From Dream to Reality: Detailed Steps to Make Your Dreams Come True, Step Two

It’s been a little bit since I started this segment, but that’s because I’ve been busy working away on things around the farm and behind the scenes with personal projects! But, I thought it was time to get back to it because it’s not only a good refresher for me, but (hopefully) helpful to others as well.

First, let’s begin with a short break down of Step Two.

2. Set SMART Goals

Actionable Steps:

• Break Down Your Dream: Divide your dream into smaller goals. For instance, if you want to start a business, break it down into steps like market research, product development, and marketing.Turn Your Dream into Goals: If your dream is to open a bakery, break it down: “Research local bakeries,” “Find recipes to use,” “Create a business plan,” etc.
• Use the SMART Framework: For each goal, make sure it is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Example: “Launch my website by December 1st with three pages: Home, About, and Services.”Simplify Each Goal: Instead of saying, “Research local bakeries,” say, “Visit one bakery this Saturday at 10 AM and write down 5 things I liked about it.” This makes the goal clear and easy to follow.
• Create a Goal Checklist: Make a checklist of all SMART goals to track your progress. Check off each task as you complete it. Set a Tiny, Daily Task: Make it something so small you can’t say no. For example, “Spend 5 minutes each day writing down new recipe ideas.”

The SMART Framework is a really great way to start getting serious about projects. Taking each subject at a time and writing down as much information as you want to is so helpful in being able to determine what is really important to you. You can write as much or as little as you want to about the project and go back over it a couple of times to weed out what is really essential and practical for you to be able to tackle.

I have a couple of different notebooks for different projects: an art project notebook that I write down ideas for projects, one for farm projects, one for craft projects and things that I want to work on and share on my blog. Recently, I’ve been working on a couple of things that I want to do around the farm. But in order to make it more realistic and manageable for myself, I started to use the SMART Framework so that I can break the items down into the most simple terms. Like I’ve shared in the past, I tend to get overwhelmed with the “big picture” fairly easily, and this way of breaking things down further helps me to be able to accomplish some manageable tasks each day or week to reach the big goals that I have.

Being as Specific as possible allows you to narrow down your ideas even more. Once you’ve done that, then you can break down the specifics into measurable tasks to accomplish like finding resources, help if you need it, and give yourself a time frame of when you want to have specific tasks accomplished by. Having a list of achievable goals can also help you feel like, “I CAN do this! It IS possible!” Looking next at what is Relevant can help you to readjust your time frames if needed. For example if you have something like a goal for your gardens, that can be held up by the seasons and so this may be one of your top goals, but it needs to be set on a different time frame to work with weather, etc. One thing you could ask yourself is, “Is this task something that can be done NOW or is it something that needs to be done at a particular time to fit into the big picture in a more realistic manner? ” And this can also fit in with Time-Bound goals and tasks. Perhaps there are things that can be done quickly and easily that will free up time later on for other tasks that are more intense and require more attention/money/help/etc.

Writing six months later….

Between the time that I started to write out this blog post, and the time that I’ve come back to finish it, I’ve been working away behind the scenes on several different projects. Hence why it’s taken me so long to finish sharing this post. I’ve been using this method to accomplish some goals that I’ve set for myself. My actionable steps get me hyper focused, so much so that I can’t seem to see beyond them at times. But it has definitely helped me in accomplishing goals. It’s so funny that in school, we never really learn these steps to work towards getting things done. Working with my children, who each have some extra-ordinary need, I’ve had to work with them a lot to get some Executive Functioning skills set in place. I’d like to think of this process as one more great tool in that tool-box.

I’d also like to share something that you might laugh at. AI has become one of my best tools in keeping momentum going, and in breaking things down into Actionable Steps to help get things accomplished. I’m not a huge fan of letting AI take over things, but it can be a great tool for helping to organized and break things down so that you aren’t feeling overwhelmed by the bigger picture. This is especially true for check-lists as well. I love a good checklist, and AI can help you make some great ones that you can print out. It’s an awesome feeling to go down a list and check things off towards your goals. It gives your mind a little Dopamine shot to see yourself moving down an Actionable list of things towards your goals. You can not only imagine yourself getting closer, but you can actually see yourself moving ahead. You can ask AI to be as vague or specific as you need to in order to feel like your checklist will benefit you to the highest degree.

Next, will be Step Three Create an Action Plan

Actionable Steps: Set Daily or Weekly Tasks

This step requires those check lists that I mentioned above, but by going intensely into the details. Stay tuned for that.

My hope is that these break-downs will help someone else the way they’ve helped me. So if this has been useful for you, I’d love to hear about it. Are there any specific things that help you to accomplish your bigger goals?