This Simple 5 Step Battle Blueprint Will Help You Achieve Your Personal Goals
There is a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that goes, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” I couldn’t agree more. It’s all well and good to write down goals and the things we want to accomplish, but the work can’t stop there. The things we want won’t materialize out of thin air. We need to plan and figure out what we need to do to achieve them. That’s why I love creating a battle blueprint for all my goals and projects.
You can write down as many goals as you want, but the main question remains: How are you going to achieve them? That’s where your battle blueprint comes into play!
A battle blueprint is exactly as the name implies. It’s an actionable plan of tasks and to-dos that I need to focus on to see a goal or project to completion. Without it, I’d be twiddling my thumbs not doing a thing.
Here are the battle blueprint steps I take to plan out my goals
#1 — Set a deadline
One of the first things I do when planning out my goals is to set a deadline. Deadlines are wonderful tools for boosting productivity because they hold you accountable. Consider school or work projects you’ve had in the past. Each of those had deadlines. And because they had deadlines you knew how much time you had to work on it before turning it in.
Adding deadlines to personal goals is no different. It raises the stakes in a way. This makes you more willing to work on them.
When setting a deadline in my battle blueprint, I ask myself the following questions:
What’s a realistic timeline I can get this done in?
How important is this goal compared to the others?
Some goals are going to have bigger priorities than others. That’s fine. But give a deadline to every goal you have. Don’t try and accomplish everything in one year. For yearly goals, I like to keep it limited to five. Any more than that and I’m likely to overwhelm myself.
Look at the list of your current goals. If you don't have one, take a few minutes to brain dump some things you want to do. Don't worry about big or small they are. Once you finish that, choose three to five you want to focus on over the next 12 months and give them deadlines.
#2 — Time to get specific
This is where you dig deep and ask yourself, “How am I going to work towards this goal?” Look at your deadline. Now, look at the goal itself. How can you break that goal up into smaller bits? Reverse engineering can be useful during this step.
For example, I’m currently working on a book proposal for a non-fiction project. My goal is to be pitching agents by early December. Here’s how I broke down that large goal:
August = write sample chapters
September = write the proposal
October = get feedback on the proposal + write the query
November = edit entire proposal (plus sample chapters) + finalize query letter + prepare agent list
December = start pitching
I then broke each month’s tasks down into weekly and daily tasks. During August, my goal was to write for 30 minutes every day. Did I write every day? No, but giving myself the entire month to write the sample chapters meant I had some leeway.
That’s another thing I want to stress. Make sure you give yourself leeway for those unexpected setbacks. Life happens. Things out of our control will derail you. Deal with them as they happen. If it means taking a day or two away from a goal, so be it. Simply get back on track when you can.
#3 — Track your progress
One of the best ways to see how far along you are in your goals is to track your progress. This can be done in several ways. Some people create habit trackers. Others might journal their daily progress. And a few will create graphs to keep track. Whatever you choose to track your progress, I highly recommend that you do.
Bestselling author Victoria Schwab has a great method that is easy to mimic. Every month she creates a tracker in her journal. Here is an example. As you can see she tracks a lot. Don’t feel like you have to put that many things on your tracker. If you simply want to track habits related to your goals, go for it.
The purpose of trackers like this is for you to see that even if you have one or two bad days, you’ve had many more good days. Too often we think that one bad day is enough to throw us off our intended paths. But when you look back at your tracker and see how much you’ve already done, you think, “Hey, I’m doing pretty good.”
While I don’t have a tracker like Victoria Schwab’s, I do track my progress. I do it weekly. Every Sunday I sit down for 10 minutes and ask myself, “How did I work towards my goals this week?” I jot them down in a bullet point format and am able to look back each week to see my progress.
#4 — Refresh your routines where possible
Your battle blueprint is nearly done. You have your deadlines, your smaller to-do list, and your tracker. Now it’s time to figure out when you’re going to do certain tasks. This is where most people fail before they even begin. If you can’t find time to work on your personal goals then you’re not going to accomplish them. It’s as simple as that.
Take a look at your day. Note any moments where you spend time on social media or watching TV. Could you work on any of your goals during that time?
You have to refresh your routines in order to complete your goals. You need to add new tasks. You may have to limit the time you spend on the couch to get some small tasks done. You may need to take a short social media break.
This is not the end of the world. This is you working on something that’s going to better your life and yourself. Why wouldn’t you make time for that? For example, if you want to read more, you have to schedule reading time. So instead of scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, read for 30 minutes.
These little changes to your routines are going to have long-term benefits for you, I promise. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be worth it.
#5 — Make your ambitions known
One of the last things I do before embarking on any task related to my personal goals is to make my ambitions known. What do I mean? I mean writing them down wherever and whenever. It sounds a little extreme. Let me simplify it.
Say you have four goals you want to accomplish over the next 12 months. Find a pad of sticky notes and a Sharpie. Write each goal down on a separate sticky note. Put that sticky note somewhere you look every single day.
Some places could be:
Bathroom mirror
Refrigerator
Laundry room
Workspace
Planner or calendar
Use a couple of sticky notes and put those goals everywhere. The more you see them, the more you’ll be inclined to work on them. This is because you’re reminded every time you read the goal how much you want it.
It might look silly to have a ton of sticky notes around but when you see your goals laid out in front of you every single day you’re going to want to work on them. If only to take the sticky notes down.
Your battle blueprint will look different depending on the goal. It may cover a span of months, weeks, or days. The point is setting realistic deadlines and actionable steps. All of that will see you through to the completion of it. Know that you’ll have setbacks and that’s okay. Simply re-evaluate and keep going.
There’s no greater feeling than accomplishing the goals you set for yourself. If you haven’t started yet, now’s the time to do it. Use these steps to get you started and adjust accordingly. You can do this!
How do you make sure you’re accomplishing your goals? Do you break large projects down into smaller tasks or do you wing it? What’s one thing you want to improve when it comes to goal setting and planning? Is there anything you want me to expand on in another post? Comment below.
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