Effective Goal Setting Tips And Hacks

In this busy life, we are always looking for effective goal setting tips and hacks/shortcuts.

Shortcuts are great so long as they help and empower you. When we refer to “hacks,” for goal setting, you might not be clear on what a hack is and how it can be instrumental in setting goals.

To be clear on hacks and what they mean, let’s take a quick look at keyboard hacks.

Perhaps you have heard the term hack but never taken the time to understand them. You can hack your Gmail emails if you receive multiple emails per day, as an example. Hacking your keyboard if you are constantly on the laptop can save you time and headaches. There are long lists but for time’s sake, here are two quick hacks:

Need to go back to a page you viewed two hours ago?
1. Hit Control + H and your history opens.
2. Did you download several files earlier? Hit Control + J.

Hacks for goal setting are anything that moves you forward, quickly and efficiently throughout the process and keeps you organized and motivated.

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Some Effective Goal Setting Tips And Hacks

Here are some effective goal setting tips and hacks I hope you can use.

Read through the items and decide the top ones that will work for you. Remember that everyone is different, and you may read a hack and think that it is crazy. Just move on and find your hacks, the ones that speak to you.

Visualize

Visualizing setting, doing, and accomplishing your goals is imperative. The best way to do this and hack your mind to success is to visualize the steps you need to take, not the end journey.

Dr. Maxwell Maltz is famous for his ground-breaking work that influenced the likes of Tony Robbins. One of the most important parts of his program is called, “Theatre of the Mind.” In this process, you are the director of the movie in your head. You start at the very beginning and work your way through. Starting at the end of your movie won’t work.

In this idea, you relax, close your eyes, and see yourself in a theatre, watching a movie of your design. In this case, it would be a movie about your goals and how you are going to achieve them.

As you watch the movie on the screen in front of you, the music and the lights are set by you. As the movie starts to progress, you get up from your chair and enter the movie, playing the parts.

You tweak everything and see yourself in the lead character part, where everything you desire, comes true.

Dr. Maltz’s book is great, however, my favorite part is the Theatre of the Mind section.

Dance Around Procrastination

When you find reaching your goals difficult and want to give up, the best thing to do is dance or step around the actual goal and focus entirely on the process of getting there.

Pretend you are a running back with a football under your arm. Your immediate focus when handed the ball, is not the goal line but getting around those 300 lb guys that are trying to trample you into the dirt.

Focus on the steps, put your head down, and just go for it.

Readjust

When a person fails in business, most times it comes down to this one thing. They had a goal in mind and started pouring money into achieving that goal with their business.

Spending money, they go further and further into debt until finally, they go bankrupt.

They don’t know when to stop. In hacking your goals, you need to be fully aware of what is working and what is not.

Stop and refocus if you see you need to. Adjust that goal or ask yourself if that is the right path or goal for you.

When you are going over Niagara Falls in a rowboat and you realize what a horrible idea that is, you wouldn’t continue to paddle towards the Falls. You would paddle in the opposite direction as hard as you could.

The next few effective goal setting tips revolve around using apps to help the process along.

Try Trello App

Trello is an app that stays in sync with all your devices. It is a great app for someone just starting their own business or for companies.

With Trello, you can set up boards and lists that help prioritize goals, and list the time to do them, and all members of the team can look in and add to it. Trello even allows you to add attachments to the cards you make with your project on it.

The Todoist App

Todoist App is a wonderfully simply way to organize your work and life, as well as collaborate with others on projects.

Try Strides App

Strides is a perfect app for individuals who want to write, track, and achieve their 90-day goals.

With Strides, you can set up daily reminders. This is important because to set new daily habits for success, you need a reminder to prompt you.

In using Strides, you can input a goal and attach a weight to it, so you know the value. Then write the action to take and off you go.

Strides tracks it so that you check at any time to see your performance.

Try The Goals On Track App

Another cool app for goal hacking is called “Goals on Track.”

This app allows you to SMART goal setting by recording your goals and the nitty-gritty details.

You can put your goals together and the app monitors your progress and then gives feedback on how well you are achieving your results.

The Fabulous Daily Habit Tracker App

If you need a health goal setting app that also works on your improving your daily habits, there’s an app for that. It’s called, “Fabulous Daily Habit Tracker.”  It helps to build healthy habits and works on the physical and mental aspects of you.

Try The Way Of Life App

The Way Of Life App can keep track of multiple goals. It records your performance and gives you graphs to read and determine how well you are doing.

The Smart Goal App

The Smart Goal App in I-tunes may be just the thing to get your creativity juices running. It helps with creating goals, your dreams, and successful habits. The dreams portion is a bucket list lovers “go to” section. It helps you to think up and organize long term bucket ideas like going to see the Northern Lights in Norway.

The Habitica App

If you enjoy gaming or did in your younger years, here is a goal setting app that is sure to be at the top of your list to grab. It’s called, “Habitica.”

This app is built to look like the games where you build up all the essential tools to fight an army. You even get to build your own Avatar. To earn your rewards, you have three types of tasks, “Dailies, Habits and To Do’s.” What is really cool about this app is in the Habits part, you can work on good habits and bad habits.

You can build new habits that assist you in reaching your goals and eliminate bad habits that stop you from attaining your goals.

Asana App

The Asana App is more for a team environment and it is normally a choice between Assana and Trello. It never hurts to test one against another to see what is the right fit for your team. You can assign project tasks to one person and it has multiple purposes.

If You Don’t Do Apps, Do A Book

If apps and software for hacking your goals is just not for you, check out this book on Amazon. It’s called, “The Desire Map-A Guide to Creating Goals With Soul.”

This book will help you create bucket lists, drill down to your core desired feelings, and create goals that inspire you. It comes with self-assessment quizzes, worksheets, and mapping tools.

This is a very handy book for anyone who is having difficulty deciding exactly what their goals are and what they want from life.

Don’t Give Up Too Easily

For effective goal setting tips, this is one you cannot allow to happen. Never allow yourself to get into the “I screwed up, so now I might as well go whole hog,” mindset.

You see this is in diet and exercise goals all the time. As you are following the goals you laid out for your diet and you allow yourself one cookie after dinner…. that suddenly escalates into three cookies- STOP! Yell that in your mind or even out loud.

If you are eating with other people, it may seem extreme but yelling stop and putting the brakes on, well it just plain works. Just ask yourself, would you rather be a bit embarrassed or blow your goals right out the door?

Truth be told, you may be embarrassed for a minute but when you explain why you yelled stop, people are very likely to congratulate you on being powerful enough to do that.

One Step At A Time

Put one foot in front of the other.

As the story goes, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”

In hacking your way to achieving your goals, if getting started at the beginning just isn’t working for you, start further up the ladder on your goals. Once you get some speed and action going, then head back to the beginning and start plugging in what you missed.

Many people fail to reach their goals because they never get out of the starter’s block.

Password To Brain Hacks

Here is a nifty hack for goal setting.

Do you know how internet security providers are always telling you to change your passwords? Well, it is a great idea and you can use it as a brain hack.

Instead of changing your password to bob123, think of a password related to your goals. For your most used Gmail account, use something like “6ilovehealthyfood+” or how about Facebook log-in passwords. Try out, “10Kpermonth$” These prompts will seep into your brain and have your subconscious mind working in the background to slam dunk your 90-day goals.

Don’t Give Up

Many people have tried to write 90-day goals and before they have finished, they quit. They are out of their comfort zone, trying to map out a roadway to success.

To hack your way out of this issue, try this. Go to work on the goals and if you don’t get far, put them away. The next day when you get up, go to the bathroom, and give yourself an “angry talk.” Get fired up and point the finger at the person responsible for you not being able to lay out a plan that will bring great joy to your life. Now go try again. And if that doesn’t work, do it again the next day.

Eventually, your brain will kick in because you have built an “I’ll keep at it until it works,” trigger in your brain. Your brain will see that you are not going to give up, no matter what, so it will surrender and become your partner in success.

Don’t Label

If you need a mind hack to reach your goal of never binge eating again? Eliminate certain food words.

For example, if you think that eating spaghetti and white bread is “bad” for you, chances are you will binge eat lots of protein. To make your weight loss goals and not binge eat, it is better to eat foods in moderation and not label any particular food.

Ask Yourself How And Why Questions

In goal setting, scientist conduct tests and in one such test they had people watch videos of mundane tasks such as a person brushing their teeth or cleaning the floors.

The people who watched the videos were then asked the questions, “How and Why?” The reason for this line of questioning is that the brain uses different areas to process those questions.

Ask yourself specifically how to brush your teeth to gain the maximum of tartar removal is processed in one cortex of the brain, while asking the question why is processed in an entirely different cortex.

This is useful in goal setting because if you are working on goals and become stuck, then ask yourself is this a “how” question? If it is, then switch to another cortex in your brain and ask, “why this goal is important.”

This hack prevents you from getting stuck and not moving forward.

Count Backwards

Because exercise is something a lot of people try to avoid, when they do hit the gym, they give it a blast and as they go through reps, they starting telling themselves how hard it is. They grunt as they count out the reps, 1 to 12 on the biceps machine.

Here is a little hack to help with reps. Count backward instead. This idea tricks your brain into believing it is getting easier rather than harder. As you get to 5, 4, 3…all of sudden rep 1 and 2 just aren’t as hard as 11 and 12 would have been.

Don’t Use Negative Talk

Your personal goals should be just that…your personal goals. However, it is not a problem to talk about your business or even your health goals.

When discussing your goals, refrain from using words like, “I can’t or but I tried that.” Negative words, such as can’t, but, or should, decrease your ability to motivate yourself. Instead, reframe the words to give new meaning and have a growth mindset.

An example of reframing the word “can’t,” is something we will look at now because it is an overused excuse. “I can’t save money, I spend as soon as I get it.” This can be reframed to, “I’ve had some issues with saving money, yet I know this will be solved since I am going to study how to budget and save.”

Tear Your Money

This next hack is an extreme one but if you commit to it, it is one of those very effective goal setting tips, because, well it just plain works.

Go to your bank and withdraw one hundred dollars in twenties.

Take those five bills and stick them on the wall, near your written goals. The first day that you do this, look at your top goal. Are you committed? Are you committed enough that if you do not complete your top goal, you will have to take a twenty-dollar bill and rip it into tiny little pieces?

If you follow this to the core, it is pretty much guaranteed that you will follow through on your goals, rather than lose your hard-earned money.

Don’t Be A Procrastinator

Procrastinators are not all equal. When you know that you are a procrastinator and you even tell people that you have a hard time reaching goals because of it, are you aware of what type you are? If not, you need to discover it, so that you can hack it and cure it.

There are five types of procrastinators and once you decide which type you are, you can go to work and overcome this issue.

The first one up is the Perfectionist. This type doesn’t want to be judged and worries that if things aren’t perfect, then people will look down on them. They avoid doing the work…setting the goals because someone might be watching.

The Imposter avoids goals because if they don’t have success they may be thought of as inferior.

Next, we have The Dread Filled. This person thinks setting and achieving goals or any type of work is boring, so they look for entertainment.

How about The Overwhelmed? Maybe this is you. There is so much to do and so little time, that you might as well couch surf instead.

Finally, we have The Lucky One. You may be the person who left everything to the last minute in high school and carried it over to being an adult. You mistakenly believe that you work best under pressure.

Once you discover the type you are, do the work to change it. This hack will bring you ultimate success.

Don’t Set Goals

Don’t set goals! Believe it or not, this is one of those very important and effective goal setting tips.

Most people do normal goal setting, but did you know that goal setting is a setup for failure?

Goal setters are people who do New Year’s resolutions. They write down a list of goals they think they would like to accomplish. When you look at Google search, you will see about 250,000 people entering terms like, “goal setting activities.” They are blissfully unaware of the better method.

Goal planning hacks your brain for the ride to success. When you goal plan, you have a goal, strategies, rewards, and checks/balances. It is far more advanced, and your internal system thrives on it.

Always, always goal plan.

I hope you have found the above to be effective goal setting tips and you can put some of these hacks into play for yourself.

Please comment below if you have anything else to add. Feel free to add your own effective goal setting tips, as I am sure there are many.