Mind Management Angela May

Year End Goal Review

As I mentioned in a previous post, I hate New Year's resolutions.  But I DO think that the end of the year is a good time to reflect back on your previous year and plan the next one.  In 'Western' society we're geared towards thinking of December as an "end" and January as a "beginning". 

As such, I thought I'd write out a bit of my year-end process. I've been writing and reviewing annual goals this way for a few years now, and the process evolves every year, so I'm sure I'll be back with an update later on.

If you had set goals at the beginning of last year, go back and dig up that post/sheet of paper. 

Review each goal and mark whether or not it had been met (and write down your success metrics). If you had failed to meet a goal, try to determine why it was not met.  Did another short-term priority come up that derailed your original plans?  Did you forget or lose motivation halfway through the year?  What can you do differently in the future to make this goal happen, or if you lost motivation, is this goal *really* what you're after?

Try to summarize what you've learned and what you've accomplished this year. Even though it's important to note and assess your failures, you don't want to start your goal-setting with a defeated mindset. We don't often get chances brag, so praise yourself for everything good that happened in your year.

Now turn your focus to the year ahead.

1 - Brainstorm goals - the biggest things you want to attack and conquer this year. Focus on your BIG ROCKS: career, family, health... those things that mean the most to you should take the most of your time.

2 - RANK these goals, putting the ones that are THE MOST important to you at the top. Ask yourself, if I fail at this goal (say, spending time with your kids), does it *matter* that I achieved the others (say, attending a conference)? If you're having trouble, try running through a prioritizing excercise.

3 - QUANTIFY your priorities and make SMART goals: This can be kind of difficult and awkward... trying to quantify "spending time with family" can seem a bit cold, but it's just a formality to make sure that you don't guilt yourself out for spending time in this category (or just as a double-check - to remind yourself of what's really important in your life!)

4 - Brainstorm SUB-Goals, either smaller milestones for throughout the year or actions you can take towards a goal that might not be in your complete control. (For example, if you have a website and you want to "build traffic", you can't magically make that traffic come to you. But you CAN do marketing activities, update on time, promote yourself on facebook...)
Next..

5 - Take out a new sheet of paper and write out every month (January, February, March...).  Under these headers, write out all the BIG EVENTS that you'll need to attend ("Vacation", "Wedding", "Conventions"...) Then, write all the SMART deadlines (for both goals and subgoals) that you set for yourself in the previous steps.   Now that you see them all together, does it look feasible? What should be adjusted? (some goals moved forward, others back so that you don't have a few make-or-break "hell" months. Make sure these goals are listed in the same order as they were ranked before! Also take a moment to watch for Conflicting and Reinforcing goals.

6 - Look on your list for goals that are due "every month", or "every week". Write all of these down in the same place. For Monthly goals, assign each goal to a particular week of the month (week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4). For example, if you made a goal to invest in the market every month, make 'week 2' the week that you do that. This way you're not trying (and failing) to complete all your 'monthly' goals the last week of the month!  For Weekly goals, assign them to specific days of the week.

7 - SCHEDULE your goals! On a big annual calendar (or your dayplanner), mark the annual deadlines and milestones you've set for yourself. If it's a critical deadline, you should also mark out some reminders: "6 months to deadline!", "3 months to deadline!". DON'T schedule the monthly and daily goals just yet! Things change, so keep that list you made up in the previous step handy throughout the year. Schedule your "Monthly" goals at the beginning of every month (remember: schedule the most important ones FIRST), and your "weekly" goals at the beginning of the week.

8 - Set a time to review these goals and your progress towards them (I like monthly, but do whatever works best for you). Copy and paste your list of goals and write out what progress you've made towards them. This will help you make sure you're throwing your energy towards your TOP GOALS, and so you don't forget the goals you set for yourself! If you're not on target, this will help you identify a problem and fix it before your whole year is wasted.  And remember, you should be spending most of your time and energy on your highest ranked goals! 

9 - Set a New Year's Resolution. I know, I know I just said at the top of this post that I hate New Year's Resolutions. But here is the thing: everyone is going to ask you what your New Year's Resolution is and when you tell them 'well actually I don't believe that New Years Resolutions are an effective strategy and instead I have compiled a list of 8 ranked goals' they are going to look at you like you're from Saturn and back away slowly. So here is my recommendation for New Year's Resolutions: pick something frivolous and inconsequential, that you can accomplish easily without sabotaging any of your major goals. My favourite thing is to think back on something I really enjoyed in past years, but stopped doing for some reason. Last year's was "read more comics" (And I did! And I enjoyed it!). 

10 - Go. NOW! Start putting your process to work!