Big Goals, Small Steps: How to Make Progress and Stay Motivated

Have you found yourself feeling overwhelmed or stuck when pursuing an ambitious, long-term goal? In the beginning, when the goal is created, there is excitement and energy. You get started, you’re taking action, and you are making progress. Time goes by and after a while of working towards this goal, your enthusiasm and excitement has disappeared. Some days you are forcing yourself to continue or you are going through the motions and progress has slowed. Maybe you get stuck not knowing what to do, maybe you feel overwhelmed, maybe it feels like you will never reach the end, maybe you hit an obstacle, maybe doubt about achieving the goal creeps in, or other things seem like a higher priority. Eventually, you stop, give up, or significantly delay your goal.

One issue is that our minds can only see so far into the future and then it goes blank. Some people can plan farther ahead than others because they have developed that skill. Another issue is the feeling of progress or lack of progress. Emotionally, we like to have a start, middle, and end and with long-term goals, the middle is very long and the end is far away. Maintaining motivation through the middle can be difficult. Another issue is feeling overwhelmed by the amount that needs to be done to accomplish the goal.

To solve these, you need to adjust to your current capabilities to plan into the future and hold large projects in your mind. When you exceed your current capabilities, you get stuck. Keeping a large project in your head can overwhelm the mind. It becomes too much information for the mind to process together.

In order to work with your current capabilities, break the large goal into smaller, manageable pieces and milestones. This will enable you to plan the amount that you can handle and it will give you a smaller goal to accomplish so that you have a sense of accomplishment and progress. Your large goal becomes a series of smaller goals. A series of beginnings, middles, and ends that you can track.

The other piece is to document the project on paper or a digital document or in software so that you can see the goals, milestones, and actions instead of trying to keep them in your head. This frees up your mind for solving problems and processing information instead of trying to remember so much information.

When breaking down the large goal into a series of smaller goals or milestones, it can help to start at the end goal and work backwards in time to the present moment. With this approach, you ask yourself what step comes before the large goal is achieved, then ask yourself what step comes before that, and so on.

For example, if the large goal is to build your dream house in 4 years, then what needs to happen just before the house is completed? The lawn is put down and the driveway is paved. What needs to happen before that? Final walkthrough of the house for approval of it’s construction. What needs to happen before that? Clean up from the construction. Before that? Installation of fixtures, mirrors, etc. Keep going until you reach the present moment.

For large goals and projects, working backwards can be easier for figuring out the milestones and steps compared to starting in the present and going towards the future. As you use these tactics, your skill for planning into the future will improve and you will be able to see farther into the future.