Everyone always talks about making plans. “Let’s do lunch.” “Let’s go out to a movie” is something people talk about all the time. I’ve never heard anyone discuss their deep plans in such detail. I’m one of those people who like yearly plans (because of course I am). As we’re getting into December, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about goals for next year. And for me, goals mean to-do lists. The problem is that you can’t just jot down some ideas and assume you’re going to conquer the world. I mean, YOU might be able to, but in my experience, it’s doubtful. There are a few practices that I would advise considering while you’re trying to plan for the next twelve months.
1) Let your goals ruminate – Depending on the scope of your goals, you may want to take a certain amount of time to think them over. I’m not talking about lunch plans here, I’m talking about what you want to get done over the next 12 months. Truth be told, I’m a bit of an overthinker, which means that if I let myself, I will eventually talk myself out of most of my goals. Typically I have some brilliant ideas, but my follow through usually ends up lacking if I don’t think about them for at least a while. I developed this habit when I was in Ottawa. We would have to present yearly goal plans to our supervisors for the following year by the end of November, which meant that October was prime “Big picture thinking” time for me. This habit has stuck with me, and I’ve applied it to both my personal and professional life ever since. I like taking a month or so to let my big ideas percolate so that I can figure out how (or even if) I want to do them.
2) Pre-planning helps with success later – if I try to launch into a big project with little to no knowledge of what I’m doing or how I’m going to get it done, I tend to fail nine out of ten times. Usually, it takes me the tenth time to get it done, but I’m not thrilled with the results, so I have to figure out something else anyway. That being said, when I take the time to think through all the steps that I’ll have to take to be successful, I have a fairly decent hit rate. In your life, when you’re thinking about big projects that you have to do, you need to make sure you have all the tools you need to get the job done.
3) Pivoting is always an option – One thing I like about my to-do lists (which I’ll discuss in more detail next month) is that about sixty to seventy percent of them are tasks I need to do, but not necessarily on a specific day. This means that if I need to move stuff around, or to another day, most of the time I can. Granted, I have things on my to-do list like “Pay bills” and THAT gets done on time, but if I have to pick something up that I can put off until tomorrow, sometimes I do. There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, it’s better for you to move your tasks around if something important comes up in your day-to-day life, because it so often does.
I’ll be honest, as I’m writing this post, it’s technically the middle of October. I know it seems way too early to be thinking about goals for next year, but I’ve developed this habit from a former employer. They would have us set our yearly goals for the following year, and we would need to submit everything by November 1st. I started applying this in my personal life, and it sort of stuck with me. It gives me enough time to think through all the various big goals I want for the following year, and it allows me to ruminate on all the tasks I’ll need to do to achieve those goals. I’m hoping that by the time you’re reading this, I will have finalized my goals for next year, but sometimes it comes down to the wire. Having goals is a good thing; being able to plan them out properly is even better. Take some time to figure out 3-5 things you want to do next year and how you plan to achieve them. With a little work (and a well-oiled to-do list), you would be amazing at what you can accomplish.
What’s your plan for next year?
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