It is almost 2019. Are you ready?
Over the last 3 weeks, we have been preparing to make 2019 an amazing year. If you haven’t read the previous parts of this series and downloaded the 3 free worksheets included, you should back up and start there.
Here is the rest of the series:
- Part 1: Lessons Learned in 2018
- Part 2: Thinking Big about 2019
- Part 3: 2019 Focus and Your Yearly Theme
Now it’s time to take all of your ideas and turn them into goals you can accomplish next year. This is how you will make it all happen. Download Part 4: Make It Happen now to get started.
Short term and long term goals
On the first page of your worksheet, you are going to start putting all of your ideas into place. First you’ll want to think about your yearly theme. This is the overarching idea for the year that will guide all of the decisions that you make and the goals that you set.
Take that idea and let it guide the goals that you want to set over the next:
- 5 years
- 1 year
- 1 month
- 1 week
It might feel weird to think on such a broad timeline. Aren’t new year’s goals all about the year coming up?
Usually they are — but we are focused on helping you have an amazing and successful *life*, not just one year. And this comes from thinking big and small. It is about knowing where you want to end up, and then making small decisions every day, week, month to get you there.
Your life is made up of the small decisions you make every single day. Set goals that take that into account realistically. What can you do today to help you end up where you want to be in 5 years?
Breaking down your goals
With the idea of consistent, daily progress in mind, start thinking about your goals as things that you can make regular progress on every week.
Let’s say you want to take a leadership role on a team project in 2019. There are some big things you can do to make that happen, like going to an impressive conference where you learn new things related to an upcoming project.
However, even more important than that are the things you do every day. Are you on time (or early) to meetings? Do you help the people around you achieve things? Are you in touch with the people who have influence over your career (your manager, etc) and communicating with them about your goals, successes, etc? Are you looking ahead to team goals and seeing where your skills would be a good fit to take a leadership role?
Look at ways that you can make micro-commitments every day to getting closer to your goal. This will include things like being early to work every day, speaking up in meetings, or connecting 1:1 with a member of your team every week.
Then zoom out and think about your biggest goal. Define it so that it is crystal clear. Be as specific as you possibly can. What kind of leadership role do you envision on your dream project? Where are your skills? What kind of project best suits you? Where do you need to level up in order to be a good candidate?
Then break your goal into small steps — the smaller the better, because that gives you really concrete actions you can take to move towards your goal. If you don’t set up the steps you need to take, it’s really likely that your goal will not happen because you won’t have a way to tell if you’re making progress on it throughout the year.
Making progress
Most people don’t achieve their goals. Why? Because they get a great idea, they write it in their planner, and then they just go about their normal lives, waiting for it to happen.
You are different. You are going to set yourself up for success.
You’ll do this by listing the steps you need to take to achieve your goal, and then setting up a timeline to achieve those steps. It doesn’t matter if your timeline turns out to be wrong — you can simply adjust it as you move ahead and get more information. What matters now is setting up a way to track your progress.
Just as important is thinking in advance about how you’ll hold yourself accountable.
It’s easy to wake up early and go for a run in the morning when the weather is nice and you got a great night’s sleep. So you might think training for a half marathon is just a matter of doing that consistently until you can run 13.1 miles in a few months.
But what will you do on days where you got a bad night’s sleep? What about when it’s raining? What about when you’re sore, sick, or busy?How will you increase the distance you run, even when it’s hard? When will you know you need to push yourself, and when you’ll need a break?
Set up systems now that will support you later when life gets complicated. Because it will.
Write down your goal, your reason why, and how you will succeed
The last page of your worksheet is maybe the best part of this whole process. After so much thought and planning, you are finally ready to write down your goal and how you will achieve it.
Celebrate this step, then get started making it happen. We are cheering for you!
