Daily goal setting is the process of identifying and outlining actionable steps that help you achieve your desired outcome. Most of us have goals across our career, personal life, health, and finances. Still, we’re not always prioritizing the critical step of breaking down broader goals into productive, daily steps that set us up for success. Daily goals are our target points for the day that allow us to build a simple plan to stay on track. These daily plans should align with our short and long-term priorities so that we can accomplish urgent things that need to get done now and maintain progress towards important goals down the line.

When you think of your goals, you probably envision the ambitious, down-the-road outcomes of your aspirations, such as buying a new house for your growing family or landing the promotion by end of year that you’ve been working so hard for. And while it’s great to maintain sight of future milestones for drive and inspiration, it’s equally important to focus on your everyday efforts because they are ultimately the building blocks to achieving those long-term goals.

Setting goals has been shown to boost self-confidence and increase productivity, in big part, because the process creates purpose for action. And when you apply it as a daily habit with achievable goals, you develop a system that facilitates constant progress towards your long-term objectives, and gives you the satisfaction of smaller accomplishments to keep your long-term motivation up.

Daily goal setting has many benefits, including prioritizing your time around what’s most important, creating an action plan, making daily progress every day towards your future goals, helping you develop productive and healthy habits, and celebrating day-to-day accomplishments to maintain motivation.

However, with 65% of people trying to get better at setting daily goals, it’s obvious that it isn’t as easy as it sounds. Maybe you feel like, no matter how hard you plan, your long-term goals aren’t getting any closer, or you just can’t keep up with the daily goals you set for yourself. So how can you get better at setting attainable goals to make it worth it? Let’s take a look at five key principles of productive goal setting.

The first principle is commitment. The more you desire a certain outcome, the more motivation you have to achieve that goal. This is the why behind your daily goals. The second principle is clarity. Specific goals give you more focus, increasing the likelihood that you’ll follow through on the goal. The third principle is challenge. The best goals require a degree of challenge but still feel achievable. The fourth principle is complexity. While a level of challenge is beneficial, overwhelming goals outside of your skill level or time/availability to complete can negatively affect your confidence, productivity, and motivation. The fifth principle is feedback. Goal setting is more effective when there is immediate feedback - especially since daily goals are so time-sensitive as delayed feedback can slow down your progress.

To set effective and easy-to-follow daily goals, you must prioritize your goals, make SMART goals daily, plan ahead, and write them out. Begin by creating a master list of all your goals. Yes, all of them! Because master lists are usually quite lengthy, it’s best to create digital lists - one list for your work goals, and another for your personal goals. Once you have a complete list of all the things you want to achieve, prioritize your goals in order of importance. These will serve as your North Star, guiding you towards your end goals while you work to stay on top of daily urgent tasks. Then make SMART goals daily by breaking down end-goals into smaller milestones using an approach like goal-ladders. From there, you can specify them even further into prioritized daily objectives.