Usually right after the New Years celebration, many of us start looking at the resolutions we make, and if you’re like many people, yours is probably more like a shopping list: you want to exercise more, gain more money, have savings, learn a skill (say to play the guitar), get a better job (so you can earn more money), and find a lover (if you haven’t found one yet, or the one you have isn’t as “caring”) “).

A typical scenario might go like this: You’ll look at this long list of New Year’s resolutions and pick a goal, let’s say one of your goals is to master the guitar. So what you can do is buy a book on how to play a guitar, maybe buy an instructional DVD, and start practicing at home. If you’re a bit more diligent, you’d even start taking a few classes. But what about your other goals, like making more money? I mean, that minimum wage job isn’t really going to help, unless your definition of making more money is that fifty cent raise that’s coming your way… in about six months (pending your employee performance review). , of course).

So you start looking for another job to complement the job you have. Let’s say you found that other job. If you are already working full time at the job you have, at best you would probably be working part time at this new job.

Well, the good news is that you are now achieving one of your goals: making more money. The bad news? Now that he spends most of his time working at his job and a half, he doesn’t have time to practice his guitar, so he ends up giving up his guitar lessons. Hey, at least with all the running around between your two jobs, you’re working out, but now your life is miserable because you don’t have a life!

So you start looking for other ways to make money. You start looking for work at home opportunities and let’s say you found an opportunity. But now, you have to quit one of your jobs (probably the part-time job) so you can focus on building your new home business, which still isn’t making money to break even and even if it was, you still work two jobs. and no time to play the guitar, and we’re not even going to cover the other goals you’ve set for yourself.

The above scenario may sound comical and implausible to some, but all too often, we find ourselves setting more goals than we are capable of achieving. Now, understand that I’m not saying you shouldn’t have multiple goals, just start prioritizing them.

How do you do that? Start by choosing no more than one goal that you think you can best accomplish right now (I’ll give you an exception to this rule later). If you find that there is more than one goal you can achieve right now, choose the one that would have the most positive impact on your life. It could be financially, emotionally, spiritually, whatever goal would have the most positive impact on your life right now if you achieve it. Once you have chosen a goal, focus on that goal as if it were the only goal you have.

That’s how it is. Forget all the other goals and focus on achieving that one goal, and then use the momentum from that one goal to achieve the other goals on your list. Going back to the previous scenario, let’s look at our objectives. We have: exercise more, earn more money, have savings, learn to play the guitar, find a better job, and find a lover (or a new one, for that matter).

So which of these, if you were to focus on right now, would impact your life the most? The answer, of course, varies from individual to individual. However, if these were my goals, earning money would have a bigger impact on my life. Even though working that side job (or that side home business) isn’t as personally satisfying as learning to play the guitar, that side job or home business would give me the money I need to start saving. I would also try to cut back on other things to save money (which is essentially the same as making money), like walking to work (if possible) and taking my lunch to work instead of eating out.

This would also fulfill my other goal of exercising more and staying fit and perhaps the only time I would recommend focusing on more than one goal, as in this case, the two goals work in harmony with each other. This would essentially be killing two birds with one stone. In this case, there are three birds. Now that you’ve built a comfortable savings account (and, hopefully, already gotten that raise), it’s time to focus on the next goal. Maybe learning to play the guitar. Once you get the hang of the guitar, you could start giving lessons for money. So maybe I could afford to work less at the job I have. I would then look at the other targets on my list and use the same approach.

Unless the goals you have are in harmony (working toward the same goal), it’s best to focus on one goal at a time and move on to the next. This would give you the best opportunity to achieve your goals. Remember: it’s not about how many goals you set, it’s about how many goals you achieve.