You probably already have weekly goals, whether you know it or not. If you have a job outside the home, one of your goals is to go to work every day. Another goal will be to groom yourself every day, eat several meals, maybe do some exercising, sleep a certain number of hours, clean the house, work on the yard, take care of kids and pets and so on. These are so routine, you hardly ever have to think about most of them anymore.

But if you had to pick one goal you’ve been putting off to work on for this next week, what would it be? What would happen if you picked one every Monday and tried to accomplish it by Friday or Saturday bedtime?

I would bet that in a month or two, your overall to-do list would have shrunk to a more manageable size (it never, or rarely, gets to zero if you keep it updated, unfortunately).

Remember the process for accomplishing a goal. Write it down. Write down the steps you need to take to accomplish it. Move those steps around in the order you need to do them in. Go!

For example, you want to paint a room. First you have to pick which room. Then write it down. Next, you have to figure out what you need in order to paint it. You may already have some supplies on hand, but need to buy others. You have to pick a color and get the paint. Maybe you want to check out paint chips first. Put all these things in order on Monday and see how far you get by end of the week. Even if you don’t get the painting done, you’re that much closer to end of goal. The next week, you can have the same goal, and probably finish the job.

This works for just about everything. Need to see the dentist?

You have to make an appointment. If you don’t have a dentist, you have to decide whom to see. You need to gather information, find out locations and telephone numbers. (See where the steps aren’t in the right order as I quickly wrote them down? Remember to re-order your steps.) Then you have to call for the appointment. The dentist may not be able to see you the same week, so again, you have to put that goal off to the week you can go.

If you concentrate on only one rather large goal each week, you will be a lot further ahead than if you take a scattershot approach and work on two or three or more each week. You also lose momentum if you don’t narrow it down to one. You may go get the paint chips, gather the information about dentists, then decide to work on something else because you’ve lost interest and focus.

What one major goal will you pick for this week? Write it down. And check in with yourself on Friday or Saturday to see how far along you got.