What separates those people who are moving their lives forward from those that stagnate? How do some people seem to always be growing, changing, excited about life, looking forward to the future?

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately. Maybe it’s because I just turned 40, but I want my life to move forward. I don’t want to stagnate. I want to see progress physically, intellectually, spiritually, emotionally. How do I make sure I’m making progress?

In my mind it’s all about setting goals. I’ve gotten into the habit of creating life goals. What I realized is that I wasn’t defining incremental goals to achieve the life goals I’ve committed to. They are broadly defined with no real time limit. I realized that each one of those goals need to be broken down into individual steps with metrics attached which allow me to know if I’ve made progress.

So here are some practical steps I came up with.

1. Write down 2-3 specific things I’d like to achieve this month.
2. Break those down into specific steps you’re going to take each week to accomplish your goals.
3. Define HOW you’re going to measure successful completion of each step.

It’s not all that complicated, but will force you to move the ball forward on a weekly basis.