How To Keep Your Goals Simple in 2026

Everyone, happy New Year! I hope that you have big goals and big dreams that you are working on this year. But how do you take this big goal or big dream that you have and break it down into a small achievable action that you can take every single day? Because I believe that having goals is a very good and very human thing to do, to have something that you're striving towards, something that is improving yourself, something you can challenge yourself for and practice discipline through. That is something that is going to make you a better person and bring you closer to the goals and to the bigger vision that you have for your entire life. And that may seem like a really big thing to say, but I believe that one of the ways that we live interesting lives and that we give meaning to every single day is to have a vision, to have an intention, and have a goal that you are moving towards and something that you can align your daily actions with the vision that you have for your life and the person that you want to become. In this video, I'm going to walk you through my goal setting system. It's very simple, it's very straightforward, and it allows for a lot of flexibility so that even as you're trying to figure out how a goal setting system works for you, whether an action that you have to take during the day is something that is aligned with the outcome and the milestones and the goals that you have— we'll talk more about those distinctions in just second, it makes it something that you can look at every single day and say, the thing that I'm doing today, the actions that I'm taking today are aligned with and connected to the vision that I have for my life and the kind of person that I want to become. Because let's face it, one of the main ways that people fail to reach their goals is because they set something that is really big and takes a lot of time, which again, I think is worth doing Don't take— don't, don't set small goals for yourself. Set big goals. Take small actions each day. And this system that I'm going to show you is a way to attack those goals every single day and align them with the vision that you have for your life, with the big goals that you have for this year. Okay. The acronym that I use for my goal setting system is OMG, which stands for outcomes, milestones, and goals. Hey, real quick, before we get into OMG, I wanted to let you know that I have a printable that you can download. Just look for the link in the description below. It'll give you something that you can either put into your bullet journal, you could even put it into a software tool like Notion. And again, you, if you have a printer, you can just print it out and follow along. Okay. So the link right down there, go ahead and get it and then come back and watch this video or keep watching this video, but definitely get the template as well. Okay. The O in OMG stands for outcomes and the outcome is the thing that you want to do, what you want to accomplish. And one important distinction that I want you to make when defining the outcome is that you make it something that you can control. Like, for example, when we're talking— when I'm talking about my, like, vision and my intention for this year to create a weekly YouTube video, I'm saying that as something that within my control, I can publish a YouTube video every week. What I can't control as much of, and what I try to do Last year was to say, hey, 50,000 YouTube subscribers, and I ended up between 15,000 and 20,000. Yeah, still, still a few days left as of the recording of this video. Now, I do know that recording and publishing more YouTube videos will lead to more subscribers, and I will get better and better at YouTube videos if I practice and publish more. But see the difference between I want to hit this number of subscribers versus I'm going to do the work that should lead to more subscribers. Now, I use a lot of exercise metaphors because it's something that I think is pretty easily explained and understood. But let's say you had an outcome of completing a half marathon this year. Well, if you go out and you run and you train 3, 4, 5 days a week, leading up to that half marathon. If you say, okay, I'm going to go out and run 6 miles, I'm going to go out and run 4 miles. Those are things you can control. Now, if you wanted to say instead, and this again is gets a little, a little trickier, you said, hey, I want to break 2 hours in that half marathon. Now, you know, you could train, you could train harder and, you know, I could spend more time on like titles, thumbnails, like understanding all those things that make YouTube videos better. But you may or may not kind of hit that goal that you have in terms of time. I may or may not hit the number of subscribers that I want to have. It's the same thing for like this newsletter program that I'm running. So a positive outcome or an achievement for this newsletter program would be to run it and make sure that everyone is successful. Now, I may or may not be able to hit the revenue goal or the number of people goal that I have for the, that I have for the program. And that is a little bit different than saying like, hey, for me to have a successful outcome is to do the thing. And to do the thing that I have to do all these other things, these other little actions, these sub-goals, these milestones, which we're going to talk about next. But make the outcome, make the achievement something that you can control simply by doing the things that you set out to do. Okay. The next two parts of OMG, I'm going to kind of explain in tandem. The M stands for milestones and the G stands for goals. The outcome is the final achievement, the thing that you want to do. A milestone is smaller than the total outcome, but bigger than just a weekly goal. When I use goals in this video, in this system, these goals are connected to the GAP method that I use for my weekly planning. So when I say goals in this OMG system, I'm talking about a goal that I would have for a week. And to me, pretty much like the difference between a milestone and a goal is more about timeframe than type of work. A goal is something that I'm working on doing that particular week. And if I know that something that I need to do is going to take multiple weeks, 2 to 3, let's say, then I'm going to set that up in the system as more of a milestone. Now you're seeing all of this on the page while I explain it to you, but what's important to know is that as you're getting used to this, you're going to have to figure out for yourself through practice, through repetition, through trial and error— I'm sorry— what of the things that you have to do to achieve the ultimate outcome is something that's just going to take you a day, a week, or multiple weeks. So as you look at this on the printable, the same one that you can get by clicking the link in the description below, you're going to see how I start to plan all of these things out. So a milestone is something that I know is going to take me 2 or 3 weeks to accomplish, and there can be sub-goals underneath that milestone. And even within those sub-goals, which are part of the gap, those can have actions that I know that I need to take or complete. In order to achieve the goal so that I can complete the milestone and ultimately move closer to a positive outcome, a successful achievement of the thing that I want to do. Now, one of the big ways that people get stuck and start to give up here is by not understanding how much time things take. I've used this example a lot, but let's say, for example, with a YouTube video, if my goal is to complete and publish a YouTube video each week, I know that I need to protect usually 8 to 10 hours to be safe. And so I need to look at it and say, realistically, can I protect 8 to 10 hours this week to do the YouTube video? If I can't, then I need to understand, you know, give myself some grace and to be a reporter, not a judge, and understand Okay, this video might take 2 weeks, or I have too many other things going on with family or client work, whatever it might be, to publish a video this week. And that way, if I'm tracking my time, if I'm understanding the actions that I need to take, the goals that I have, the milestones, all of these are going to take time that if you're new to this, you may not fully understand yet, because I can tell you almost everything takes a little bit more time than you expect until you really have done it enough to know, like, okay, a video takes me 8 to 10 hours. I know that now. When I was getting started, I thought, oh shoot, this will only take me 3 or 4 hours. This will be easy. I can just, you know, protect half, half a day and it'll be easy. Was not easy, was not the case. And so I had to change how I set up my actions, my goals, and my milestones for that particular, like, OMG, like, project that I was putting together for YouTube. Now, when I say track your time, I don't necessarily mean that you have to track every minute of every day. But when it comes to the goal or the action that you are working on that particular day or a particular week, you know, write down in your bullet journal, like, if it was for me, I was like, hey, outlining this video itself, outlining and writing hooks and some of the intro and scripting, this took me an hour. So now I know that I need to protect an hour. I know that setting up the Bullet Journal itself for this video and like the template takes an hour, sometimes two, and then recording takes at least an hour, sometimes two. Editing takes 2 to 3 hours. So you can see how those hours add up to get to that 8 to 10 hours that it usually takes for me to do a video. But I didn't track every single minute of every single day. For the purposes of understanding your time for these goals and milestones that you want to hit, for the actions that you need to take. Just track time for those for now so that you can be better at making your plan for the weeks to come. The other thing that I want to encourage you on this year for the goals that you have, for the, for the successful outcomes of the things that you want to achieve, the things that you want to do this year is to be patient and treat this, especially early on, as an experiment. Don't be too hard on yourself. I'm convinced that most of us don't achieve the things that we want every year and even like throughout our lives, because we're too hard on ourselves and we put too big of expectations. Now there's kind of a weird thing going on right here. Like I told you at the beginning, I think it is good and very human to have goals and to strive after them. The thing that you have to continue to encourage yourself on is that achieving your goals may take longer than you think. And just because it takes longer than you think doesn't mean you suck, doesn't mean you're not good at it, doesn't mean they won't be achieved in the future. It just means that you weren't able to do it right now, or you weren't able to do it in the timeframe that you want. Like, for me, I've had— like, it took me 6 years to hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. It took me 5 years of working on my own to cross $200,000 in revenue, not profit, but revenue. And I thought, you know, when I quit my job at the end of 2020, I thought, you know, year 1, here we go, let's crush it. I'm going to be doing $200,000, $300,000 easy. Not the case. It took me, it wasn't until, yeah, year, year 5, 2001 through 2025.. And if you can be patient, if you can stay aligned, and this is the important part. This is why I said like, it's so important for you to set intentions, to have a vision, to know what you want in life and to keep stubbornly pursuing it even when it's not working out. And you know, this isn't a video about like, when do you quit? And when do you do, when do you do other things? That's not what this video is about. That is a very personal thing. But if you can just stick with it, if you can continue pursuing the vision that you have for your life, writing them down, doing the things, making it outcomes and goals and actions that you can control, just doing the work instead of thinking like, oh, I didn't— like, if I had said, oh, I didn't make $200,000 in 2021 when I first started doing this, I'm a failure. I'm Like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be here right now if I hadn't gotten to 50,000 or 100,000 YouTube subscribers after just a couple of years. Wouldn't, wouldn't be here, wouldn't be talking to you right now. It is persistence. It is grit. It is the ability to bounce back, to keep sticking it out even when you don't initially get the result that you want. Here's the thing that I want you to keep in mind all year, and hopefully you'll come back and you'll see this and you'll Remember it and it will encourage you in the future as well. This is about progress, not perfection. Can you stick to the vision that you have for your life? Can you keep going even when you don't initially get the result that you want? Even if you don't get the result after a few tries, do you have grit? Are you able to bounce back? Are you resilient? And what I love about this OMG system, which is really just a deconstruction of bigger goals into things that you can do every single day, is that when I have been intentional about the vision that I have for my life, when I have defined a positive, successful outcome for the things that I'm working on, that means that every single day I can take an action and I can look at that action and I can realize and understand this thing that I'm doing right now is filled with meaning and purpose because this action is bringing me closer to my weekly goal. And when I do these weekly goals, it's bringing me closer to these bigger milestones. And when I complete all these milestones and all these goals and all these actions that I've been working on every single day, then I know that I'm going to have a successful outcome. And yes, that successful outcome may not be the revenue that I want. It may not be the subscriber count that I want. It may not be the half marathon time that I want or the amount of weight that I'm bench pressing, but I know that I'm moving closer. And if I can be resilient, if I can be determined, if I can be disciplined, if I can be consistent, then I know that I am moving myself closer to the kind of person that I want to be and the vision that I have for my life. I hope that is true for you as well. No matter when you see this, no matter who you are, no matter where you live, I hope that it encourages you. Thank you so much for watching this video. You can get the template at the link in the description below, and I will see you next time. Thanks for watching.