Today I’d like to share with you another lesson that I have learned while achieving my own goals.

When I first started setting goals for myself and trying to reach them, like many people, I constantly failed to achieve them. I tried to figure out why. The goals were fine, they had deadlines, were realistic enough, and there was enough motivation. It seemed that there was nothing wrong in the “setting” part of goal setting.

Upon further reflection, I came to realize that it’s not the goal “setting” part, but rather the goal “reaching” or “doing” part, was the problem. For most of my failed goals, I found that the main reason I didn’t reach them was simply because I wasn’t spending enough time on them, time spent on doing the things required to make the goal happen.

So after this realization, I changed my goal setting routine a little bit. Instead of focusing on the result I want for the goal, I started to track how much time I spend on my goal each day. After doing this for a few weeks, I suddenly found my progress on all my goals greatly improved. I was accomplishing more than I had ever been able to before.

So today’s lesson: to achieve a goal, you need to spend enough time working on it to make it happen. Instead of solely tracking your goal progress, make sure you also track the time spent on it.

For example, if your goal is to start your own business, ask yourself: “how much time have I spent working on my new business, research, product, marketing, sales, etc., on a daily, weekly or monthly basis? Is that enough for me to reach my goal, realistically?”

If your goal is to lose weight: “how much time do I spend on exercising on a daily basis?”, or even better, “how much time do I spend on eating everyday?”

If your goal is to finish a degree or course: “how much time did I work on it regularly?” If your goal is to write a book: “how many words/pages have I written per day, per week?”

When you honestly answer these types of questions, you will quickly see why you are not reaching that goal you set for yourself.

Of course, there are many other factors that we may not reach our goals, but in real life, for most of our goals, for most people, I just feel that time, or lack of time spent on goal, is the sole problem. If you can find ways to allocate more time for your goals, you would have much better chance in achieving them.