Set Yourself Up for Success: Set Reasonable Goals

One of the surest ways to sabotage your own success is to set unreasonable or unattainable goals. Doing so will quickly lead do discouragement and a lack of any sense of progress or accomplishment. To succeed, you have to feel like you’re actually getting somewhere.  Setting your goals to high or too broadly can cause all of your hard work to come to naught.

There is no reason that you can’t take on the world if you have the motivation, but following just a few basic guidelines will make succeeding at your task a much more pleasant experience.

Be reasonable in your estimates.

Whether you bid contracts for clients or have just decided to do a remake of your own blog, be reasonable when estimating the amount of time it will take to accomplish a task.  Be sure to factor in common delays. (Do you have a Day Job that will most likely get in the way?  A two year old in the home with you? Family obligations coming up?)

Make no mistake, there will be delays.  If you are prepared for them you have avoided the pitfall of feeling that you’ve been working extremely hard at nothing.  you can comfortably get the work done in the time that you actually do have, and save the embarrassment of an overdue deadline with a client or your readers.

Break Large Projects into smaller, more manageable pieces.

If you’re tackling a larger project, break it down into well defined milestones.  Doing so will allow you o focus on specifics, not the entire project. As each piece is completed, the project gets a little closer to done, seemingly all on its own.  working in this manner can keep you from placing undue pressure on yourself.

If it’s going to take a week to get graphics back from the design shop, you can focus on a portion of the project that doesn’t need those images. You don’t tie yourself up in the details you can’t handle now, and other people don’t have to wait on the next piece you were supposed to deliver.

If you’re handling the project alone, Makee sure that you’ve ordered your milestones so that the work needed for the upcoming bitwas completed in your last session.  It keeps the project as a whole moving along at a good pace, rather than bogging down in details, which not only costs you time, but can lead you to walk away entirely.

Don’t be afraid to hire out what you can’t complete yourself.

In the end, always be sure that the work gets done.  If you don’t have the time or resources on hand to finish a project in the timeframe required, don’t be afraid to hire someone to handle those portions of the project that they are best equipped to handle.

While hiring out a part of the project might cut into your margins a bit it will more than pay for itself in time needed to get the work completed and in customer satisfaction.  If you’re not na expert in PHP, hire one.  the time you’ll save will more than make up for the expense in time while you try to learn enough to get the project done.

Experts in many fields can be hired online through companies like elance.com.  Don’t be afraid to shop around.  There is certain to be someone willing to do the work at a price you can afford, just be sure to check references before you hire someone online.

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