End the Year Strong

The best way to set yourself up for success in the new year is to start with new goals and habits in the months prior to January. Most people will do the opposite. They let everything slide in November and December – exercise, eating right, business goals, etc. – thinking it will be easier to just start fresh in the new year. The poorer the habits you form at the end of the year, however, the harder it will be to get back on track later. Instead, take advantage of the time you have left this year to propel yourself into the new year with energy and confidence.

I prefer to set goals in 2-3 month chunks of time, rather than setting year-long goals in January. There is a fantastic book on the specifics of how and why to do this, called The 12-Week Year by Brian Moran. This practice makes it possible to set some specific, achievable goals towards the end of the year, during the holiday months, rather than automatically writing those months off. By the way, how crazy is it to discard productivity for two or three months of the year – that is nearly one quarter of our life each year!

Below are my goals and focus for finishing off 2019 strong and propelling into 2020. I try to always limit goals to 2 to 4 major areas of my life, with some specific steps or actions I can take in each area. I write these out simply in the Notes app on my phone so I can add to or refer back to them at any time, especially at night when I’m in bed with a sleeping baby snuggled in each arm.

My 2019-20 Goals for November-January:

My Blog

-Write 1 blog post per week

-Invite 30 people to subscribe

-Fine-tune the website

Service

-Donate to MV Food Bank 1 time/month

-Donate $[x] to food bank for holiday meals

-Donate supplies and clothes to TD Elementary

-Donate hats, gloves, socks, toy, gift card to TD Elementary

-Donate outgrown clothes to ES Baby

-Set up monthly $[x] donation to charitywater.org/spring

Family/Emotional/Relationship

-Finish Will

 (Other details are personal, so not included here.)

If you do not have much experience yet in creating goals, start by asking yourself questions and doing some reflection. What went well for you this past year? What are you proud of? What do you want to build on? What are 1-2 things that would improve the quality of your life? Envision what you want your life to look like one year from now. It can help to write down a detailed description of your ideal future. Then narrow your goals down to a couple areas. Some ideas for areas of focus could be: Family, Health, Relationship, Financial, Business, Career, Emotional, Faith.

I chose my blog as one of my major goals because I feel a sense of purpose whenever I have a project in the works. Writing is a passion of mine and working on a personal project helps me improve as a person, become stronger, learn new skills and feel a sense of hope and excitement looking towards the future. I also have a larger goal to eventually turn my blog into a business that empowers women and helps the community.

Service was another of my focus areas. Lately I have been engaging in an exercise where I write out, daily (or as often as possible), the description of my life as I dream it to be 10 years from now (Rachel Hollis). I find myself writing a lot about the type of people my children will be, and I envision them to be kind with a passion to help others and serve their community. In our future lives, we engage in a multitude of volunteer projects and donate to a range of organizations. Now that my son is going on four years old, I want to start planting the seeds of service in his mind and start engaging him in simple acts of community service, such as going with me to take food to the food bank every month.

Whatever you choose for your goals, make sure that you have engaged in extensive reflection about the “why” behind them. Write them down, and get as specific as possible. My goals listed above are pretty bare bones, but as I mentioned, I go into depth about my dreams for the future in my journaling exercise. The format of my goals is more of a “to-do” list. They are specific and measureable; wherever possible I use numbers to indicate exactly what I will do, how much and how many times. This makes it easy to objectively gauge whether or not I’ve achieved the goal.

You may have many goals, but as suggested earlier, it’s often most effective to narrow them into a couple categories with just a few action items in each. Especially in this stage of time, as a busy mother, I find it more motivating to put less on my plate instead of more. When I was single, my current three-month goal list would have been my weekly goal list. But right now I’m raising two tiny humans. Remember life has seasons. There are times to push yourself and times to give yourself grace. Only you can know what is right for you.

Leave a comment letting us know your tips for goal-setting at the end of the year.