The power of planning

ACTION PLAN: WRITE DOWN YOUR GOAL, THEN TAKE THE STEPS TO REACH IT Goal-setting and accountability partners will help you with your objectives.

While it’s still early in the year, I want to reiterate the importance of setting goals and, ultimately, the use of accountability partners to keep you accountable to your goal.

If you want to achieve something, whether it’s weight loss, weight gain, muscle gain, drinking more water or following a healthier diet, the easiest way to achieve that goal is to plan it, write it down and put in place the necessary steps to achieve your goal.

And those necessary steps could be consulting a dietician if your goal is diet-related, consulting a sports coach if your goal is related to achieving success at a particular big sporting event, or starting a WhatsApp group of friends who hold one another accountable to the same or similar goals.

Let me give you an example from my personal experience.

The Comrades Marathon has been on my bucket list from the time I was young, because my family would watch it all day on TV. I promised myself that I would run it one day.

A few years ago, I decided it was time to tick off this bucketlist item.

I began by approaching a running coach for a training programme.

The first thing he asked was my Comrades goal in terms of time. I told him I wanted to finish comfortably but with a good time that, for me, was a sub-ninehour marathon.

We first looked at my current finish times over 10km, 21km and 42km and then created my training

When you have a big goal to achieve, link up with like-minded people

programme.

The second step was to approach a nutritionist. I did this because I used to suffer from runners’ gut during 42km marathons and with Comrades being more than double that distance, I knew I needed a nutrition intervention for me to have success at the race.

Last but not least, I started surrounding myself with the Comrades Crew of runners in my neighbourhood.

When you have a big goal like that to achieve, it’s important to link up with like-minded people (even if you aren’t chasing the same time) so that you can train together and share training tips.

To add to making my goal a success, I diarised my training sessions to ensure I didn’t miss them. I treated them exactly how I treated my work meetings.

Goal-setting helps to align your focus on whatever you want to achieve. It also helps you to manage yourself and measure your improvement or success with executing your plans.

Accountability partners help to ensure you don’t fall off the wagon. They can be your actual training partners or virtual accountability partners that you message daily.

So simply put, when you have a challenge ahead of you, sit down with it and make plans on how to achieve it.

It’s best that you put the plans in place because nothing beats a plan and a person who’s determined to execute it.

Zulu is a qualified biokineticist and co-founder of PopUpGym. Follow her on Instagram: @letshego.zulu; X: @letshegom; Facebook: Letshego Zulu