December is right around the corner, and as the year wraps up, you may already be feeling the panic of wondering whether you’ve met your yearly goals. Now is a good time to reassess the year and start planning for the upcoming year. And it’s a perfect time to spend the last month of the year meeting any of the goals you haven’t checked off your list.

If you haven’t set goals for yourself in the past, they can be critical to your success, both as a businessperson, but on a personal level as well. Here’s why, and how you can set yourself and your team up for long-term success with goal planning.

Research shows that goals are motivating. They literally create momentum toward achieving something you’ve set your mind to because we are hard wired to do so. Your goals should give you direction and clarity. They should help you understand what you want and how to get there. And they should empower you to meet them, even when they’re challenging.

That’s also why every individual within your organization needs their own goals. Encourage them to evaluate your company goals and align their own with where your organization is headed. But they should all have their own individual goals as well, particularly as they relate to their positions and the personal objectives they have. You should also be looking for ways to help your employees meet their goals along the way. They need your support, and the support of your entire organization, to ensure they meet them. You’ll see a more empowered workforce because of it.

As the end of the year begins to wrap up, it’s time to check in on how close you are to meeting your goals. According to research, it’s important to write down your goals. Writing them down stores them externally so you can access them when you need them. And more importantly, it encodes them into your brain. This process is telling your brain that they are important and will help them stay top-of-mind throughout the year. You’re literally telling yourself to remember what’s important and most critical to your success.

When your goals are easily accessible, you can pull up your document to review them and see where things stand. What goals were you easily able to complete? Are there still goals you haven’t checked off the list? If there are still things you want to finish up by the end of the year, you’ll need to create a plan of action.

Once you’ve assessed what goals you want to target, go into planning mode. It helps to make mini goals to tackle those larger goals, so with just a few weeks left before the end of the year, you’ll want to dedicate some time each week, or maybe even each day, to ensure you’re meeting them.  

Be realistic about meeting those goals, too. Don’t sacrifice your work for the sake of checking something off a list. But if it’s important to you to meet those goals, it’s important enough to build time into your days to ensure that happens. Setting goals and working toward them daily builds good habits and makes them a routine. That’s something that will benefit you for years to come. Once you have that last minute sprint toward your goals in place, make sure it’s realistic. If you can achieve a major goal at the end of the year, that’s a great way to start the incoming year, too.

If, for any reason, you didn’t achieve a goal that was on your list, that’s okay. Just re-evaluate what happened. Was the goal too lofty? Was it unclear? Did you not have enough small steps that you could check off along the way? Did the goal change for some reason? Remember: these are your goals. If you were uninspired to meet your goals or if something changed along the way, it’s up to you, and only you, to figure out how to pivot.

Be sure to take the time to process what happened and how to move forward. You may want to write down the evaluation, just like you did with your goals, to make sure to learn from it. The important thing is to make sure you’re using your learnings to create new goals for the upcoming year and to make sure they’re achievable and driving you toward success.

The end of the year is a great time to check in with yourself to make sure you’re giving yourself momentum to work for the things you want. I promise you it’s worth the work.

Jim Allen is a business leader and entrepreneur who has built one of the top-producing real estate groups in the Triangle. He is President of The Jim Allen Group, which is consistently named one of the top real estate teams in North Carolina and even North America.