One of the biggest secrets to achieving your goals is so simple it's almost laughable: write them down!

All highly successful people have certain common characteristics. The ability to set measurable goals and act on them is at the top of the list. The ability to organize yourself is not imprinted in your DNA; the skills and qualities common among successful people are learned behaviors based on experience and results. In other words, you can learn those skills.

Writing down your goals is truly the path to greatness. Billionaires have been able to attain such heights of wealth because they were committed to setting goals, placing them in writing, and working towards those goals every day, every week, and every month.

If you want to live a truly successful life, you need to choose four primary life goals to work on this year. Your goals will fall into one of these categories:

• Wealth
• Health
• Personal Self (your intellectual and artistic pursuits)
• Social Self (how you relate to your friends, family and community)

Once you have defined your goals for the year – and written them down – it's time to take action. Clarify why you have chosen these top four life goals and give yourself a reasonable timeframe to achieve them. Then, break each goal into smaller "chunks" — yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily objectives.

Finally, you should list your daily goals. These are specific actions you can take each day that will help you achieve your weekly, monthly, and yearly objectives. For example, you can determine just how many sales calls you need to make each day to reach your weekly sales goal of N1,000,000.

If you want to be even more specific, you can break your daily goals down into hourly goals, so that you have a targeted action you can take each hour. This goal-setting system works because it takes very large, sometimes very nebulous, ambitions and breaks them down into specific tasks – things you have to learn, things you have to know, and things you have to do.

Transforming your dreams into tasks may take away some of the romance, but what you'll receive is a growing excitement about how increasingly likely it is that you will accomplish your dreams. Not to mention the satisfaction of taking measurable, constant steps toward reaching those goals.

When working on your goals (hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly) stay focused! Being able to focus your energy and compartmentalize your tasks is vital to accomplishing one goal at a time. Always be aware of your long term goal, but make sure that you focus on the task at hand, and finish each item on your "to do" list.

Here's how you can begin today:

• Write down four (4) goals that you have clearly defined
• Break those goals into manageable yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily "chunks"
• Make an emotional commitment to taking regular action toward achieving your goals
• Monitor your goals regularly for progress (daily, weekly, and monthly)

Making a master plan work is about simplifying your interests and acting upon them in a very simple way. When you receive the emotional gratification of taking one forward step toward one cherished goal, you'll find it that much easier to take the next step.

I am looking forward to hearing your testimonies. Do you find this post useful? Have you implemented any similar method before? How did it work for you? Please leave a comment below.

It is that time of year when everyone is thinking of goals for the New Year. When setting goals, a lot of people find themselves ‘biting more than they can chew’.  They have more ideas than time to put the ideas to work; they want to do everything and have everything NOW. If you are one of these kind of people, you have to start to change right now – that is the only way you can achieve better results than you have been getting in the past.

Make sure you are not trying to take on too much at once. This might sometimes mean that you will have to limit or even postpone some goals.   View what is before you; then resolve to take one task at a time in order to achieve your goals. You need to understand your limits so that you don’t make poor decisions which can lead to failure instead of success. In order to give yourself the best chance of accomplishing everything you set out to do – in your personal and professional life – you must do two things.

1. Recognize Your Limits. You are only one person, with a limited amount of time, energy, and mental sharpness at your disposal. So you need to make sure you're not taking on too much. This may mean cutting back on your goals. After speaking with many people on goal-setting, I've discovered that most of them are overachievers. They all have big ideas and many goals; but having too many goals means you are trying to divide yourself up into too many pieces. If you only have five hours a day to devote to your goals, and you have 10 different goals to accomplish, you run the risk of making little progress or no progress at all. I suggest you limit yourself to one goal in every major category of life i.e. health, wealth, personal relationships and personal development.

2. Identify and Take Advantage of Your Peak Hours. Everyone has a set of "peak hours" during the day when one feels fresh, alert, and mentally sharp. You should try to do the most important work and the most difficult work during your peak hours. That's because your energy, alertness, and mental acuteness fade as time goes on. You shouldn’t be making crucial decisions when you are feeling tired or when your brain is sluggish. So figure out when you are at your best and reserve that time for your toughest and most essential goal setting work.

Fortunately, you can learn how to limit what you are taking on. Here are three techniques you can use to make sure that you're not trying to take on too much at once. Several successful people put these techniques to use:

• Be realistic in setting target dates for accomplishing your goals.

For example, if you want to lose 6 kilos before the Easter holidays, set a goal to lose 1.5kg by January (the first month) then consistently hold that loss and lose another 1.5kg each month after that (perhaps aiming to shed that final kilo in April). If you want to start 20 new joint ventures, you can set a goal to contact five possible joint venture partners each month, etc.

• Be flexible

There will be many steps you take towards your goals where it will feel like you are taking two steps forward and one step back. You will have breakthroughs, triumphs, and opportunities to overcome adversity. But no matter how the process is going, be flexible. You may find that it isn't possible to accomplish all you plan to do each month, which means that you'll have to adjust your goal to your abilities. This by no means makes you a failure. It is part of the learning process that will help you achieve these and future goals the best way you can.

I used to be a perfectionist, wanting everything to be just right before taking the next step forward. After a mentoring program, I was able to realize that my desire to have everything to be perfect was creating huge delays. I have since started using "ready, FIRE, aim" to get past any hesitation. It is important you accept that risk is involved in achieving your goals but you can trust yourself to find the solutions along the way. Remember to "go for good and aim for better."

• Don't be afraid to ask for ideas and help.

You should never feel like you're alone in your goal process. You can always ask friends, family members, co-workers and experts to give you advice, suggestions, and support.

To a Prosperous and Successful Life!