You’ve officially completed the first month of the new year, a new decade! Congrats! But let’s rewind to 35 days ago, how were you feeling? Other than tipsy of course 🙂 were you hopeful? Did you have your list of resolutions filled out and ready to go? Did you KNOW that this year, this month would be different.
Well, is it?
Unfortunately for most people it’s not. And that’s not because they aren’t capable or willing to do the work, but probably because they did not properly aid their goals/resolutions to prepare them for success. And I say this from experience! It has taken me yyyyeeeears to finally come up with a system that aids me, helps me. What I mean by that is, I don’t have one list of goals to complete for the whole year, and I even mentioned this in my year end post last year about how I categorize my goals. Then I talked about tips about how to make those goals in the Goal Getter post two years ago. But this time I want to give you something more than tips.
I created a template for my goals this year that helped me to hold myself accountable, as well as helped me to map out exactly what I needed to do to feel like I attained at least a portion of my January goals. To be completely honest, I didn’t set personal goals for the whole year. With our life in a bit of limbo right now I find that too overwhelming and confusing, so I am sticking to monthly goals but keeping in mind big picture goals for the next 90 days. Now you might already be a list maven like me and have your planner and lists set up. Does that work for you? Because I am literally looking at three different planners on my desk, which is not a different view from years past. But what I discovered what I needed was a visible reminder every day of what my goals were; not hidden away on a page somewhere in my daily tasks or lost in my post-its somewhere. DISPLAYED PROMINENTLY! That way I don’t have to do more work to find out what I need to work on today.
And now you can too!!
You can get my three go-to docs to print out and fill in yourself. Then, hang them, display them, set them somewhere uncluttered and visible that you can look at easily, quickly, and constantly! My Big Picture page is hanging on my acrylic calendar that I look at several times a day (mostly because I can’t remember what day it is :-D). And my Fitness Calendar is laying on top of the shelf right next to it. Now, you could fill these out digitally with the little text inserter into a PDF, but we all know what a difference physically writing something down makes. It will immediately be cemented into your brain more-so if you take pen to paper instead of typing it out.
So, what’s the skinny on these bad boys?
With these documents you can follow my exact goal-setting routine that I used this past month. I’m not lying when I say that for me this was the best goal-oriented month I have had in a very long time, if not ever! And I know that having something like these completed documents was a huge reason for that. I encourage you to print them out and WRITE out your answers/goals. There is something very cerebral and intentional about writing it instead of typing it. Think about the bajillions of emails you send a day and how many of them do you actually remember? Exactly. So write it out.
HOW THEY WORK
BIG PICTURE – this is the overarching umbrella goals that you have for February. I’m talking vague and broad. Like, “spend more one-on-one time with spouse” or “be more active” or “read more”, etc. Most goals start this way, but unfortunately that’s as far as they go. So I added the Specifics area, so that I could write down exactly what I was going to do to attain that original goal. So, my January goal was to read 4-5 books, and I wrote in my Specifics #1 the exact titles I was going to read. Then you can check off the calendar below the days you did something to accomplish one of those goals. And I literally mean some-thing. It could be reading 12 pages of one of the books, or something super small! If you did something to accomplish your goal? Check it off. Haven’t done it in a while, then you see those days unmarked… almost like a guilt-trip in calendar form 😛
FITNESS CALENDAR – I am a huge planner when it comes to my workouts which I feel is a reason why I am so diligent about them. This is a way to help you get a good balance of cardio/strength, but also write down certain classes you want to sign up for. And I urge you to sign up early! We all know that we are more likely to do them if we are going to lose money to a cancellation fee.
PRIORITY OF THE DAY – this doc you make all your own. I use it to write down which goal is going to be my main priority, and what I’m going to be doing; like, “finish book”, or “go to yoga”, or “follow-up with brand”, this is a more day-to-day to-do list of how you’re going to accomplish everything in your BIG PICTURE list. Or if you’d rather, this could just be a list of workouts! I’ve used it for both.
You might be thinking that this seems too tedious and you don’t want to be bothered with it. Well then I ask you, how much closer are you to completing any of your resolutions that you set on Jan 31st? If your answer is “really not much closer at all”, well then yes, you do want to be bothered with it. And to be honest it really doesn’t take that long! Sure it takes a little more thought than just the Big Picture list, but think about if you do this once a month every month how different will could feel by Dec 31, 2020 than you did Dec 31, 2019?
And to prove it I’ll share some specific progress with you that I have made.
Without getting too specific with my entire litany of lists that I have made, I’ll share with you certain things that I have done that I am POSITIVE I would not have completed if I didn’t have my TASK LIST taped to my oversized calendar staring my in the face at my desk:
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In the past month I my % body fat has gone down .5% and my BMI has gone down by .8 – while these numbers are not my favorite, this is how I am going to measure progress in 2020. Not pounds, not calories. And these are some of the worst my numbers have ever been, so, that was fun.
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This one, not so good. I took 2 yoga classes on my Peloton app. My goal was 7-10, so I realllllyy need to work on that this month.
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I read all five books (when my goal was 4-5). There were times I wasn’t into it, I was tired, I would have rather watched Friends reruns on TBS, but I felt the TASK LIST staring at me, so I did it.
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I started conversations with two of the likely biggest and long-term collaborations I will have completed to date. However, my goal was three, but I reached out to soooo many more brands in an effort to get to that number. If I hadn’t, I might have been okay with just one!?
