Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Ali Hale, of Aliventures.

I don’t know you, but I’m willing to bet that you have some project that you’d love to get completed.

Maybe it’s that back-of-an-envelope idea for a business that you spent an evening discussing with mates in the pub … and that you think you just might be able to “make it” with.

Or that new direction for your current business, that you need to research and plan for … and which you’re still no closer to than when you first thought of it.

Or perhaps it’s a skill you want to learn, which will require twenty or forty hours of study.

Whatever it is, all you need is a few clear days, perhaps a week or two, and you could do it. You know that. You’ve known that for months, maybe years.

Trouble is, you never get those few clear days. And you also know, somewhere in the back of your mind, that you never will.

There’s never going to be a perfect time to start a business/write a book/change your career/learn a new skill. Life keeps happening. But you can achieve your goals – much more easily than you think.

Here’s what you need (and as Naomi would say, cue big ass red text):

A daily, no-excuses target.

So what the hell is that?

It’s DAILY. That means you do it every single day. Seriously. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

If you absolutely only work on weekdays, and this is absolutely only related to your business, you can do it on weekdays only. But it’s easier to make it stick if you do it every day, without fail. Without excuses.

Start crossing off days on the calendar. You’ll be loath to break the success-chain.

It’s NO-EXCUSES. That means you need to decide on an absolute minimum target. Something that you can do when you’re busy, stressed, feeling (as we say here in the UK) that you “can’t be arsed”.

Make it something you can do in half an hour. You have a spare half hour every day. If you really, truly don’t, get up earlier. Eat faster. Make someone else do the washing up.

It’s a TARGET. By that, I mean it’s something you can count.

If your goal is “a completed ebook”, your target might be “five hundred words per day”. If your goal is “learn PHP”, your target might be “read one chapter of this book and try out the exercises”.

For some goals, you’ll have to stick with “spend half an hour working on Project X”.

It’s as simple as that.

If you’re reading this and thinking that an itty bitty, no-excuses target won’t let you progress fast enough – ask yourself this. Are you any nearer your big goal now than you were a month ago? How much closer could you be if you’d spent fifteen solid hours working towards it?

Exactly.

And just to prove it works – here’s what happened for me.

I’m writing a novel. I wrote about 6,000 words of it between October and December last year, mostly when I had one of those rare free afternoons.

From January 1st, I set a target of 500 words, minimum, per day. I write fast, so this is a “no-excuses” level . I’m kidding myself if I can’t find time and energy for 500 words.

So where am I now? In forty five days, I’ve written 34,000 words. Bit of an increase, I think you’ll agree.

What’s your big goal? What “daily, no-excuses target” can you set to ensure that you reach it?

Ali is a freelance writer, specializing in online articles, blogging and website copy (see www.aliventures.com if you’re interested). When her early ambition to rule the world started to look unlikely, she began writing fiction, where she not only gets to rule a world, she gets to create it too. She gets over-excited about her projects and other people’s. If you need a hand with something wordy and webby, drop her an email (ali@aliventures.com).