We all want the upcoming year to be our best year yet. And, I believe there are two parts to planning to ensure this happens. The first is to review what’s worked and what hasn’t in the year just gone. The second is to map out the key things we want to achieve in the year ahead.
Here’s seven questions I use to reflect on the year just gone and to plan ahead to create my best year yet.
Was this your best year yet? If so prove it by writing down all the things you achieved for the year. I have a rule around this where I must write down at least 50 things. You might think this is a lot and it will force you to look beyond the obvious and dig deeper than you might have.
Here’s some things to consider:
In other words, what did you set out to achieve but didn’t quite make it? This is about creating room for future learning and improvement and it requires you to be honest with yourself. My general rule is to find at least 25 things that I failed to achieve. Even if the year just completed was your best year yet, there should still be a few things that didn’t meet your expectations.
Here’s some things to consider:
What were your most valuable lessons from the year just completed? This is your chance to stop and reflect and convert stuff that just happened into valuable experience that you can avoid or replicate in the future in your quest for your best year yet.
There are two perspectives to consider here:
Did you give your best everywhere? I doubt it. Here’s your chance to come clean. Where did you pull up short? The goal is not to be perfect in the future it’s about your level of effort and going for a goal that’s important to you. Ultimately, this is about living your life with no regrets.
There are a couple of obvious places to look here. For instance:
Now it’s time to make the transition from review to creating our best year yet. And, our starting point is to consider a general theme for our entire year. Chris Brogan creates a powerful theme by distilling it to a couple of words.
Here’s a couple of ideas for creating the theme of your best year yet:
Themes are general, goals are specific. Now it’s time to turn your general theme into a specific and measurable result for the new year and your best year yet.
Here’s a couple of general guidelines for creating your master goal:
My master goal is to create products. This has two key aspects – create my own products and help others create theirs. In particular, create 12 of my own products this year (specific, measurable and a stretch!) And, to run 6 two-day workshops helping people to create their products. Again, super specific, it allows me to measure my progress and given I not run a two-day public workshop previously, this will be a good challenge. When I achieve these two goals I can declare my year my best year yet!
It’s useful to think about your master goal as the destination you’ll arrive at during the year. And, to think of your practices as the things you will do on a regular basis to help you reach this goal. Start to think of the essential actions you need to take to create your best year yet.
Here’s some suggestions:
Love to hear what you do to plan your best year yet. Also, what you plan to create. Drop us a line below in the comments section.
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