CC101: Plan your year strategically to achieve your goals.
Are you tired of setting goals and never achieving them? The key to success is strategic planning. By creating a plan for your year, you can confidently work towards your goals and make them a reality. Start planning today!
I want to share a new method I used this year because I struggled to achieve some of my goals in 2023. I ticked off some of my goals, but others were left behind. So, while reflecting on why I didn't make it, I realized I needed a better action plan. There are so many aspects of life that demand your attention. Think about work, personal projects, relationships, mental health, physical health. I can go on and on. So, If you have specific goals that go beyond these daily aspects of your life, you need a terrific planning skill to make time for your goals.
Let me give you a practical example. I have a full-time corporate job, wedding planning, and a million other things like everyone. But I also want to grow my business with martinamanca.com. So, when the daily things got chaotic, I decided to pause martinamanca.com. So, I ended 2023 with the goals for martinamanca.com not ticked off from my visionboard. I was let down, but I used this experience to better myself for 2024.
That's when I came up with an experiment I will share today to help you plan your year to achieve your goals.
Divide the year by trimesters, and note everything you need to remember. Birthdays, special occasions, holidays, big days for businesses like Black Friday and Back-to-School, and everything you think you'll need for your business.
Then, decide how to organize your activities to achieve your goals. For example, one of my goals is to improve my blog post calendar. So, I already planned the first three months of 2024 with all the blog posts I want to share on the blog, being conscious that I'll have the wedding week and other personal deadlines. This trimestral view gives me the clarity to plan my daily schedule better and not feel overwhelmed by what I have to do. Also, now that the blog posts are decided, I can write them during my spare time and plan them on the blog. So, I can tackle the second trimester to plan the activities when January ends. And at the end of the trimester, I can review it and adjust the planning game to improve in the second trimester 2024.
The blog post calendar is just an example, but you can apply it to everything. Of course, you already have the yearly goals thanks to your visionboard. But the action plan needs to be compliant with your attitude. For example, I know that a semestral plan makes me anxious, but the monthly view I used the past year didn't help me. So, I further divide my year into trimesters and experiment with this planning game.
One of the things I loved about my monthly view from 2023 was reviewing my month and seeing what I did and what I loved. So, that's a thing I want to keep in 2024 because it motivates me like nothing.
I want to end this post with a gentle reminder because January can be stressful for many reasons. You can start whenever you feel ready. It can be February 14th or June 6th. You decide when it's time. And the great thing about this method is that you can use it whenever you plan your year to achieve your goals.
