8 Steps to Setting your Annual Goals – Tips and Tricks

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A New Year and a blank sheet of 12 months of possibility. Now…you would be right in thinking, that this type of mindset is usually the thing that you would see people posting about in January. However, let’s face it, January this year, was not like most years, full of optimism and hope. It unfortunately, started in the shadow of tougher Covid restrictions and an uncertain/longer timeline of when the global pandemic will draw to a close. This coupled with our own personal deadlines of obtaining and creating a fully priced building specification for a potential new house build, meant that the start of year, didn’t start in the same way as usual. 

That being said, setting our Annual Goals, at the start of the year is something that has become a bit of a tradition in our household and something we look forward to. So even though, we may have missed the first month of the year, we are starting this exercise in February instead. Furthermore, it is important to recognise, that your can set your annual goals at anytime in the year and it does not have to be confined to the first month of year, in fact, it is that regimented mindset, that ultimately, could lead to your downfall. As the chance to change/focus the path of your life, does not only appear in the first month of the year, but in every day, week and month of the year. Ultimately, your ability to alter your life’s course, lies within you and the very visualisation, plans and steps that you have set in place. Along with the hard work, discipline and self sacrifice you are willing to commit.

Step One: Gather your Planning Tools

Yes, you read the above right – I said gather your planning tools! For me, the process of discovering and setting your goals is a creative activity, as essentially you are curating the life that you would like to lead by deciding and setting your goals. I look at this exercise as not ‘just’ a task of ‘writing a list of goals’, but as a chance to pluck all the ideas / dreams / wishes out of your head and scribble them down, with no inhibitions or structure. So in order to do this, I recommend using plain paper and a pen, so that you are not confined to the lines of lined paper.  My go to tools each year are: 

• A Large Whiteboard (Link to the one I have)
• Dry Wipe Pens (as many colours as you wish)
• Paper
• A pen
• Enthusiasm

Step Two: Decide on your Goal Categories

Before I start writing my down my goals/ideas, I like to workout what are the categories of goals that I would like to develop. The categories you choose will be very much down to your own set of personal circumstances and what you wish to achieve. 

For me, my categories have always been, ‘Personal Growth’ and ‘Career’. However, a new one for me over the past couple of years has been ‘Family’, which groups the goals that both my partner and I would like to achieve together, for our relationship/family. For example, these goals could be working towards a certain holiday, house move, house plans, wills, financial – you name it, it contains whatever we would like to achieve together. 

Step Three: Brainstorm

This is one of my favourite parts of the exercise as essentially this is where you allow yourself to be true to yourself and write every single thing you would like to achieve or do down, outside of your head. There is no limit as to what you can write down and nor should there be. The type of mindset you should bring to this exercise, is the same type of energy that a child would bring to answering the question ‘What would you like to be when you grow up?’. Use this as a rare moment in your adult life, where you give yourself unrestricted access to your mind and write down literally every single thought that pops into your mind. It can honestly be quite liberating as well as eye-opening.

For this exercise, my partner and I will sit in front of our whiteboard and we will say to one another ‘What would you like to do this year for your [enter your category]?’ And then we will time ourselves for 3-5 mins and write every single thing that pops into our mind onto our whiteboard. We then repeat the same exercise for each one of our categories. 

Tip: As you write down your ideas, do not consider them or try to make them too detailed, this task is to just purely write down whatever flies into your mind and not analyse your ideas, at this stage.

Step Four: Analyse your Brainstorm

After you have completed writing all your ideas down, the next step is to look back through them and examine all the things that you have written down. This part of the task may seem daunting, however, be brave and examine without judgement or thoughts of what others might think. You should never be deterred by what you have written. Ultimately, whether a goal is right for you is to be decided by you and not by whatever, others or society constructs deem to be right for you. 

For my partner and I, what we like to do first, is read what we have written down during our brainstorming sessions and then we bravely exchange our white boards with each other and read what the other has written. If you don’t have a partner, then this is something that you could do with a close friend or family member with a similar mindset. However, please note that having someone to do this exercise with, is not a limiting factor. I only suggest adding another person into the mix, to help hold you accountable to your dreams/goals throughout the year as well as have someone to discuss and strategise your goals with. Nevertheless, this is something you can do by yourself and is also something that I used to do, alone, before meeting my partner.

Once each of us have read each others boards, we then discuss each others ideas, analysing what we have written and talk around what we would like most achieve. 

Step Five: Identify your goals

Once you have analysed what you have written, draw a ring around the ideas which have ‘spoken to you’ the most and you would most like to achieve. Note, that this part of the exercise is as important as the previous step and should be proceeded with, with care – as in order to realistically achieve goals you need to be able to be kept focussed by them throughout the year. Therefore, they should be something that you are passionate about as well as goals that can be realistically achieved.

When deciding on which goals you wish to set for the year, make sure that the goals you are setting yourself are indeed obtainable within the year – for example, if it is a very large goal, ask yourself, “Is this goal achievable in one year or this something that may need to be split into two years?”. If you find that the task is indeed too large, then you could split the large goal into two and set yourself the ‘first part’ of the goal for Year 1, in order for you to get yourself into a position to achieve the final part of the goal in Year 2.

Tip: Do not choose too many goals as you do not wish to spread yourself too thin across all your goals.

On a separate note, do not worry if not all your goals make the ‘cut’ for the year. As it is better to place less on your list and achieve them all, than add too many and become disillusioned throughout the year, when you are not able to achieve many of your goals. 

Any ideas/goals that don’t make onto your list that year, does not necessarily mean that they will never be a goal that you achieve later on in life, it just means that they are not a priority for you, this year. They may, however, appear on your goal list later on, further down the line.

Step Six: Visualise

Now that you have have identified your goals for the year, you can then use the same whiteboard (I have popped a link to the board I use – HERE) to create your ‘Focus board’ for the year. Divide the board into two halves, with the bottom half being the section where you write out your ‘Annual Goals’. Now, if you have two categories, you may wish to split the bottom half of the board into two allowing for a category on each side, to list your goals. 

The top half of the board will become your ‘Monthly Goals’ board, where you will sit down at the start of each month and list the small task steps to complete in order to get you one step further to your annual goals.

Step Seven: Creating your ‘Roadmap’

Setting your goals is one thing, however, sometimes once you have set your goals, it can feel a little overwhelming and/or you may not know where to start. In order to not succumb to feeling overwhelmed, the best way to look at your goals, is as if they are at the top of a staircase, a staircase which only has twelve evenly spaced and manageable steps, to get to the top. The twelve steps that you visualise in front of you, are indeed the twelve months in the year before you, all of which you can break your Goal down into the small steps that you would need to complete, in order to get you to your end goal.

The next step, is to write on a piece of paper the types of things you think you will need to complete each month, from Month One – Twelve, in order to get you to your end goal. Now, this will serve as a ‘loose’ roadmap to your end goal. I use the word ‘loose’ as your ‘Roadmap’ should remain as just that, as it needs to be flexible, as some months you may not complete all your tasks or you may indeed complete more. Furthermore, as you work through your steps you may find that you need to add additional steps or some of the planned steps are no longer required (hopefully!). 

It is also important to remember that ‘life’ happens and there is likely to be things that happen throughout the course of the year that you are unable to foresee. Therefore, ensuring there are not too many goals/steps planned for each month and that they are manageable – is key.

The trick here is to create 12 bite size chunks/steps towards your end goal, in order to make it manageable. If it feels like the 12 steps are not manageable, then it may be that the goal itself is too large to be completed throughout the course of one year and you may need to consider whether this is a goal that would be better spread over two years. By way of example, we are currently working towards our ‘new house build’ goal, which is a long term goal spread over 3-4 years.

Furthermore, another important reason behind creating 12 manageable chunks/steps, is in order to achieve a goal you need to be consistent and remain focussed. The best way to  remain focussed is to ensure that you are indeed able to complete the work that you need to do each month whilst it still being enjoyable. For example, if you have too many tasks to complete in one month, then it is likely that many will go uncompleted and by month six you are likely to be left feeling disillusioned and disengaged, leaving you more likely to quit halfway through.

Step Eight: Remaining Focused

Once you have completed your ‘Focus Board’, you have now curated not only your goals for the year but the very roadmap that is going to get you to the end of year. Although, just setting the goals is not going to get you to the end and achieving the goals alone, it is however, a very big step and important step to get you very much on your way to achieving your goals.

In order to keep your ‘road map’ alive, place the ‘Focus Board’ in a place that you will see it throughout your day, for example, your Hallway, Living room in Study. Agreed, it may not necessarily fit with the ‘Feng shui’ of your room, however, it will serve as a powerful reminder of what your goals are and force you to remain focussed with just its presence.

Along with the board serving as a reminder, make sure that you sit down at the start of each and every month to assess your goals from the previous month, ‘what you did’ or ‘did not achieve’ and set your goals for the following month, to keep you on the right path towards achieving your goals. If you wish to read a little further into setting monthly goals and starting a new month, then take a look and read HERE.

Last word from me… 

Congratulations on reading this far and an even bigger congratulations to you, if you have followed this path and set your goals for the year!

And on the ending note of my post, I wanted to share with you some knowledge, which may help to provide you comfort and further inspiration in achieving your goals…

In a Harvard Business Study, it found that people are more ten times more likely to be successful than those who do not set goals. Furthermore, it also found that those people who write down their goals are 1.4 times more likely to achieve them, than those who do not write down their goals.  

I hope this post has inspired you / given you ideas on how to pursue your goals and dreams. I would love to hear from you all in the comments as to what you are striving for this year. I look forward to putting our goals and plans into action together xxx