Are your goals set for 2015?

It is that time of the year that we start thinking about what has happened in the past year and start thinking about the new year to come. This is also the time that people think up New Years resolution's that get forgotten by January 2nd, I have already discussed the importance of setting goals and how to set them.I  also talked about a good planner to keep track of what you need to be doing. Today I am going to discuss putting them together to set your yearly goals and to make plans for the year to come.

Last year I had a small planner that was about 5X7 but it just did not work out the way I wanted it to. I found that I liked to have more room to put hourly schedules in and have room for important dates. This year I purchased a planner that measures 9X12 but is still convenient to carry around. This planner is an weekly appointment book that is broken down by 15-minute intervals 7 days a week and runs from 7am to 8pm.

In addition at the there is a monthly calendar at the beginning of every month. One feature that attracted my attention to this particular planner was that both the monthly calender and the weekly appointment sections have an area for notes that I can write my goals for that month and week into and see them every day as a reminder of what I am going to accomplish. I will have to say it sometimes scary to see how fast the calendar is already filling up and we haven't hit the new year yet.

Now that I have a planner that I like that allows me to put in my monthly and weekly goals there is the job of getting the yearly goals done. As I mentioned on the posts about setting goals there are long range (life) goals, medium range goals and your yearly goals with the yearly goals set up as stepping stones to those big life or long range goals.

Last year I accomplished several of my goals a lot sooner than I had planned for which means I set the bar too low so this year I am raising that bar. For example I hit my weight loss goal by the first of September and even though I do not have that far to go I want to hit my final weight by the time I attend an importance conference from April 17th to April 21st. While this is a tight deadline it creates a challenge to overcome especially since I want to buy a nice new suite for the conferance and don't want it to be too big after a few months!

Another goal I set up was to have an update set of life goals by April 1st. While I already have a set of life goals, they should be reevaluated every few years to ensure that you are on the right track or when you have major life changes that cause you to reevaluate your priorities in life. An example using a medium range goal is that I have a picture of a Ford Raptor on my desk as it was something I wanted a few years ago. Well life has changed and that Raptor no longer appeals to me so that goal has changed.

On the other hand there is also times that you may reevaluate how aggressive you are with a goal. I have mentioned previously that I added a goal during the year to read a book a week after seeing the that my friend Rich Hopkins was doing it. Well not only did I meet the goal I blew it away by reading 87 books this past year. While I could say I want to be even more aggressive this year instead I am actually sticking with the 52 from last year. While I love to read there was times last year that reading became a choir so I am going to work on enjoying it again instead of worrying about how much I am reading.

Now is the time to get those goals in order and ready for the challenges the of the new year.

Scheduling

Custom Moleskine Planner & iPod touch (Photo credit: Mike Rohde)

In the last couple of entries I talked about the importance of goals, what they should include, and how to set them. Today, I am going to talk about something that goes hand in hand with goals and that is scheduling. When I talked about setting goals I mentioned that you needed to find the system that works for you when setting goals and that goes for creating a scheduling system also, and frankly I have to admit that finding a scheduling system that works for me has been difficult.

It is not scheduling itself that has been difficult but finding a system that would fit my needs. Despite all the modern electronics that are designed to make scheduling easier, I just have not found one that I like. I started by using a software program that created schedules but then realized that Microsoft Outlook basically did the same thing. While Outlook worked for a while, I hated having to getting on the computer to check my scheduling. I know that modern cell phones can also but I quickly realized that I liked having something I could look at more thoroughly than a phone.

After deciding that a software program wasn't working for me I started using an planner that my wife had laying around that was given to her by an old boss. I decided I like the idea of the planner and having it written down so I can see it all the time but this particular planner was very large ringed binder that took up a lot of room and weigh a lot and I already have enough to carry everyday so I decided to start using one of the spiral bound planners that come out every year.

While I have been using the planner on regular basis I couldn't get a system down that I really liked until I saw what one of my friends did in their planner. This person has their planner neatly organized plus has different colored sticky notes for important things and highlights important things in the planner. This gave me an idea that I have started to use in my planner.

The first thing I do is to put in all the important dates that I have coming up into the planner. For items such as important projects that are do I go through the book and put reminders in at weekly intervals that the project is coming up and then I highlight them with green if they are more than 3 weeks out, yellow of they are one or two weeks out and red for the day that they are due. This way I have regular reminders that I have something coming up so that I can be working on it and have it done before it is due.

This coming year I am making one change and that is going from a weekly planner to a daily planner due to the increased commitments and the importance of having things scheduled in a more detailed fashion. As I said before this is my system and you need to find a system that is going to work best for you so good luck.

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