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Once you experience success you will be able to look back and realize that you achieve all success pretty much the same way. You set a goal, follow through on the tasks needed to be done for achieving results, keep an open mind, learn from others, track your successes and learn from failure. It’s the same thing, over and over again. And it works.

If you want to create a pattern of success in your life, you can start now by learning the secret that successful people know. Successful people are only successful because they are doers and they follow through. They are not smarter than others; they just follow through no matter what.

Become a Goal Setting Expert

Start at the top and learn how to craft the best goals for yourself. Keys of a good goal are 1) Knowing that the goal is something that can be accomplished in the time-frame you want to accomplish it and (2) knowing that the goal is measurable. Most of all make sure it’s a goal that you really want to achieve.

Schedule Everything

People who achieve are doers. If you want to get something done, schedule it no matter how silly it might seem to you. If you put it in a schedule at a particular time, and not just on a generic “to do” list, it will be more likely that you get it done.

For instance, if you have set a goal to write an 80,000 word novel by a certain date, then you should know how many pages you need to get done each week and which days you can work on it, which times, hours, and how long it takes you to write a page. Successful writers write; they don’t wait for inspiration to strike. They schedule it, and do it. The same can be said for anything you want to achieve. You don’t wait until you want to do it; you do it on schedule.

Automate the Mundane

There are a lot of things that need to be done but that can escalate easily into “busy work” which doesn’t get you closer to a goal. Bookkeeping for instance is something that can be accomplished today, with the right software, almost automatically. You can schedule payments to happen automatically; you can also use software that enters everything for you in the ledger. Freeing up time to focus on your scheduled activities that must be done to achieve the goal is a more productive use of time.

Get Outside Expert Help

To be a success doesn’t mean you have to do everything yourself. You’re not on your own. The best scientists, professors, doctors, lawyers, and CEOs have assistants who help them look great. You too can hire outside help and contractors to help you do the tasks needed to reach your goals. Other than doing exercise for you and things you must do physically for yourself, there isn’t much you can’t outsource today.

Stop Reinventing the Wheel

In most cases, someone has already done it before you. Someone has already worked out the kinks and devised a plan of action that will work for you too with hardly any tweaks. Learn from other people’s mistakes and realize that you can gain valuable information from what others are already doing.

Never Stop Learning

They say it takes ten thousand hours of reading about a topic to become an expert on any subject. Keep this in mind as you look toward your future and set your goals. If you want to be an expert, you’ll need to start today by building up those ten thousand hours. Even if you know nothing about a topic today, you can be an expert in just ten thousand hours.

Know Your Core Values

As you set goals to create a pattern of success, it’s imperative that you know what your core values are in terms of family, personal, financial and your physical life. Everyone has different areas they need to work on more than others – you need to know what your areas are to set realistic goals that you want to meet.

Track, Assess, Repeat

Nothing is ever done without the paperwork, as they say. Well, that includes creating a pattern of success. Only by setting goals, then tracking and assessing the results of the goals, and then repeating what works will you create a pattern of success.

Here are some goal setting tools to help you succeed:

You can use an old-fashioned paper and pen to make and set your goals, but what’s the fun in that? Today there are so many wonderful online tools and software that can help make goal setting fun and easy. When something is fun and easy, you’re more likely to stick to it long enough to actually achieve the success you desire.

1. Goal-Buddy – Using this cloud-based software you can name, set, and manage your goals easily. It leads you step-by-step through questions for what your goals are so that they are S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timely) goals. Then you can use the system to track your goals through milestones that you set as the days go by.

Link – http://www.goal-buddy.com/

2. Mint – If you need to get control over your finances, want to set up goals such as establishing a six-month emergency savings account, start a business and other goals, you can use this software to track your financial success and projections.

Link – https://www.mint.com/

3. Basecamp – This is really a project management system, but any goal has to have actionable steps involved or milestones and tasks to take to reach success. You can use Basecamp for any type of actionable steps and it will even email you a reminder to do the task. This can work with your business life or personal life.

Link – http://www.basecamp.com/

4. Google Calendar – Where were we before Google Calendar came alone? Unorganized, for sure. This is such a handy calendar that you can use for the most important areas of your life. Be it family, personal, financial or physical – you can set your goals and work your way back inserting actionable steps and tasks to do each day. You can then let it email you a daily task list so you never leave anything out.

Link – http://www.google.com/calendar

5. VisonBoard.me – This is basic vision board software that you can use to create your vision board then print it out. You can also use something like Pinterest to create a vision board if you need to be fancier about it. Its fun to create a vision board, paste it on your wall, fridge or in public so that you can see the reality of your dreams in person.

Link – http://www.visionboard.me/

6. Lifetick – If you want a very in-depth goal setting software, this is it. It helps you traverse the four important areas where you should be setting goals and then view how they overlap and work with each other. This software helps you define your core values, and develop S.M.A.R.T. goals as well as track everything.

Link – https://www.lifetick.com/

7. GoalsOnTrack – This software is a lot like Lifetick but has features that help you “chunk down” any goal into reasonable and easy-to-follow steps. Their whole idea is that you want to do less but get more. This software’s features encompass the 80/20 rule and put it to work for goal setting and achieving.

Link – http://www.goalsontrack.com/

8. Goalscape – If you like to visualize your goals in pictures, charts, and graphs then you might like Goalscape. You’ll create a kind of wheel with your goal in the middle and everything you need to do to reach the goal will circle it. So you can see it in one glance.

Link – http://www.goalscape.com/

9. BizOnTrack – If you need software to help you set business goals and team goals, then this is the software you want to try. It will help you and your team work together to ensure that everything stays organized and tasks are done on time. The statuses of tasks are able to be reordered and marketed accomplished to help you see where you are in any goal.

Link – http://www.bizontrack.com/

10. Smart Goals Templates – If you like templates, these are some free goal setting templates that are based on filling in the blanks for your goals. They will help you go over the various goals setting steps needed to achieve results in both your personal life and career and business life.

Link – http://www.smart-goals-guide.com/free-goal-setting-worksheets-forms-and-templates.html

Whichever type of software (if any) you feel you need to use for goal setting and goal realization is up to you. The important thing is that you visualize the results of any goal, write it out, and then take steps toward achieving the goal.