We are officially more than halfway through the year, which can either be an exciting or terrifying thought. At the beginning of the year, you may have set some ambitious goals for yourself in your career or personal life. Regardless of how much progress you’ve made, now is the perfect time to perform a mid-year goals check in. If you didn’t get a chance to set goals at the beginning of the year, now is a great time to set some goals to achieve for the remainder of the year! Whether it is improving productivity, updating your resume, or finally asking for a raise, use the following steps to set and achieve your goal.

1. Reflect on your progress

Whether or not you set goals at the beginning of the year, the first step to achieving them by the end of the year is to reflect on what you’ve accomplished so far. Did you make progress towards a goal, or were you unable to set aside the time to work on it? When reflecting on this, it helps to consider the factors that can impact your progress. You may be constantly interrupted and distracted by new tasks. If this is the case, beginning the day with a set amount of time to work towards your goal can help you make progress. If you make significant progress, how can you continue this? Write down specific steps on how you can continue advancing towards your goal.

2. Remove unnecessary goals

While reflecting on your progress, you may have realized that some of the goals you set were slightly overambitious or don’t align with what you currently want to work towards. If this is the case, then remove them! You don’t need to have a large list of goals; it is more about the quality than the quantity. The inclusion of unnecessary goals distracts you from focusing on the goals you actually want to achieve. By removing the less significant ones, you are not only saving your time and energy, but also allowing yourself to put more effort into the goals that are important to you.

3. Create or adjust timeline to complete goals

A timeline is paramount to staying on track with your goals because it allows you to plan where you should be, and when. In the past, you may have worked on a project that had multiple deadlines throughout. A goal timeline follows the same concept. By completing smaller goals within a certain time frame, you are staying in line with your expected deadline. Creating a timeline could be something you forgot to execute during the first half of the year, causing you to become behind. However, the second half of the year is full of opportunities to create a realistic timeline to follow. It does not need to be set in stone, but while you perform your mid-year goals check in, try to realistically estimate when you can complete each step until you eventually achieve your goal.

4. Determine indicators of progress

Besides setting timelines for progress, determining key performance indicators is one of the most useful tools when setting a goal. In this context, a key performance indicator is considered a small task to help complete the overall goal. For example, if you want to be more organized at work, the first step could be organizing your email. That would be your first key performance indicator. This can then be broken down into creating folders for each topic, moving all emails into the proper folder, deleting all unnecessary emails, etc. The completion of each of these brings you one step closer to achieving your goal of organizing your email. If you set key performance indicators at the beginning of the year, now is when you should evaluate how many of those you have completed , and what you should adjust for the second half of the year.

5. Remind yourself why you started

This may be one of the most important steps of your mid-year goals check-in. A reminder of why you started in the first place will reignite your motivation towards your goals. Write down your “why” on your plan for the second half of the year to provide this small reminder. If you don’t remember why you started, write down why you are continuing towards it. This will help when you start to lose motivation or get distracted from working towards your goal.

There is no time like the present to achieve your personal and career goals. The year may be half way over, but that also means there are still six months left filled with opportunities. I highly recommend updating your resume (or hiring a resume writer to do it for you) with any accomplishments  you achieve or new roles you earn. Regardless of your personal or career goals, remember to follow these steps to complete the goals you set both at the beginning of the year or during this mid-year check-in!