In today’s blog post, I’m sharing the process I use to help my clients set their goals for the upcoming year. If you want to follow this process, take some time to read through to the end before starting anything. Once you’re clear on what you’re doing, you’ll need to spend some time getting the various elements ready and decide when you’re going to work on this as it will probably take you at least an hour.
It’s ideal to do this process between Christmas and the New Year when everything is quiet. You want to feel calm and spacious when setting your goals. If you do them in a rushed, stressed state, it’s likely you won’t have a good connection to your intuition, which is very helpful when setting goals. So, try and find time where you can do this process in a relaxed state.
Your bigger vision (optional step)
Think about your goals for the next 10 years and write them all down. How would you like your life to be, how do you want to feel and what does your life look like? This can take some time, so I’d set aside at least 30 minutes for this.
Also, don’t limit or downplay your goals, write things out as they come to you envisaging your ideal scenarios.
Once you’ve done this, then work backwards and think about where you’d need to be in 3 years, to have reached those 10-year goals. Again, take some time to write this out.
These larger life goals can help inform what you want/need to do over the next 12 months – however, if you’d rather skip this step and only focus on your goals for the next year then start the process from here:
Choosing your goals for 2024
Choose up to 3 major goals for the year – if one is a really big goal then only choose that one. But definitely no more than three.
Be realistic but also aspirational – these goals need to be able to work with your lifestyle. Think about what it’s going to take to achieve these goals and make sure you’re not being over-ambitious. I say this as many people overestimate what’s possible. Yes, you can achieve a lot in a year, but you also don’t want to set yourself up to fail. The goals should stretch you, but not too much.
Consider that you may have to adjust your priorities to make time for your goals – if the goal(s) are important to you, you will be willing to shift your priorities.
Get clear on your ‘why(s)’ – write down your reasons for wanting to achieve these goals and what your desired outcomes are.
Planning your goals
You’ll need: A pen or pencil, some plain paper or a notebook, 2 colours of small Post-it notes, A4 paper and a printer ideally. If you don’t have access to a printer, you’ll have to do this all by hand, which is fairly easy, it’ll just take you a little more time.
Here, we’re referring to your goal(s) for the year as the long-term goal(s). Tackling each goal separately, break the goal down into medium-term goals – to do this, decide what you need to achieve each quarter of the year to reach your long-term goal by the end of the year. Write this down on a piece of paper – what needs to happen by March 31st, by June 30th, by September 30th, and finally by December 31st? Be as specific as you can here.
Then you break these goals down further to give you your short-term goals which can be monthly and/or weekly depending on what you need to do and the level of detail you need to go into. For example, if you’ll be doing the same thing all month, then you could stick with a monthly goal, but if you need to change what you’re doing every week to achieve that monthly goal, then break those down even further into weekly goals.
By the end of this part of the process, you should have made a list of the medium-term milestones/goals, which then helped you break those down further into monthly and/or weekly milestones/goals.
Mapping out your goals
You need a visual plan of the year on paper. Ideally, one that shows the year with a page for each month. I like to do this by going to my online schedule calendar, and I temporarily create a new calendar with no entries and then print that out – so you end up with the calendar only. You can also go to this free website called print-a-calendar.com and create the same document to print.
Once you have these 12 monthly calendar pages ready, go back to your lists and now add this information to the calendar pages – starting with the medium-term goals, you’ll add these at the end of each quarter. Then do the same for the short-term goals either by the months or weeks depending on the level of detail you’re going into.
So, essentially, you’re moving the medium and short-term goals from the lists to the calendar. However, you can do this in one of two ways – see below:
Post-it notes (optional)
When you start mapping out your goals on the calendar pages, it can be helpful to use Post-it notes here so that you can move things around until you’ve decided the plan is realistic and ready to go. I suggest you have two colours of small Post-it notes, one for the medium-term goals and one for the short-term goals.
Write each medium and short-term goal down on a separate post-it note – place the medium-term ones on the sheets first, then do the same process for the short-term goals.
Once everything is laid out – look at the plan and timelines and ask yourself if it makes sense and if it’s realistic. Are there any months or weeks where you’ve got too much going on? If so, you will need to move things around until the plan feels manageable. Also, have you factored in big life events like holidays etc?
When you feel the plan is ready – you can remove the Post-it notes and write the plan out in pen or pencil or if you like you can simply leave the goals on there as Post-it notes.
Working towards your goals
Ideally, put these sheets where you can see them – on your office wall would be the ideal location but failing that you want to be able to refer to them easily. I also strongly recommend that you add the dates/milestones to your daily online schedule as well if you can.
Cultivate the habit of reviewing your progress on a Friday at the end of your week – assess how you’ve done over the previous week and then review the week ahead looking at what you need to do to continue taking action on your short-term goals to meet your medium-term goals.
Other points to note:
Whenever possible use the SMART goal framework for setting your long-term, medium-term, and short-term goals – this means your goals are: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
Note that it’s likely you’ll have at least one unexpected work or life event crop up over the course of the year that will potentially throw you off track so you may need to adjust your plan at certain points – this is where the post-it notes come in handy, as you can move them around.
Remember, that small things done consistently, make the biggest difference.
And keep going even if it feels like you’re not making progress. It’s often the case, that at first, it feels like nothing is changing and then at a certain point it feels like a lot has changed in a short time – results often creep up on you!
However, also pay attention to how you feel – you will likely come up against resistance especially at first, but what you’re doing should generally make you feel good/better. If something always makes you feel bad in some way, then either the goal isn’t right for you or you’re likely expecting too much of yourself.
If you’re planning on using this goal-setting process to set your goals for 2024, I wish you all the best with it – remember, it’s the small consistent actions taken towards the larger end goal(s) that get you there!
Kate x
