Repacking Your Suitcase

So, have you repackaged your goals for last year?  Repackaged?  What am I talking about? 
Repackaging your goals is when you rearrange your goals from last year, rename them, reorder them - anything, but making a plan to take action on them.
 
Have you ever rearranged the papers on your desk into pretty file folders with neat labels?  You didn't really resolve what to do with the paper; you just put it in a different wrapper.  It's a bit like repacking a suitcase for a trip.  No matter how efficiently you pack and repack, it does nothing to move you closer to the trip you've been planning.
 
If you found yourself recently putting together your last year’s goals and they looked suspiciously like last years goals, STOP.
 
Ask yourself these questions, first:

I'm going to try harder, hasn't worked for most people.  They say most people can grow a business to $1 million working half days.  Wow - that sounds outrageous!  A half day - Oh, right, a half day would actually be 12 hours!  Ok, so how do you grow your business to $10 million?  Easy - work ten times as hard.
 
No, trying harder, then, isn't the answer to achieving the goals you weren't able to achieve last year.  Look at your goals.  Are they specific?  Will you know when you've achieved the goals?  A goal of spending more time working on your marketing isn't specific.  Spending 1 minute more on your marketing would technically meet the goal as you stated it.  How much is "more?"
 
Is your goal realistic?  Realistic isn't what I've been hearing from all the latest gurus.  State your dream - put it out there or it'll never appear.  There is some validity to the idea of visualizing your dream.  However, when setting goals for the upcoming year, you need to have your feet on the ground and assess how achievable is your goal.
 
Let's say you have a goal of generating $1 million in sales, selling coffee.  A bit like Starbucks, but using the couple of coffee makers you have sitting around the house, and your blender for those frozen fru-fru coffee drinks.  Let's say your average sale is $5 - how many cups will you have to sell to make $1 million over the next 12 months.  That's only 200,000 cups, or 25,000 pots of coffee (12,500 each if you have two coffee makers).  Let's say you're not going to work insane hours - just 5 days a week.  That would translate to just over 96 pots of coffee a day.  Ok, even if you work 7 days a week, it still translates to over 68 pots of coffee each and every day.  Hmmm...that's beginning to sound a little questionable.  You get the point?
 
Whatever your goal - if you don't know the very next step to take toward that goal, and the step after that, you'll be like the person packing and repacking their suitcase.  It doesn't move you any closer to achieving that goal.
 
And, finally, does your goal have a deadline?  By what date will you achieve that goal?  There is something to be said for a count down that gets the adrenaline pumping and the feet moving toward a goal.  Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six...­