Just a few weeks ago, many of us wrote goals for 2021. Unfortunately, though, many of us set ourselves up for failure before we even got started.

You’ve probably heard the statistics: only 8% of people achieve their New Year’s resolutions. To go from a goal setter to a goal achiever, start by remembering that 10 x 10% ≠ 1. In fact, when it comes to goal setting, 10 x 10% = 0.

In other words, if you set 10 goals and you achieve 10% of each of them, you’ve effectively achieved nothing. If you think about it, 10% of a goal to get a new job isn’t even getting an interview or an offer. 10% of holding a gallery show for your artwork isn’t even finishing a painting. 10% of completing a certification or degree might be registering for a class, but it isn’t completing the class.

Instead of ending the year with 10% done, you really need to complete 100% or at least 90% to truly reap the benefits of completing a goal – including achieving the sense of satisfaction and completion that comes from knowing you’ve worked hard and achieved something that matters to you.

Rather than having 10 (or more) goals and only achieving a piece of each one, we recommend focusing on just 3 or 4 goals per quarter. When you focus on just a few goals, you avoid both getting overwhelmed, and spreading yourself too thin to get them done. And by focusing your efforts on reaching 90-100% on the goals you set rather than doing a little across a lot of goals, you can actually make a huge difference.

There’s also the psychological boost of achieving a goal, which you never experience if you do just pieces of many goals. By focusing on 3-4 goals each quarter, you can still achieve 12-16 goals per year, and you’ll benefit from the psychological rewards of feeling good about having achieved goals every quarter.

Giving yourself just 90 days rather than 365 to achieve a goal is also ideal for procrastinators; quarterly goals mean that you generally have time to slack a bit if you become ill or have pressing obligations at work, but have too short a time to be able to procrastinate as can be so easy with annual goals.

Put another way, if you use quarterly goals, you give yourself three additional deadlines over the course of the year, thus ramping up the encouragement to achieve your goals rather than waiting until the end of the year and trying to do everything at once.

In other words, by limiting yourself to fewer goals per quarter rather than trying to tackle everything all at once, you can achieve more over the course of the year.

So when it comes to goal setting – and achieving – remember that 10% x 10 goals = 0, and focus on 3-4 goals per quarter to go farther, faster in 2021.

If you missed Achievement21: Goalapalooza on January 2, you can still purchase access to the recordings of our full day goal setting and achievement event.