Do your big goals feel overwhelming? If you’re unsure of the goal setting steps to take, you’re not alone. Many of us get stuck trying to turn ambitious visions into actionable plans. The key is to use simple goal setting steps that help you move forward with clarity and confidence.
In this post, I’ll share a proven system for breaking down your vision into manageable steps. Whether you’re aiming for career success, personal growth, or both, these tips will help you take the next step toward your goals.
Why You Need a Goal Setting System
Big visions are exciting, but they can also feel daunting. Without clear goal setting steps, it’s easy to feel stuck or unsure of where to start. Breaking your vision into smaller, achievable pieces helps you maintain focus and build momentum.
Goal Setting Steps to Break Down Your Vision
1. Start with Annual Goals
Revisit your long-term vision. Choose one or two goals you can realistically achieve within the next year. Focusing on just a few goals ensures you don’t overwhelm yourself.
For example, if your five-year vision includes a promotion, your annual goal might be to document your achievements and find a mentor.
2. Break Goals into Monthly Milestones
Divide your annual goals into smaller monthly milestones. These serve as checkpoints to keep you on track.
Think of this process as training for a marathon. You don’t start by running 26.2 miles. Instead, you build endurance mile by mile.
3. Create Weekly Intentions
Weekly intentions are smaller steps that align with your monthly milestones. For instance, if your milestone is finding a mentor, your weekly intention might be identifying potential mentors in your network.
4. Focus on Daily Priorities
Each day, choose one to three priorities that support your weekly intentions. These daily actions create the momentum you need to achieve your goals.
Use tools like Google Calendar or a planner to schedule your daily priorities. Consistent tracking helps you stay accountable.
Proven Tools for Goal Setting
Using a time management tool is essential for staying organized. Tools like digital calendars, project management software, or simple planners help you track milestones and priorities.
Next Steps: Put These Goal Setting Steps into Action
Ready to take action? Start by revisiting your vision and choosing one goal to tackle this year. From there, use the steps above to create a plan.
For more support, check out my Goal Positioning System Mini Course. It’s designed to help you set and achieve goals that align with your values. Learn More
Need more clarity? Revisit Episode 2 of The Next Step with Corrie Lo to learn how to craft your five-year vision.
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Do you ever feel paralyzed by the thought of planning your future? Like your dreams and your goals are just. So big, you get completely overwhelmed and you have absolutely no idea where to start.
For so many of us type a overachieving women like myself, the pressure to create the perfect division can leave us stuck, spinning our wheels and completely unsure of ourselves.
In today’s episode we are going to build on from the clarity that you gained in episode two, where we identified or four key values, as well as created a five-year vision surrounding them.
And today we’re going to focus on breaking down that vision into manageable goals so that you can take confidence steps moving forward.
[00:00:48] Corrie LoGiudice: You’re listening to The Next Step with Corrie Lo, where we transform overwhelm into confident action. I’m Corrie LoGiudice, keynote speaker, coach, and working mama for here to help ambitious women just [00:01:00] like you take the next step, whether that be leadership at work, at home, or in your community. Let’s get started.
So after crafting my own first five-year vision, I remember feeling this sense of anxiety as well as excitement. Some of the things I put on my list were really unrealistic. So some examples of this included that I was going to be. Remarried with two children and another baby on the way, which for those of you who don’t know me and you’re new here, I left an abusive relationship with my son was only five months old.
So that said I did this five-year vision immediately after that divorce. So this was saying in five years that I was going to go from being a single mom of one to a married mom of four, which that’s a tight timeframe. Like, how exactly was I going to do that? So other things that I had put on there too, was that I was going [00:02:00] to get a promotion.
I was going to be able to change some of the arrangements at our office to be able to allow for more flexible work arrangements, which was important to me. And again, that was very Unrealistic because my old career, we were in wholesale distribution, we made our money moving boxes between locations. So we had to be in an office, So while I was excited by the concept of this future vision that I had, I was really stressed out and anxious about how realistic it actually was for me to achieve it.
The clarity was there, but I was so overwhelmed by how far away at all felt.
So here’s the thing visions are meant to inspire you, but at the same time, it’s completely understandable for them to feel daunting. If you don’t know the exact steps that you need to take, to be able to make it a possibility.
So some common pitfalls that I see [00:03:00] working with my clients and when I’m speaking to audiences include feeling overwhelmed by the overall scale of your vision, this is very similar to how I felt. Wanting to go from being a single mom of one to a married mother of four in less than five years.
Like how do you even begin with that?
Also another common pitfall is trying to tackle everything all at once. Like how would I tackle, going from being single, to being married at the same time that I’m trying to take over the world. My former company getting a promotion and completely changing their work-life balance arrangements.
It’s just. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed without having a clear plan when you’re trying to tackle everything all at once.
And then last but not least staying stuck in this cycle of perfectionism because you’re afraid to take action unless every single element is perfect.
[00:04:00] And the worst part about this is by getting stuck in perfection. You don’t even start at all right? And that’s what we’re trying to avoid.
All right, so let’s break down how to take this huge five-year vision. Into more achievable goals.
The first things first, you want to revisit that five-year vision. And in doing, so think to yourself, what is one thing? That I could really focus on from this vision in the next year. What’s one thing that would be entirely realistic for me to be able to check off my list this year.
What’s one thing that I can achieve this year that will bring me even closer to that.
Five-year vision.
So sit back and think to yourself what are one or two things max that I can tackle this year, specifically that are in direct alignment with my ultimate five-year vision.
Next we’re going to take that [00:05:00] big annual goal and break it into monthly milestones. The way I always like to describe this is it’s like running a marathon, right? You don’t go into running a marathon thinking, okay, I’m going to run the 26.2 miles right off the bat. No, you don’t train for 26.2 miles just by going out there and running 26.2, you have to take it in mile markers.
So from here, you’re going to take that big annual goal. And you’re going to break it into individual monthly segments. That would be achievable.
The best way to think of this is as smaller wins that when achieved, it keeps you on track, right? Cause you’re motivated to keep going.
So here’s an example. Let’s say that your goal for the year is you want to get a promotion. So some monthly milestones that you could include into there might be things like finding a mentor or starting to document your overall production. In your jobs so that you have that for, when you go to [00:06:00] your annual review. It also might be starting to build your network,
starting to do more networking.
Now, one really quick hack that I wanted to share for this while you’re breaking out your monthly goals is to overall, when you’re looking at your calendar block out stuff that you know is an obligation that you need to meet first.
So for me, as an example, I love to take one of those, year at a glance calendars. And I block out things like, summer vacation when my kids are home from school or school. Breaks or in different doctor’s appointments or vacations with my family, things that are important. Then from there, it makes it much, much easier to plan everything else around that.
And not that the things that you personally need to commit to get lost in the shuffle.
Now, the next step from here is creating weekly intentions. So you’re going to take that monthly milestone and you’re going [00:07:00] to break it into weekly intention so that you have maybe anywhere from one to three things that you’re really focused on over the course of the week that are going to help you get to that overall monthly milestone.
So as an example, let’s say that this month milestone is your looking to find a mentor.
This week’s intention might be looking through your list of connections and seeing who inspires you and why. So then that way you’re prepared for the following week. When you actually start reaching out to them to start up some discussions.
From there it’s as simple as every single day, breaking it into priorities.
What are your daily priorities aligned with your intention, your milestone and your goal?
Kick off each day with anywhere from one to three things that are going to help move you towards that mark. So in the example that we were just sharing before, it might be that you set aside [00:08:00] five minutes from your day to start writing out a list of the different mentors that you potentially could reach out to, and really start thinking about, okay.
Why specifically is it that this is somebody that inspires me, that I should reach out to.
So one great actionable tip I have for you is to make sure that you’re leveraging different sort of time management tools. It could be anything from a planner or a digital calendar. I personally love Google Cal. Use that all the time, and make sure that you’re inputting all of these intentions goals, milestones that we had talked about so that it keeps you on track week by week.
Alrighty. So today we just talked about how to take that huge overwhelming five-year vision and break it down into completely manageable and achievable. Annual monthly, weekly and daily goals.
So your next step for today is going to be to revisit the five-year vision from episode two, if [00:09:00] you haven’t listen to episode two, your first step is actually going to be listening to that, but you’re going to take care of that five-year vision. And then from there, dive deeper, breaking it down with this goal positioning system as I like to call it.
And if you want even more support on this, check out my goal positioning system mini course on my website. We’ll make sure that we link into the show notes.
Thank you so much for showing up for this episode. I am so proud of you for making the time for yourself to not only create. Greater vision for yourself, but for taking the time to break it into manageable steps so that you can take action on it.
Next week. We’re going to talk all about what to do when you get off track.
Sometimes we set great goals, intentions plans, and we start doing all the things and we lose momentum. We fall off the rails, right? What exactly do we do when that happens? Check back next week and we’re going to dive deep [00:10:00] into that. We’ll see you there.
[00:10:01] Corrie LoGiudice: Thanks for checking out the next step with Corrie Lo. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave a review. Together, we’ll transform overwhelm into action, and we’ll keep taking the next step towards confident leadership. See you next time.