Goal Planning

I’m a planner girl at heart and spend an exorbitant amount of time on building a schedule to keep me not only on task, but to make sure I don’t forget things that are coming up. While having a lovely schedule does keep me on task, sometimes I’m left asking myself:

What are my goals? What will I achieve with my schedule and why am I doing the things I am doing?

This is critical. Without goals and guidance for ourselves, we don’t really have clear measurements for what we might want to achieve. Keep in mind, not everything needs a goal. But if you’re in school and studying for tests, or working on a big project at work, or trying to achieve something with your small business – then you probably have some goals in your life that you could be building plans for.

A study by Dr. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at California’s Dominican University, have shown that “those who wrote their goals accomplished significantly more” than those who did not. It’s a simple fact that by writing things down and building the path to achieve those goals, mixed with a level of accountability, will help you be more successful at achieve your goals.

What goals do I set?

Goals are cross functional in our lives and can be related to anything, including our personal development, improving our health, setting us on a track for our career goals, or in the relationships that we have. Here are some examples of goals for any of these area to get you thinking.

• Personal Development Goals
  • Creating a meditation routine
  • Lowering stress or anxiety
  • Developing a hobby
• Health Goals
  • Losing a certain amount of weight
  • Changing your diet
  • Improving your strength
• Career Goals
  • Learning a new skill
  • Increasing your income
  • Find a new career path
• Relationship Goals
  • Spending more time with your husband/wife/kids
  • Improving your dating life
  • Developing new friendships

Staying Motivated

It’s really easy, and fairly common, to set goals and then walk away from them. Don’t feel discouraged if you ever get overwhelmed and need to take a break – it will always be there for you when you’re ready to come back! Finding that motivation to stick with it can be difficult as it might feel like just another thing you have to remember to do. If you’re serious about setting and achieving goals then the best way to stay motivated is to create a process of accountability, either within a community group, close friends or family members. Whatever you feel most comfortable with.

Combining accountability for yourself and your achievements and regularly reviewing and adjusting your goals will get you set on the right track!

Goal Setting Process

1. Set the “big rocks”

When I lay out my goals, I do so in “big rocks” and ask myself “what are the really big things I want to set as goals for myself?”

Here is a little peak at the Goals I set for my social media and blogging for 2023:

As you can see, these are my big rocks. It includes the big changes I want to see and by accomplishing these big rocks, I know that I will see the results I want to achive:

• Improve my social media content
• Increase blog visits by 10% versus the previous year
• Reduce social media noise and make it more fun to visit

2. Carve out the “logs”

Once I know what the big things are that I want to achieve, I break each one down into smaller “logs” that are more actionable activities. Each goal has it’s own list of activities that will help me get to those goals.

For example, I want to Increase Blog Visits by 10%, but how am I going to do that? Firstly, I need to get more traffic to my site and to do that I need to be incorporating more relevant content that is personal to me but also important to other people as well. Providing my insights and assisting others in learning new things is a great way to start to achieve this goal. My site is primarily a book blog so there are lots of book related posts reviewing my latest reads, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t incorporate other things like goal planning, which is relevant to those that read as well.

By breaking these big goals down into smaller “logs” that are achievable steps towards that goal, it provides all the stepping stones you need to reach those goals. Again, writing things down in some organizational manner, whatever works best for you, keeps you focused on the things you want to accomplish and let’s you keep track of the things you have completed towards achieving that goal!

If you’re curious, I use Trello Boards as a way to track all kinds of different things. But especially my goals because it has a fun and creative way to lay out all the things I want to see and makes it a little more fun for tracking and accountability (sharing with you all)!.

3. Working in the “weeds”

Then the final step is really getting down into doing all the things that will help me achieve those goals, or “working in the weeds”, as I like to call it. Once you’re in this stage you’re starting to get things done and see if the results are what you were hoping for or if you need to make adjustments to anything.

Creating goals begins with setting up your accountability. Whether you want to track things in your bullet journal, a digital journal, a word document or a fun site like Trello, set up a personal space where you can track your goals.

Start by listing out 2-5 big goals you want to achieve.

Examples:

• Create a savings account and reach a certain amount to go on a special trip
• Plan out a big family event that’s coming up
• What your career goals are
• Setting a reading goal for yourself for the year
• Finishing a big project you’ve been wanting to get done

Then starting listing out all the things you need to do for each of those goals. Don’t feel pressured to stick to just the things you list out either, because as you start the process you might find that you need to revisit your list and make adjustments to get you in the right direction.

Once you have all your accountability steps lined out, it’s just a matter of doing. Make it even more fun by setting goals with your friends or family and having a weekly chat about how you’re doing with your goals. Setting yourself up to be accountable to those goals is one of the most effective ways to ensure you continue working towards what you want to achieve and getting those meaningful results!

Goal Tracking Resources

Every resource listed below is something I have personally used throughout my goal planning and day to day organization.

• Digital
  • Trello Boards – Free Plans Available
  • Asana – Free Plans Available
  • Google Keep
  • Google Sheets
  • Todoist – Free Plans Available
• Notebooks
  • Bullet Journals
  • The Phoenix Goal Planner
  • Meditation and Reflection Journal
  • Leather Writing Journal

Conclusion

I hope this helps you feel empowered and motivated to set a few goals for yourself and play around with all the tools that are available to you! Let me know in the comments what some of your goals are and how you plan to achieve them!

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