So how did January work out? Hit all your targets? Have you completed 1/12th of your plan for this year?

It’s about this time of year that New Year Resolutions are abandoned, business plans falter, and reality starts to peel away from the bright, upward course you had planned. So if you haven’t yet sat down to review and, if necessary, regroup, now’s the time.

If you’ve wandered from the path you planned for yourself the obvious areas of blame are lack of willpower or discipline. However, there is another possibility that does not immediately occur to most people.

Often the problem lies with the nature of our goals. Big, ambitious goals that can only be achieved through daily applications of superhuman willpower and incredible levels of commitment and focus.

Attempt to pursue these type of goals and you are doomed from the start. If your achievements are reliant upon you being more focused, organised, enthusiastic, and energetic than ever before you’re simply setting yourself up for failure.

If this is the case, you need to break down your goals into smaller, simpler ones. A sequence of achievable steps to reach your desired destination rather than one giant leap.

You need to commit to small, but important action steps. This could be something like writing 500 words a day, creating a new video per week, or regularly interacting with your fans on Facebook.

Each step needs to be simple and not too challenging. Yet if you can achieve them on a regular basis they will compound into significant progress toward your larger goals.

In one month, just keeping to the above goals every weekday, you will have written 10,000 words, made four videos, and started to build relationships with potential partners and customers. In three months you’d have written enough for an ebook, be in a position to regularly release one video a month for the rest of the year, and build trust with people who can significantly help your business. Just by consistently keeping to three simple actions on a daily basis.

At the end of this month we’ll be 1/6th of way through the year. Think about how quickly January has gone by. The rest of the year is just that, eleven more times.

If you’ve set up goals that were doomed to failure and your achievements already lag behind what you had planned, give this approach a go. Take another look at your goals and break them down into simpler ones. Then commit yourself to achieving these on a daily basis. No one can complete a worthwhile journey in one leap, but small steps taken consistently can produce significant results.