My dear friends, today I want to talk a little about how I manage to, and how I think you can too stay focused on set goals. Also, do we need goals and do we need to reach them?
One part is a philosophical question and the more technical part are the strategies you can use. I rather like the philosophical part.
“Maybe I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one”
I think to have goals in life is the biggest motivation for doing anything at all. Now I have a wife and a daughter and this forces me to work hard but.
I’m sure without the goals I and my wife have come up together, it would be much less fun working hard every day.
To get up in the morning, at 5 AM, and think what will come from doing this, makes the whole thing worthwhile and takes every stress aspect of it.
I do believe in my goals and I try my best to reach them.
Why should we have goals?
I don’t know about you, but when I talk about goals I also talk about dreams. There are short-term goals, they are more “realistic” but there should be long time goals as well.
Near-term goals like, what I should achieve today or even this morning can be set the day before. It can really help to focus on what you want to achieve in the bigger picture.
A short-range goal also helps to forget the big heap of tasks that await us. These can sometimes overwhelm us and almost paralyze us.
It’s much easier to focus on one or two tasks until lunch without thinking what should be done until the end of the week.
Imagine you have to build a house and just started. If you think about how hard it will be getting all the tiles up to cover the roof while digging the building excavation you’ll be tired only from thinking.
The other way around if you tell yourself in the evening, tomorrow I want to dig a 5 m2 big hole and discharge the dirt and then the next day only think about this task, you will be tired too but I think because of digging and not because of thinking lol.
All things come different anyway. It is hard to think of the future and fix one’s goals too far from now. It can be very disappointing when delays occur.
It can also be counterproductive when we achieve goals faster than expected and then think we can relax and lose focus on the bigger goals.
Here in Thailand they say step by step and don’t like to be distracted by too much planning into the future. I am ever again surprised how in the end the whole project is finished.
Set A Far Term GoalTo have a long time goal is a bit different. It is the sum of all the small goals we set every day. The everyday goals should always focus on the bigger longtime goal.
Without a longtime goal, we can lose ourselves in too many projects and find ourselves not achieving anything at all.
Too many people work just for money and not for goals. I think money isn’t worth much if you can’t reach a goal with it or realize a dream you have.
Longtime goals and dreams are the fuel for the hard-working engine, without them, you’ll get burned-out sometime and depressed because you don’t know why you do all the things you do.
Just to pay bills isn’t a goal or a dream, it will kill you. I say I work to live and not live to work. I don’t have a problem with working, although at the moment I don’t even earn much money.
I do it for reaching my goals, this is a challenge, and to fulfill my dreams, this is what I live for.
How to set goals?
Humans Have DreamsI’d say, first you need a dream. For me this seems natural, as a kid, we don’t have goals, we have dreams.
You might say now, dreams are for children but life is different. I say if you don’t have a dream you don’t live. One thing, differentiating humans from animals is, we have dreams.
So first please allow yourself to have a dream and believe in it. You again might argue, I had dreams but life thought me different.
I also had dreams before that I don’t have today, this doesn’t matter, I haven’t given up having new dreams. The dreams are my reason to live.
Next, you can think which bigger goal brings you closer to realizing a dream.
I had a dream when I was small, I wanted a girl with black hair. Nothing too easy living in Switzerland lol. The dream somehow stuck with me and after 40 years I live in Thailand and married a Thai woman with beautiful black hair.
Today she’s dying them lol because her dream is to have not black hair 🙂
Sorry, back to the goals. Most of us have goals which have money involved. So we need to think how we want to achieve this goal without forgetting our dreams.
I always wanted to have my own business and make money as a freelancer. I could survive so far without going too far off the trail.
Of course, there must be compromises be done and a hundred percent direct line to achieving our goals is most often not possible, “we are only humans”.
But once you get older and did follow your dreams and set relevant goals you will probably see that your life took a unique direction according to these dreams and goals.
There is actually no wrong path in life, as long as we keep moving we are on the right track. We all need different things in life to happen to grow.
Staying focused on our goals and dreams mixed with the challenges life gives us makes us the personalities we are.
Achievable GoalsSet your goals not too high, not too low either. You can always adjust them once you reached one or found it irrelevant or impossible to reach.
Goals are there to help us find a direction to focus on, they are no law and order. Noone has failed in life if they didn’t reach every goal set.
I know, the real goal is the product of our whole lives and this we will never see so it is a little hard to believe that one is on the right track all the time.
I hope you can understand what I mean.
Have a dream, set a goal helping to realize the dream and split the big goal into small every day, weekly, monthly goals that build up to reaching the bigger goal.
I do it like this and with the small goals, I assure, having a sense of achievement every now and then. This keeps me going on.
How to stay focused on goals?
Don’t play around on Facebook!!! lol.
No for real, I have several things that keep me on track. Of course, it is not very helpful to fill your time with things not related to your goals.

Time is limited and if you want to focus on something bigger and want to reach the goal in a reasonable time you can not waste time.
This means, first of all, you need discipline.
I already said I have a kid and a wife, they both need my attention too. What I do to optimize the sometimes little time I share with them, I also focus on them, 100% while interacting.
A lot of time and energy gets lost when we do more than one thing at once. For example, my daughter comes to me and wants to say something but I’m working.
First I don’t even listen and do not react until I finished the sentence I’m writing at the moment. Then I turn around, take off my glasses and ask her what she wants.
Most often it is a small conversation or a question to be answered. If I do it like this the whole distraction lasts some seconds to a minute and I’m back to concentrated work.
My daughter is very happy with me too because I took the time to listen to her and took her for full and important.
The same takes place when my wife needs something from me. I tell her, just a sec, then I take off my glasses and concentrate on her needs.
If there is something I have to do to help her, I do it right away and end of the story. The longer you wait satisfying your families needs the longer you can not focus on the goals.
Next, I have some optical reminders of what I dream of or of what my goals are. Right in front of me, I have pictures of the most important things in my life.
Like this, every time I take a little break or just look up to think, I see what I’m working for, and why I’m not just hanging around and have fun with friends.
Here on the dashboard of the program, I do all this writing, I also have two reminders showing me my goals and the progress I made so far. (Picture above)
I also have an automated writing goal management implemented in the program. There, for example, I set this month a goal of writing 12 articles and a total of 22’000 words.

After every article published I quickly check where I stand and how much is left to do. I think this is a very motivating tool.
Even if I don’t reach the set goal, at least I see how much I accomplished and can adjust my approach for the next month.
I think to have visible appearances of my goals helps a lot. It makes me happy to see what I can achieve if I stay focused.
It is also a psychological trick to visualize the things you want to have and to get the picture so much into yourself that it actually gets a part of you.
Like this, you can open doors and “energies” that help you reach anything you want. This goes a little into I don’t know, parapsychology or some would say mysticism.
Still, I would actually highly recommend to everyone watching the movie I added to this article. It is called “The Secret Law Of Attraction”. It talks about the way we can reach our goals and fulfill our dreams.
Ok, to sum it up, how to stay focused on goals, I’d put it like that.
- Visualize the goals, write them down and look at them as often as possible.
- Visualize the already achieved steps towards your goal and overthink, actualize the approach reaching them.
- Think about them and talk a lot about your goals with your partners.
- Try to be a focused person in general.
- Don’t take drugs lol.
- Do things 100% or don’t do them.
- Do what you like.
I hope this can help you a little with your future and ongoing projects. I know life is hard and often it is not easy to stay focused. Try to have your private space where you can concentrate, maybe even meditate.
I now add the mentioned movie, relax, listen what they say and feel what they mean.
Thanks for reading.
That’s it for today folks, I hope you had fun. I’ll be back with more because I love to share my thoughts and it makes me happy when I can help one person or another.
If your goal happens to be getting a great blogger, I can recommend the program I work with.
Oh, before I forget, your feedback here is very welcome. Did you enjoy the read? Was there anything you could learn from this post? Do you have a question I might be able to answer?
All Your comments will be of great pleasure for me and all the readers on this site.
With this said, I wish you a great time, stay focused and come back for more 🙂
See you, Stefan 🙂 asuperaffiliate.com

Good read first thing in the morning for me Steff.
Visual reminders are huge for me. “Out of sight, out of mind,” is how my brain operates. I’ve been using Trello to help me see what to do and what I’ve done.
Also, the enjoyment part is key for me. Why do it if you don’t love it?
O, and you gotta reconcile these 2 different pics I see of you. You’re blowing my mind!
Hi, Mr. Brown, thanks for commenting.
I guess you have pics of your goals in front of you too then. I love to look at my “new car” first in the morning lol.
To stay focused on something one doesn’t like is a difficult challenge. I think for having a rich and satisfying life one has to try to do things one likes.
Of course, this asks for compromises, everything has two sides.
All the best, Stefan 🙂
Excellent read my friend. I too love setting goals but dreams as well.
I like to think of things I don’t know, not have any idea of how to get and go after them.
You really described this well. Well done.
Hi AJ, thanks for the comment.
Life is a journey of learning I think.
Once you think you know all you might as well stop living lol.
Have a great time, Stefan 🙂
I think the happiest people on earth are not the richest as far as money.
They are the ones that are satisfied with what they are doing, and they work to live just like you said. They do not live to work.
Hi Alene, nice to meet you.
I think so too. If it was the other way around, there would be just very few happy people in the world.
I think feeling rich is an attitude and has nothing to do with money. Of course, if you feel rich, money will be attracted as well 🙂
I think if we do things because we like to and because it helps others, money will come automatically.
I wish you all the best, see you, Stefan 🙂
Articles about setting goals are always very timely.
Short-term goals are my specialty, but long-term goals always feel daunting.
This info was delivered with a light touch but also gave me a lot of useful pointers to ponder.
I will probably revisit to watch the movie at a later date.
Thanx for this! And I enjoyed your aside about the black hair. Isn’t life ironic?
Hi, Ingojace, and thanks for commenting.
I’m glad you liked the read. I read your latest article, it is soo much more sophisticated 🙂
I try to write in an easy to understand style, some jokes, and some irony.
I have long-term goals but don’t let them overwhelm me.
The movie is great, very motivating really.
I wish you all the best, see you, Stefan 🙂
Good read Steff;
Everyone has to have goals, or nothing would get done.
Since I am retired, not only do I have to have goals but the dreams come along to achieve those goals.
See you again in Snowball. I used to have black hair, but I won’t dye it.
Bill
Hi Bill, thanks for the comment.
I’m sure being retired doesn’t mean one should not have any more goals, that would be sad.
I love to hear that you, even you have reached an age, still have dreams.
Maybe you have Indian or Italian blood somewhere. Black is beautiful but white too lol.
I wish you all the best, see you, Stefan 🙂
Hi Stefan!
It is a very good post. We all have kind of goals. Golas are important to set, but reaching them is not always easy.
For some people easier, for some harder.
There are many factors which can influence reaching goals.
The first and the most important one is health.
The next one is your available time for it and the third your resources.
Finally, your skills and knowledge regarding your ability to reach goals.
Goals are like the skeleton. They are there as a guide, as something that can carry you onwards, but skeleton without muscles, organs etc. is not going to move. The systems which are moving the skeleton are actually something to focus on.
Besides goals, it is important to focus on the tasks. Daily achievement of small (or bigger) chunks of the goals. You are referring nicely to it.
I think besides dreams, you need the realistic setting of the goals.
So, there are many factors which will influence achieving your goals.
Thanks for sharing your ideas and the motivation.
Keep up the good work!
Best regards!
Hey Igor, thanks for the visit and the great comment.
These are interesting thoughts on the topic and I’m glad you added them.
I think first comes a dream and according to this, I adjust my goals, according to those I set short-term goals.
Of course, there are always circumstances that influence the forthcoming on our path but they are supposed to be there to make us strong and overthink what we really want in life.
Noone’s way will be from A to Z in a straight line, this is for robots but to have Z in mind all the time does lead us in the right direction.
On the way, we learn the skills needed for reaching our goals. The only thing that can stop us going on is ourselves.
We have to take care of ourselves and the best way to do this is to do things we love.
I wish you a great time, see you, Stefan 🙂