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5 Ways To Set Goals You Might Actually Accomplish

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One of the gifts I received from yuletide this year was a Bullet Journal.

I’ve dabbled in making spreads on plain paper and slotting them into my disc planner, but it’s never quite the same as having one place with a dot grid, and being able to actually use all of the paper (disc-bound involves cutting away some page sections to attach them to the planner.)

I’ve also been watching bullet journal spread video channels for YEARS because they are pretty, and as someone who likes to be creative but isn’t skilled (i.e. I haven’t practiced enough to be seen as good), this was another avenue for that creativity.

And now I felt I had a reason to explore them further. And in looking to set up my initial spreads for 2021, I realised I don’t have any clear goals for the upcoming year.

And I know I’m not alone, after how 2020 turned out.

I’ve made goals and picked a word of the year for over a decade, and in exploring this with friends, I came to realise that while most of us have heard of S.M.A.R.T goals, actually identifying your desires and then making clear goals from that is a skill on its own.

So in this article I want to summarise a few ways you can consider what you’d like 2021 to look like. If you’re an audio-person, I also have a podcast episode on designing your life and why it’s important, which you can listen to here.

Whether you like to pick goals for the whole year, or just a 90-day or 6-month method; these may help you spark the ideas themselves.

1: The Word of the Year

I discovered this in 2009, but it’s definitely been gaining popularity as time goes on. In the simplest terms, you pick a word to “guide” your year. For example, my word for 2020 was ‘steadfast’ because I wanted to feel stable and rooted, and to not lose my own conviction and beliefs.

The idea is that this will be your “am I following ____?” whenever you make a decision or find yourself uncertain throughout the year.

If you need a few ideas, here are my previous words:

  • 2010: ‘quiet focus’
  • 2011: ‘strength’
  • 2012: ‘connect’
  • 2013: ‘improve’
  • 2014: ‘settle’
  • 2015: ‘kindness’
  • 2017: ‘create’
  • 2018: ‘trust’
  • 2019: ‘unfurl’
  • 2020: ‘steadfast’

 

Taking 2011’s example, Strength, I focused on three aspects: physical strength, strength of mind, and strength of spirit. This shaped my goals of exercising weekly, eating healthier, reading (and/or watching a documentary) weekly and then meditation.

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Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

For 2021, my word will be ‘Spirit.’ For me, this is about my wild, natural instincts; my spirit. It’s also about purity and fuel (like vodka is a spirit). It has that’free spirit’ connotation of being true to myself, or walking barefoot across the grass, or dancing in the rain. Similarly, it’s the’spirit’ of something is the core character, to ‘truth’ at the centre. And finally, a focus on my beliefs, on meditation, and ritual.

Using this ‘guide,’ I’m shaping goals of my movement, creative writing, meditation, and connections.

Rather than specify ‘do bodyweight workout A, 3x a week’ my movement goal is ‘stretch for 5 minutes a day’ and ‘3x a week, either dance, do bodyweight, complete a yoga routine, play ring fit adventure, or practise staff spinning.’

Summary: Pick a guiding word or phrase, and consider what you want that word to look like for your year ahead.

2: Reflect on Old Goals

This is a simple one, but I always do this to ensure I don’t “miss out” anything that might not be top of mind in this final week or the year, but is still something I want underneath the day-to-day business.

Do you remember any of the goals you’ve made before?

Every year I have something relating to my health, and although usually it’s building on the previous year’s progress, for 2021 it’s definitely needing to rebuild habits I’ve lost.

Looking back at my previous goals (including ones I’ve completed) helps my brain make connections, and consider different options for the year ahead.

Summary: Consider previous goals you’ve set.

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Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

3: Categorise Your Life

If you’ve ever had Life Coaching you likely know about the Wheel of Life: splitting your life into various ‘sections’ and rating them on how happy you are with them, to help you see where you might want to focus your attention.

You can combine this with a word-of-the-year, or just pick categories in general.

An example of themed categories:

  • Health — Workout 3x week
  • Friends — Socialise 1x month
  • Relationships — Date 1x month
  • Creativity — Complete novel third draft
  • Career — Video 1x week
  • Wellbeing — Meditate 1x week
  • Learning — Read book 1x month

 

Considering the word and categories, for “unfurl” you might have a list that looks like this:

  • WORK — Unfurling My Business — work on list-building for my website and finish NVQ for dayjob.
  • RELATIONSHIPS — Unfurling with my Relationships — schedule in date evenings and ‘marriage meeting’ quarterly.
  • HEALTH — Unfurl my Wellbeing — build on my fitness routine and continue daily meditation practise.
  • FUN — Unfurl my Hobby Wings — schedule in non-productive time.

 

A third way to do this is to consider the frequency of tasks.

  • DAILY: Move my body. (exercise/walk/dance)
  • WEEKLY: Journal at least once a week.
  • MONTHLY: Did I read at least twice? Or did I finish X chapters?

Summary: Split your life into ‘compartments’ and set one goal per partition, or only pick 2–3 sections to set goals in.

If you are like me and try to set 400 goals, this article about how many things the human brain can focus on and how I apply this to goals and life projects might be useful.

4: Continue Previous Goals

I’ve been socialising monthly and meditating daily for over a year.

Continuing these are not new daily expectations, and thus “continuing” them may take less mental energy and time than starting a new thing.

But if I stopped now and changed these, my fitness and mental health would decline. Maintenance goals are still goals.

Summary: Can you build on last year’s goals or things which are currently working for you?

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Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

5: Consider Tracking Improvements First

One of the important steps in setting goals is to know where you are ‘starting’ with it.

In order for me to set my daily/weekly fiction writing goal I needed to track how much I wrote in an average day after work, how fast I can type when I know what I’m writing, and how I best succeed in that task.

So for example, you may have 3 “checklists” for 6 goals. Rather than set a specific aims, your goal is “track how much fiction writing I do each week” and “how many times did i move my body this week?” This allows you to keep an eye on it, to gain information about your baseline, and also doesn’t put quite so much pressure on yourself.

But from our brain’s perspective, tracking these things often leads to an improvement in the action itself. When I know I’m tracking my food intake, I eat less junk food: even if it’s just me and my app that will ever know.

Summary: Track your current baseline first. Knowing where you start allows you to track your progress.

Take-Home Message

At the end of the day, your goals are for you to craft life how you want it, and personally, I like to review my goals every 3 months to check if I need to tweak things, if my priorities have changed (ha, 2020 much?) or if something else arises that means I can just pause them for the next few months.

If you struggle with setting goals and are sick of the self-help quick-fixes that rarely work, you can join the community of seekers reinventing their life from their roots by merging the science and spirit with evidence-based tools.

Interested? Sign up for the mailing list and free guide to reinventing yourself here.

This post was previously published on medium.com.

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Photo credit:  Estée Janssens on Unsplash

 

The post 5 Ways To Set Goals You Might Actually Accomplish appeared first on The Good Men Project.


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