I don't know about you, but I'm the kind of person that makes 3824802 resolutions every New Year's Eve only to forget about all of them by January 15th. But I never waver in my optimism: every December 31st, for a short few hours, I am ready to start being a whole new person: strong, smart and confident. The girl that goes to the farmer's market on Saturday mornings to buy kale and to spinning before work five days a week. The girl that does brunch with her friends on Sundays at noon and date nights on Friday. The girl that reads Tolstoi and Rousseau before bed.
Come February and I'm the girl who agrees to a second date with the guy from Tinder who stood her up (because he needed to take his ill pet gecko to the vet or something), then, when he turns out to be a sexist pig, eats a family-sized four-cheese pizza in one sitting while listening to "All By Myself" on repeat.
(It's not actually that bad.)
Anyway, this year I've decided to be a bit more realistic, and I came up with quite a simple three-step procedure for generating useful goals.
By the way, I'm going to stop calling them resolutions from this point forward - it sounds so vague and non-committal, like giving yourself a $50 promise ring. Not this year. This year, you get a one-carat rock.
First of all, get in the right mindset. Put on some good music, get a glass of water or some tea, and grab two blank sheets of paper and as many color pens as you like. Ready to do some serious reflection and self-examination? I bet you are!
Step # 1 - Dream
On your first sheet, you're going to dream. I gave my sheet the rather vague title "What I Want". You can also call it "Things To Achieve" or "My Dreams" or anything else you want. The point of this is just to brainstorm ideas. Who do you want to be? Where do you want to be a year from now? Five years from now? Ten years from now? What do you want to change? What do you want to spend more time on? What would you like to do less of? What do you like about yourself? What talents do you want to spend more time fostering? What weaknesses do you want to work on? Don't set yourself any limits. Anything you can think of, goes.
Step # 2 - Prioritize
There is only so much you can get done in a year. See how I circled some stuff on my sheet? Those are the things I decided I would work on this year, and some of them actually go together, which is why I circled them in the same color. I'm now 24, which seems like a good time to work on building a career and saving money. So, I decided to focus on those things. Dreams that seemed to vague or too far off (like starting a family), that I thought were too difficult to quantify and make actual goals out of, I didn't circle. So in step #2, you want to highlight those dreams that you think you can realistically work towards in 2016, or those that seem most important and pressing to you at this stage in your life.
Step # 3 - Quantify
On your second sheet, you're going to quantify your dreams to make goals out of them. See how I went from "be more tidy" to "tidy up for 15mins a day" or from "be a homeowner" to "save €10k"?
Figure out how you can turn your "priority dreams" from Step 2 into quantifiable goals, and split those goals into daily, weekly, monthy and yearly To Do's.
Don't make too many goals! I decided to have three daily and three weekly goals - a reasonable amount to fit in.
There! You now have your List of Goals for 2016. Congrats!
One last thing: Keeping track of your goals is really important. That's why I made you a lovely sheet that you can print weekly and use to keep track of how you're doing :) You can download it here.
So what are your goals for a perfect 2016?
Love,
Damita
No comments:
Post a Comment