We tend to greatly overestimate what we can do in a week, but grossly underestimate what we can accomplish in a year. Isn’t that crazy?
One year is plenty of time to level up your life and business, but somehow we end up missing that crucial point.
You can do a lot in a year, especially with the right goals and a plan to accomplish them. All it takes is having a clear vision of where you want to go and prioritizing the actions that you need to take to make it happen.
After trying many different ways to achieve my goals I’m sharing a process that actually works. This is the same method that the Visionary Journal is based on. I focus on more than just setting S. M. A. R. T goals and writing them down. I take it a step further and create quarterly, monthly and daily actions. It’s a lot of upfront planning but once you have your goals broken down it’s much easier to make steady progress.
Here’s my step by step breakdown of how I plan and achieve my goals:
Yearly
Before I start thinking about my goals for the year I decide on the areas of my life that I want to focus on improving. To achieve that I choose six focus areas that I want to work on during the year. A few examples of areas that you may want to focus on are family, health, spiritual, travel, personal development, finances, and career.
Sticking to six focus areas gives me a bit of goal diversity so that things don’t get boring. I want balance in my life so I want to make sure that not all of my goals are business or money related. This year one of my focus areas is happiness and I set goals related to my hobbies (crafting and reading). This allows me to work towards something that is fun and lightens the load.
After I’ve chosen my focus areas I set two goals for each one. I try to create a mix of small, medium and large goals. When setting your goals for the year you really need to think about how long each goal will reasonably take you to finish. You can not have 12 really large goals to complete in one year. You won’t be able to complete them all and you’ll end up disappointed.
Next, I write down all of the action steps that I need to take to complete each goal. (No you don’t have to do this all at once for every goal. You can break it up.) This helps me see just how much work I have to do and makes it easier to decide what to do first.
Quarterly
Trying to achieve your goals with day to day planning doesn’t work. Every 90 days I sit down and make a list of actions to work on. Knowing ahead of time what I want to achieve gives me time to plan for it and work it into my schedule.
Here’s how that looks:
I choose 1 to 3 goals that I’m going to focus on for the coming 90 days. Then, I pick 5 specific tasks for each goal that I will complete at 30, 60 and 90 days (15 tasks total over 90 days).
Now I have a 90- day action plan to work on.
Monthly
At the beginning of every month, I make a note of my goal(s) in focus for the month and I use the 90-day action to get my tasks for that month on to my schedule. I assign each task a specific week to complete it. If I have 5 tasks for the month, I commit to completing approximately 1 task a week.
Knowing what I need to do to move my goals forward at the beginning of the month eliminates overwhelm and frustration. It’s much easier for me to make plans and work around my time constraints.
Weekly
On Sunday’s I sit down for about 30 minutes to plan my schedule for the week. I make sure to plug in meetings, appointments, and any other time commitments. Then, I assign my goal tasks to a specific day. I also schedule in recurring tasks (writing blog posts, updating my accounting) and lingering items from my to-do list.
I always make sure I schedule in a light work day towards the end of the week. I use this as a recovery day to catch up on work.
Daily
My daily schedule is where the magic happens. My goal task is a part of my daily top 3. These are the 3 things that MUST be completed that day. At this point, it’s up to me to put in the work.
Do things always go as planned? Nope. Sometimes my days get thrown off. However, it’s easier to recover and reschedule things when I know where things went off the rails.
Planning in this way also has the added benefit of keeping my goals top of mind. I’m constantly looking at them and reviewing what needs to be done next. It’s much more difficult to veer off course or forget what I was working towards.
That was a little intense! There are a lot of the moving parts involved in achieving your goals but it’s so worth it.
If this style of planning feels right to you I’ve created the perfect paper planner. The Visionary Journal was designed to help you create your action plans, manage your tasks, keep track of your schedule and cross those unfinished goals off of your list. If you’re ready to ramp up your goal smashing abilities, check it out and order a copy.
I absolutely loved reading this, Monique! These types of posts usually come out at the end of the year and I always feel overwhelmed about setting my goals, so I’m really glad you’ve published this now so I’ve got time to prepare.
You said about choosing different areas of your life to focus on, which is an awesome idea – I’ve never set goals in that way before. But how do you decide what goals to set within these areas? I know it might seem like a silly question but I just want to make sure I’m clear on it all so I can get going with my goals!
Hey Holly!
It’s mostly a matter of personal preference. I try to think about what I can do to improve in each area or how a goal I set this year can be built upon in the coming year. For example one of my focus areas is personal development, I set a goal to develop a daily writing habit. This is an important goal for me because I’d like to write a book in the next 3 years. I realize I need to practice and write more so it’s a good goal for me. I hope that helps.
Enjoyed reading this amazing post