Setting goals for the year can be daunting. A methodical approach can take out some of the guesswork—and risk.
It’s that time of year again, when the changing of the seasons and the calendar year invites us to reflect on how things are going and how we want things to go.
I always struggle with this. This seems like a pretty common affliction for those of us who even bother with it—and not bothering with it seems to be even more common. To be honest, more often than not, I find myself in that latter category. It’s hard to get started, and past results encourage me to believe that there’s not really any purpose to it. Which is funny, seeing as how I’m effective at setting and achieving goals in a work setting. I suppose I find that fulfilling a business’ vision is much simpler than identifying and enacting one in my personal life.
But! Methodicalism is a pretty easy way to cut through ambiguity and friction. Let’s put all of the effort I’ve put into my Zettelkasten to work for us by extracting a prescriptive process from my notes about goal setting, motivation, purpose, and whatever else pops up.
Below is a template for exploring your life context, the past year, establishing a positive mindset, setting goals, and incorporating them. Since I’ve been working at all of this for a number of years, I have already sat with a number of these longer-horizon analyses. If you don’t have anything ready to think about or reference, those ideas might become attractive focal points. Don’t get lost in them, though! They can pose a stumbling block for procrastination. If you can’t look ahead 30 years, can you look ahead 5? If you don’t know what you want (a notoriously daunting thing to identify!), can you identify a good-enough proxy for it? Your goals do not require you to know everything about your life and intentions, they only need to align with what you do know. You can put most of your focus onto your retrospective if some of those loftier answers are not easily forthcoming.
All right, let’s jump into the template! This is a written document for a reason—it’s critical that you write this all down so that you can reference it over time.
Establish context.
Before getting into the goal-setting, you need to get into a growth mindset and ground yourself in your life’s context.
Write limiting beliefs.
Anything that creates a scarcity mindset.
Reframe into “liberating truths”.
Restate limiting beliefs as opportunities for growth.
Retrospect the past year.
What were the goals? Outcomes? Failures, successes? Regrets, gratitude?
Synthesize.
Review those notes and extract 2–3 themes. What aspirations & personal potential can you identify?
Review & update other horizon artifacts.
Read through or establish artifacts about fundamental purpose and long-term desires, such as a life compass, life horizons, or any other such artifacts. Further synthesize and update with these. Now’s a good time to conduct a quality-of-life survey.
Create goals.
Brainstorm.
Brainstorm ideas for goals, with an abundance mindset from the above artifacts. Don’t hold back!
Filter.
Reduce the list to 7–12 goals for the year that best address the focus areas that have been identified.
Formalize and plan.
Frame each selected goal in terms of Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Risky, Exciting, Relevant. Plot them over the year, 3–4 per quarter.
Act.
Define triggers.
Figure out the activation triggers that incorporate actions into existing routines. Decide how goals will remain visible.
Get to work.
Stop planning. Get started by identifying next immediate small steps and then do them.
Create review checkpoints.
How are you going to externalize some triggers to help you restore your focus periodically? Calendars work great for this. What cadences will you benefit from?