How to plan and achieve personal goals that truly matter

Published on 25-02-2024

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I will bet you have heard that quote over and over again from:
Your gamer mate that found his way into 101 motivational books.
Your favorite YouTuber’s video on “How I Become a Millionaire by the 30”.
Through the countless Forbes articles. 
You most likely have heard it over and over again.

A dream without a XXXX is just a wish. A XXXX without a plan is just a dream

Goals are viable instruments to reaching your destination if devised correctly and can drain and derail you if hazardously set. I have had my sheer experience developing and executing them on a personal and a professional level. I will share my learnings and frameworks, hoping this will help you plan useful personal goals and achieve them. 

In this blog, I will go over the following:

• Reasons why we fail at planning our goals and fail to achieve them.
• Principles I rely on to set my goals.
• My 2024 goals. The Why, The What , and the HOW. 

Reasons why we fail at planning our goals and fail to achieve them

• Lack of a clear destination
  • You need to have a destination to write useful goals. Otherwise, you end up
    writing useless goals or borrowing the goals of others.
• Doing too much at the same time

• Failing to think about your goals.

• Not having a system to achieve your goals.

The principle guiding your goals.

1. Align your goals with long-term goals and personal values. 
2. Magic formula = Enjoyable + exciting + Challenging enough 
3. Measure using the right instrument.

When setting goals, you can measure them in 3 ways:

• Numerical goals. For example: Increase my yearly income by 15% or lose 15 Kilogram by the end of this year. I found numerical goals helpful in 3 scenarios:
  • When the goal is critical and the only way to attain it is by hitting that number.
  • When you have a good understanding of the goal and you can accurately connect between inputs ( what needs to be done) and outputs ( What I can achieve).
  • When you are just starting and you just need a number to motivate / challenge you but it doesn’t really matter whether or not you hit that number. You can always adjust later.
• System – based goals. For example: Run 3x a week. I found this is perfect to:
  • Establish long term habits.
  • Develop new skills / mindset.
  • Test new areas of interest. You explore rather than exploit, therefore, you want to give it the right time to see if it’s worth exploiting in the near future. 
• Progress-based goals. For example: Reduce eating fast food . This is ideally when a specific number is not critical, but you want to track whether you’re making progress (upward trends) or (downward trends) in a particular area.

      4. Set systems to help you accomplish your goals:

1. You have to have a deadline. If it must be done tomorrow, you will do it tomorrow. If it must be done in a year, you will do it in a year. As per Parkinson’s law, Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion
2. You have to manage your surroundings (environment). You will not be successful losing weight if you still keep them chips and candies hanging around waiting for you to slip. Similararly, you will not find time to invest in learning if you don’t prepare the space for it.
3. Manage the risk. 

Life happens and you will always have unexpected events that will disrupt your plan and disturb your feelings but you have to adjust, reset, and continue marching. Here is what I recommend:

1. If you can manage and survive an early morning, then do your most important tasks first. Everyone is sleeping and least likely to interrupt you. No matter what happens throughout the day, you would have at least slated the most important things.
2.  Have always an open day or window ( like 4 hours on friday ) where you compensate for any tasks that you did not do throughout the week. 
3. If you can not sprint 8 (100 metres), do 4 (100 metres). If you can’t, just run them or walk them. Doing something is better than doing nothing.
4. Have accountability partners.

5. Lastly, Inject something fun and time to reward yourself.

How I planned my 2024 goals

I will share how I planned my personal goals for 2024. I must walk the talk and live by the principles I stated earlier. So, here is how it went: 

Ensuring that my goals align with my long-term goals. 

Deep inside, we know what we want only and only if:

1. We immerse ourselves in rich experiences and are in motion as “Clarity comes from engagement, not thoughts.” 
2. If we dedicate meaningful time and effort while trying these things
3. If we pause and reflect on our experiences. 

I have tried plenty in the last decade, between building ventures, changing countries, side hustles, and trying engineering, project management, nutrition, and marketing. I have also invested heavily in applying learnings from The Effective Entrepreneur by Taylor pearson and self authoring by Jordan Peterson and doing a history test where I reflected on every event/experience; What I loved and hated to inform my next steps.
Here what I envisioned myself 10 years from now:

What is my role in life?
I am a writer, explainer, motivator, and an entrepreneur. 
How am I doing it?
I ship things quickly. I write to explain and inspire people. I read daily and connect the dots to improve and explore new frontiers. My articles have been read by hundreds of thousands of people. People love me because I drive the message home, relate to them, and simplify stuff so they can immediately apply the lessons and improve. I have co-founded, invested, and advised multiple thriving businesses. Many people have leveraged my work to take the first step, to continue what they started, and to make themselves and their community a better place.  

Health?
I am a fit & fibrant athlete 
How am I doing it?
I exercise daily and play competitive soccer at least once a week. I participate in sprinting events. I run around a sub 12% percentage year around. I am very mobile and flexible. I recover quickly, and I am always trying new modulaties.

Relationship?
I am an empathetic helper and community builder 
How am I doing it?
I have deep connections with my parents and siblings. They reach out to me without hesitation, knowing they can count on me and that I am not judgmental. I have a deep, intimate, and intellectual connection with my wife. I practise sports with my kids. I have a great relationship with my readers.

Others?
I follow Islam in every aspect of my life.
How am I doing it?
I Pray on time, and I read the Quran daily. I am continuously learning about Islam, and I connect Islam practice with my fields of interest. I Do small, consistent things with a considerable reward, such as smiling in other faces and reciting athkar, and I continuously give money to needy people.

Choosing a Theme:

For this year’s theme, I have chosen “Planting seeds” where I build a solid basis in each area that I could double down on in the next 2-3 years.

Writing the goals for key areas:

Here are my 2024 goals:

Ignite:

• Take the 2-hour writing course. Here are the subgoals:
  • Create your system. Apply it to monthly blogs and weekly posts.
• Take the Growth Series course
  • Read the entire curriculum
  • Summarise main ideas
  • Apply one big aha at Salla
• Take the Ready for Launch – The PMM’s Guide to Product Launches course:
  • Attend all sessions
  • Reflect on work
  • Share one video about what I learned.
  • Share on LinkedIn.
• Spend 50 hours learning French.
• Committing to dedicating 100 hours to learn The Odin Project

Side Quests:

• Invest 20% of monthly Salary
• Share two posts a week on Linkedin ( Arabic + English)
• Publish 12 blogs a year between Personal blog + LinkedIn 
• Reach out to 12 interesting persons you admire (I look up to / I want to help because I believe in their cause / I want to work with)
• Earn 30000 SAR selling something.

Connect: 

• Donate x% of income.
• Memorise Surah Al-Baqarah and comprehend every Aya.
• Perform Umrah 4 times a year
• Visit family three times a year.
• Meet with 5 friends you genuinely care about that you have not seen in along time.
• Show up to 3 conferences. 

Epic Fun:

• Do 4 Epic activities
• A trip to Indonesia
• A mid-year celebration 
• Read four novels.

Health:

• Get to 12% body fat / 73 kilos
• Sprints/soccer 2x a week
• Strength training 3x a week
• Stretch once a week 
• Stick to the dentist plan post braces removal.

Putting a system to do the actual work:

Once I refined my goals, I did the following:

1. Put a deadline for each activity.
2. Used Habitnow to track each activity. 
3. Shared some goals with my wife/friends to hold me accountable or not push for certain habits that will make me fall off the wagon. 
4. I bought talking out of turn planner to help me visualise and prioritise.
5. Each day of the week has a theme to make it easier to commit to doing stuff. 
6. I had a contingency plan for each regular activity. For example, if I didn’t have time to do a full workout, I have several 10-15 minute workouts. 

Then, breathe, commit, and do. I will revisit my progress monthly and do a deep dive quarterly to assess how I am doing.

Now, as I lace up for this year, I carry with me the cleats of past lessons and future hopes. Imagine the field ahead, green and wide where every dribble is a dialogue and every goal a shared triumph. 

For those who might find themselves lost on the field, and need help finding your position or just someone to cheer you on from the sidelines, together we’ll navigate the game of this year—one play, one goal, one victory at a time.