated, and tracked time of things you were not supposed to do. There's good news: you just become self-aware of your habits. This is where changes begin: with becoming aware of the situation, so you can improve it. Do not underestimate this knowledge.

Be careful though after the first weeks. We people tend to think they are putting in the effort, but our actions show otherwise. Becoming self-aware can be confronting. Just know that from now on, you are the captain of your ship that sails the oceans of time.

The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.

4. Remove all distractions

The culture we live in with can be very distracting and this can damage productivity. Mostly, notifications from electronic devices only add distraction. A lot of social media apps are based on recurring attention. Your attention. If you are not paying for the product, you are the product.

Removing distractions is essential to become more productive and achieve your goals. A list to limit distractions:

• Add a site blocker to remove distractions to specific websites. BlockSite for example, a handy extension if you are using Google Chrome.
• Do not allow notifications from time consuming apps. You can still use the apps if you like but change your usage behaviour to only when you choose to. Not whenever the app sends you a notification in the middle of you executing a more important task.

5. Grow to your ideal balance

We want to be able to focus our time and energy on the things that are most important to us. Achieving this is hard if you don't know how you spend your time.

This is because a lot of people are not behind the wheel to set direction. They are not reflecting how they use their time, and they make assumptions based on how they feel. Which is not strange, because in the end following your feeling is a good thing. But feeling something because of insufficient knowledge is a pity. Luckily, the insights of tracking your time will give you all the tools you need to shape your ideal life.

Grow towards your new lifestyle and achieve your goals. Follow the steps described in this article. It is very important to repeat them. Check progress daily to see if you are on track. And reflect weekly to know if you reached your weekly goals. Segro helps you with these reflections.

Conclusion

Do you ever feel unproductive or distracted instead of getting the results you want? You can change your way to reach your goals by following 5 steps:

• Make a habit of planning your week before you begin it
• Track time of how you spend each day
• Reflect your progress
• Remove all distractions
• Grow to your ideal balance by repeating these steps

Improving your lifestyle is essential to sustainable results. Create awareness and belief in yourself. By planning, tracking, and reflecting your time, you get all the steps you need to reach your goals. Segro helps you with these steps. It is available for free.