How can you make accomplishing your goals a regular part of your weekly schedule?

​You have nailed down your priorities and you have formulated a list of SMART Goals. Now it is time to take those goals and incorporate them into your daily and weekly schedule. 
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​There are many ways of doing this, and much depends on your actual goals and your lifestyle. A single college student will have far more control over their time than a homeschooling mother of 8 children. However, the Weekly Time Schedule will give anyone, with any life-style, the ability to control where their time goes.  

This can be compared to a financial budget. People without a budget have very little control over where their money is going. But people who consistently live by a budget can exercise very high levels of control over how their money is spent. They control the money instead of the money controlling them. This is true for our time as well. With a consistently kept schedule, you will know when breakfast is served, when you exercise, when you work, and when you have family devotions each day. In addition, you can share your weekly schedule with those who need to keep up with your plans.

We want to incorporate our goals into our weekly schedule by making time for accomplishing them. If you have made actionable, specific, time-bound goals, this task will be fairly easy for you.  

While reading over your goals, determine which ones you should work on daily, which ones weekly, and which ones only monthly. For instance, you may have a goal to exercise 5-6 times a week for 45 minutes. Place that on your weekly schedule for the days you will exercise. Maybe you have a presentation you will be giving in a couple of months at a large conference and one of your goals is to prepare for that conference. Mark out an hour during the week when you will be preparing for your presentation. 

You will want to use this weekly schedule in conjunction with a daily calendar for best success. The Weekly Schedule gives you the rough outline of your week. Your daily calendar (such as a Franklin Planner or a Day Timer) will help you accomplish the specific goals you have for each day. For instance, the person who is preparing for the conference will break the presentation preparation down into smaller, concrete units (i.e., make an outline, prepare the handout, create a Power Point slideshow) and write those on their daily calendar or planner during the slot allotted to their conference preparation time.  

The better you become at using a calendar or a planner, the more successful you will be at accomplishing your goals. Anything that is truly important to you should have its place on your Weekly Time Schedule.

Some people sit down to make goals and don't know where to start. Other people have 453 goals spread out over 23 different areas of life. The first step in making goals for your life is to nail down your current priorities. 

You can't work on everything in your life at one time. Even if you feel like your life is an absolute mess and you want an overhaul, you still need to start with just a few goals.  

We sometimes use the Priorities and Planning Worksheet in the Planning Your Life God's Way Seminars. It is extremely helpful in analyzing the areas of your life that you need to focus on.  

In the first column of this worksheet, you will list the priorities that you believe God wants you to focus on. What are these priorities? You can approach this in any of the following ways.

​1. Roles that you play in life    

• Your role in your company/business 
• Your role in your family (father/mother/sister)  
• Your role in your church
• Your role in your community

    
2. Responsibilities that you shoulder

• Pastoring
• Supervising
• Parenting
• Work responsibilities
• Homeschooling

    
3. Areas in which you see a need for improvement

• Finances/Stewardship
• Health and Fitness
• Education
• Skills/Talents/Gifts

The second column of this worksheet is also important. This is your underlying "why." When God has given you a responsibility or role, or burdened you with an area of needed improvement, you can be certain that He will help you to grow in that area as you submit yourself to Him. Perhaps a verse has already convicted you. Write that down. If no verse comes to mind, go searching. Ask the Lord to lead you to a verse that you can cling to when the motivation to accomplish your goals fades.

Finally, there are two things to keep in mind when filling out this worksheet. First, you don't need to use all ten slots. Some people will need four. Others may need seven. Only write down as many priorities as you have for your life right now. And that little phrase "right now" is the second thing to keep in mind. This is not a list you will keep for the rest of your life. Think of it as a temporary list. As your life changes--and it will--your priorities will also change. So focus only on the priorities you have for your life for this current period of time.