Creating project goals is easy.

Achieving them is not.

There’s a reason only 8% of people achieve their goals. It’s because they’re HARD. And achieving big goals can be intimidating. You’re creating not only a place to live but a home that inspires, empowers, and motivates you to live your best life. That’s a big project – and a big goal.

Setting out to create a project as impactful and influential as a family home is one of the biggest goals you’ll ever attempt. So, it should come as no surprise that you should do everything in your power to set yourself up for success.

Below are what I believe to be the most important things to successfully achieve your project goals.

Understand your WHY

Achieving your big project goals takes a lot of effort and motivation.

It’s not always going to be smooth sailing. You’ll undoubtedly hit roadblocks and challenges along the way.

But, the best way to stay motivated through those hard times and to maintain your stamina is to be crystal clear on WHY you’re doing your it in the first place. What is your ultimate purpose for the project?

If your child was born with a musculoskeletal disorder that limits his or her mobility to a wheelchair, you’re going to have a strong desire to create a safe and accessible home. Keeping that “why” front and center in your life is critical. Knowing that you’re creating your future home for your family and your child who desperately needs a better place to live will keep you motivated to complete your project, even when times get hard in the process. You can draw on that personal connection and remember that there is a reason for needing to accomplish your project that’s bigger than just building another house.

Set SMART goals

People don’t spend nearly enough time making sure the goals they’re setting are actually the right goals to set. Some goals are completely unrealistic, others aren’t relevant to their life goals, and yet others aren’t specific enough to gauge whether they are actually achievable or not.

One of the main reasons people don’t achieve their goals is because they don’t set SMART project goals – ones that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Creating a new house is easy to do, but creating a home is not. What is it about your project that would make it uniquely YOURS?

Once you understand the who, what, when, where, why, and how of your project, you’ll realize exactly what you need to accomplish to make sure you successfully achieve your project goals, and not someone else’s goals.

Develop an Action Plan

The first step in accomplishing your project goals is to put a plan in place to guide you through the process of achieving said goals.

Creating an action plan is about breaking down your project goal into smaller bite-sized micro-goals and creating to-do lists. If you think of your big project goal as your long-term goal, your micro-goals are your short-term goals that when completed consistently will eventually result in you reaching your long-term goal.

Having a series of steps written down, putting due dates next to them, and scheduling time to work on your project will make it easier to take action because you can stop focusing on that big overwhelming and daunting goal and instead focus just on the smaller micro-goal you’re working on right now. It’s much less intimidating to focus just on the next step than it is to only see the big picture.

Get off your butt and do something!

Putting a plan in place is simply planning. The real test is, once you have a plan in place, will you take action and actually do the work to make it happen?

Stop whining. Stop procrastinating. Stop making excuses. And just do something.

Action creates progress and momentum. Once you start taking action and doing the work, you’ll start to feel better and feel more motivated to keep going.

So start with your first micro-goal and work towards achieving it. Maybe your first micro-goal is to research and plan out the rest of the steps in the process. To do that, you may research online, talk to builders, designers, a banker, and/or a realtor to understand more about the process and what it will entail. Just start there. Whatever your first step is, just focus on that and make an effort to do it.

Keep going at it consistently

Progress is always incremental. You can’t build a house in one step. It takes accomplishing a series of smaller steps to build a home. Consistent and intentional progress on your micro-goals will get you there.

The reason for creating your action plan in the first place is so that you can have a road map for what steps are next. That way, you have a guide to help you consistently work towards accomplishing your project.

It might be very comforting to finish a task then just rest on your laurels hoping that someone else will handle the rest. But it doesn’t work like that because this is YOUR dream project. You need to be involved to answer questions, make decisions, take action, and steer the ship.

No one will care about your project as much as you do, so do something about it.

Review. Tweak. Correct Course as required.

As you make progress toward your micro-goals, you will intuitively figure out what is going right and what isn’t quite on track. Take a step back to evaluate what you can do better. Then do it. You might go wrong, but chances are you’ll be right more often. You’ll get increasingly better at doing what works for you the more consistently you put in the effort.

It’s like Matt Damon put it in The Martian —

“You solve one problem… and you solve the next one… and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home.”

Also, at times you may get too focused on the small stuff that you lose sight of the big picture. Stepping back to review progress to make sure your efforts are aligned with your big project goals is critical to the success of your project. You may like those large custom windows but if they don’t fit in the budget you’ve allocated for in your goals, then no matter how nice they look, you won’t be happy with the final result because you won’t be able to afford the upgrade.

Staying true to your initial goals, whether they are related to budget, schedule, sustainability, or performance is critical. And taking the time to step back, review, evaluate and correct course if necessary is important to achieving your goals.

Share your goals with others & find accountability

Some of us tend to be modest about our passion projects – mostly out of fear: fear of rejection, fear of failure, and even fear of success. But the more you tell people about your passions and ideas, the more you’re likely to put in the time  and energy to see those efforts come to fruition. The more you put yourself out there the more you open yourself to criticism and scrutiny, which makes you want to do better – and not want to let the people down whom you’ve confided in.

That’s how accountability works, too. When you find someone to share your project goals and progress with, you’re letting them in on your big idea and your desire to accomplish your big dream. You’re also asking them to hold you accountable and to make sure you do what you say you’re going to do. You don’t want to let them or yourself down.

The other thing that sharing your goals and passions with other people does for you is it gives you a reality check. Sharing your project ideas and goals gives you a valuable perspective and feedback that you can use to better your ideas and further your dreams.

Reward Yourself & Celebrate

And lastly, one of the easiest ways to accomplish your goals is to reward yourself and celebrate your efforts along the way. Even small progress towards a big goal deserves recognition and reward. Rewarding yourself helps keep you motivated. It also helps you stay focused on continuing to make progress.

When you tell yourself that you and your kids will go out for ice cream after you meet with the banker, you’re giving yourself an incentive to complete your next task. That incentive, no matter how big or small, will give you momentum to complete your next task and schedule the time to work on the following task on your list.