Ep. 67 Plan With Me: A Step-by-Step Framework For How to Actually Achieve Your Goals in 2024

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0:57Hi friends, Grace from the Working Hard Podcast here. When you're stretching every dollar, a little goes a long way and Walmart Business is here to help. They make it easy to order what you need from tech and cleaning supplies to everyday essentials, all at low prices and with helpful tools like spend tracking and tax exempt purchasing for eligible organisations. Because when your operations are smooth, your impact can be bigger. Visit business.warmart.com to get started.

1:26What is up guys and welcome to Working Hard Hardly Working. Today is going to be a slightly different episode. Today we are planning for 2024 This is a guided planning session You're going to be planning with me Because I have separation anxiety and don't want to do this on my own Personally But I also think as we get to the end of every year My planning senses My planning spidey senses They really start tingling And they start knowing that they're about to be activated As we all know my planning senses actually Tingle year round But this is a particularly intense tingle Ready for the year ahead going into the next year can obviously feel overwhelming it's understandable but I find that once you've actually planned for the year ahead and you know exactly what you're working towards exactly how you're going to be getting there it makes it so much more manageable and most of all exciting because it should be exciting a new year is exciting I think there's a concentration as you come to the end of the year like oh what haven't I done like I wanted to do this I wanted to do this we're going into a new year it's an exciting time but a new year is a great chance to get your shit together and align your goals with what's actually achievable and we're going to do that today using a specific framework so that we know it is achievable because we're going to know exactly what it is and when we're going to do it and we're going to goal set in the right way that I have worked out after years and years and years that this is the way to do it so grab a coffee or a tea or a croissant and let's create our dream lives for 2024 and on and on and on and on after that I personally am going to be planning with my digital planner because I personally think it's the best way to plan and that's exactly why I made it if you don't have it yet you can stay listening till the end for an exclusive discount but if you do have it then plan along with me and if you refuse to get it then you know best of luck fine if you do like these solo episodes please do not forget to hit subscribe or follow or whatever it is on your chosen platform of choice it helps me more than you know it helps the podcast it helps us be able to get some great people on here and it means we can get bigger and better episodes in the podcast on the podcast in the podcast in the podcast on the podcast either one for 2024

3:30We are going to go through this in steps. Sorry if you're listening on audio, that was probably quite loud. Step one, we're going to start reflecting on the past year. Now, reflection is very important, but further than reflection, I truly think we change so, so much in a year. So I ask myself kind of a set of questions every year to really check in with who I am and what like a good life even looks like to me, because I think it's really easy to assume that the goals you had last year if you didn't reach them are going to be the same this year whereas in reality we accumulate so much new information each year about like what a good life is to us and that leaves so much space for improving realigning setting maybe even a different destination in order to be able to get there and you won't know that unless you actually do some proper reflection and evaluation this also helps you to set expectations and realize what's actually achievable in a year and also you can give yourself a little pat on the back I don't know back the year after.

4:27I actually have every single set of yearly goals and also if you're using a digital planner then it's fine because you obviously have that from the previous year. I personally am going to be heading to the about me section of the planner but you can just write down these questions if you are refusing to join the digital planner club. But this is really important as I said to see how my life and ways of working have changed. So firstly I ask myself two two very important questions. Number one, what are my top five motivations? Number two, what do I wish I had more time to do? Now these may feel a little bit random, but I feel like these two questions in themselves pretty quickly center yourself in what actually helps you to get where you want to get and what you feel like you're perhaps not doing as well right now or not giving enough time to.

5:13Okay, step two, we're already on to step two. If that's not an achievement, I don't know what is. we're going on to the vision board. I always used to think that vision boards were kind of stupid. I'm not a very spiritual person. I'm not necessarily a person who likes to, I don't manifest. I mean, I'm sure I do. I completely understand the rules of it and like affirmations and all of that, but I don't personally do like journaling or anything like that. But I feel like these things and visualizing where you want to get to and putting yourself in the position of where you want to be is so important.

5:44And if you don't know what that looks like it's very very hard to visualize that so I head to my vision board and this is because if you set goals I think it's so important to think long term these goals for the next year need to get you closer to the life you want but you need to also be able to see the end goal and kind of what inspires you and what that looks like I want my vision board to be something that I can draw up every day or on a particularly tough day and feel inspired motivation is not going to take you everywhere discipline is but sometimes you just need that little bit of a kick up the ass so a vision board is essentially a representation of everything you want to achieve and kind of what that looks like, actions, habits you want to build and how you want your ideal life to look.

6:20Mine is actually split into me, how I want to be, my life, how I want to live and my actions, what I want to do. So weirdly, I actually start with writing down a big brain dump in each section. Keywords, like all of this, my life, how I want to live, keywords, again, specific achievements. it might be a purchase or like a house or like a dog or a relationship or whatever my actions what I want to do so specific habits that I want to be bringing into my everyday life so I do a huge brain dump on this and this actually helps with making the vision board process a bit shorter because I think you can spend days procrastinating on your actual goals with a vision board whereas realistically it's actually quite easy just to search in the keywords and all of the stuff that you put down in your brain dump and then I head to Pinterest and my saved posts on Instagram and TikTok which I generally just save throughout the year I get screenshotting and then I upload them onto my vision board there's a vision board section in the digital planner basically I just do that until everything's on there and it feels like an overall kind of yeah this is right like this is a picture of the life I want to live I also find just that throughout the year have like a little vision board folder on Instagram and TikTok or I have like a work inspo and a life inspo one and I just save things to that and then it's really easy to come back to the next year or just add them to your vision board I do think a visual representation of what you want your life to look like is one of the most powerful ways of being able to put yourself in the position of someone who would be ready to have those things in their life if that makes sense I mean that is literally law of attraction and me being like I don't do that I like to specifically goal set and I feel like with these types of things it's actually super helpful no matter whether you are more of a journaling type person or not to have these visual prompts for what you really want that to look like and on bad days as well I just find it's very important to be able to cement yourself back in that area why do I keep saying cement yourself are we a building site no I mean center yourself step three goal setting now getting into the nitty-gritty the important the goal setting part so I personally am going to head to the yearly goals tab this is where I do my goal setting as I've said I'm doing it on my digital planner I like to be able to refer back to it throughout the year this is split into six categories so if you're doing this at home or in a physical planner or wherever on your kitchen floor or the pavement outside in chalk this is split into six categories.

8:34These are personal development, relationships, finances, career and business, attitude and mindset, and health. I find it's really, really important to have these diverse categories. I don't care if you think about like overall like work as your main thing or home life or friends or whatever is your main thing. We all know that an element of balance, no matter whether that's a 60-40, 90-10, whatever, is so important in our lives. You cannot over-invest on one area, or you can and you probably will in different walks of life I guess but it is incredibly important to achieve this kind of level of balance and motivation not just for work but also to stay healthy and happy and know if any one of these things doesn't quite go to plan you still have the other ones I just think that's incredibly important I actually saw on TikTok the other day or as I should say I read an article the other day a visual article on the app TikTok which was this girl showing what a therapist had given her and it was like this boat and it was like all of the different areas of your life and like if one comes out you know your boat is fine but if like two or three come out your boat sinks I don't think I explained that well I think there's probably a reason why I'm not in therapy but there we go but so I have all of these different segments categories within my goals and as I said I think it's very important to set goals for each so when we're setting these goals you have to make sure your goals are achievable and trackable so for example be happy isn't either of those things whereas read 15 books visit my grandma every month or dance around my room every morning or go on one first date a month those are and the reason we do this is because you cannot achieve success unless you define success in every single area so just make sure they are achievable and trackable even if you're not going to be tracking them all the time it is important to be able to set parameters so you're not saying do more of this.

10:24Remember, everything is relative. So say if you were like, I want to see my friends more, and then you were seeing your friends more, but you still felt you weren't seeing them enough, you actually wouldn't be able to tell if you had reached that original target for yourself, because everything becomes relative. Everything becomes like up and down, dependent on how you feel in that time. So it's really important, again, to cement ourselves. My new favorite saying. I'm going to get it tattooed. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving.

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12:03For finances, I'd recommend a savings or investment goal. And for relationships, it might be organizing a monthly date night or sending all your friends a birthday card on time. I do think one of the things I've learned about getting older is that birthday cards are far more important than birthday presents And we should all be giving birthday cards to the people we care about And writing nice things in them and then keeping them forever So take from that what you will here comes step four habit tracking habit tracking is really the most important step in this whole process And it's not often discussed as part of goal setting it all links back to the kind of atomic habits theory So a year is just a sum of three six five days that is not new information but it's really just a kind of accumulation of how you treat those 365 days.

12:46We all think of big goals as like reached by the big moments. Not true at all. Big goals are reached by little things you do every day to get you closer to those big moments and I think that is incredibly important. So it's the small things that really do make the biggest difference and those small things happen every day and what small things happen every day? Habits. I hear you cry from home. Yes you are correct. Well done. So I'm heading to the habit tracker on my planner and I'm going to be adding all the goals that translate to daily habits in there. So for example, if one of your goals is about working out, then your habits should also correspond to working out.

13:24So it might be work out four times a week. So you're going to want to make sure that four days a week you are ticking off the habit and it will obviously track those. My planner then actually syncs with my daily schedule so I can log when I've kept my habits every day. And it's just like a really good way of bringing the yearly into the daily because I think what we often make mistakes on is making yearly plans and then those aren't translated into the daily so we think we need to do them in like the last few months of the year realistically none of your yearly goals maybe one or two of them are going to be achievable at a certain time in the year but most of the time it's going to actually be an accumulation of each day or a specific quarter where you really lean into something and so you have to get it into the habits.

14:07I feel like habits is never discussed as part of goal setting and realistically it is one of the most important parts. Step five is actually keeping it up. When I've been talking this through this actually feels like quite a short thing for yearly goals and obviously for my businesses I would specifically do OKRs so I do an objective and key result for every single area within the business so like financial, operational, growth product marketing etc but I think realistically yearly goals is actually a really easy way to procrastinate doing actual work you should spend about half an hour on your yearly goals obviously probably a little bit longer if you're doing like the vision boarding stuff but then from there the important thing is actually getting that into your day-to-day getting that into your week getting that into what it really really looks like to be doing those things otherwise you're just making like wishes like you're not actually making a goal and a goal action plan, you would never do that for a business.

14:58Like you'd never set a goal and then be like, cool, well, we'll just check back in a year and hope we've done that this year. When are you going to do it? What's it going to look like? Like what does success look like in that goal? When have you achieved it? Is it trackable? Is it actionable? Is it measurable? Is it right? Step five, actually keeping it up. So once that's all done, I kind of sit back and relax, look at my stunning plan for the year ahead. And then I just never look at it again. got you I'm only joking you cannot let all of this work that you've just done go to waste so as I've said I translate my yearly goals into not just the habits but also monthly goals as I said working out how that's going to come into the day-to-day week-to-week month-to-month again I keep them achievable and trackable I try and not make them too big remember big goals come from small goals and then the really good thing about having this in a planner type setup whether it's digital whether it's paper whatever is that every month when I'm goal setting I can check back with my yearly goals to see if my priorities have changed or also if anything kind of needs editing due to like a change in circumstances or a change in goals or a change in job like literally whatever it might be you've got to be flexible life can throw a lot at you in the year and I think one of the most harmful things you can do or just ineffective is set goals at the beginning of the year never look at them again never be specifically tracking them because then you're just as I said you're writing like wishes at the beginning of the year you're not doing like an actionable plan to get to where you want to get to this sounds like a lot of work but it's really not I promise you the five minutes you spend on this at the beginning of every day or the 10 minutes you spend at the beginning of every week is going to be far less time than if you actually just did check back at these and had to work another year towards this goal I promise you just get it in your routine the reason I do this again is so that I know that everything I'm working towards is on that sweet, sweet vision board.

16:46Everything is really, really clear in terms of where I'm trying to get to and how I'm going to get there. Do not make it a yearly wish-making session. It is a yearly goal-setting session. You are going to get there, but you are only going to get there if you follow the steps. Maybe that was too harsh, but do follow the steps. And here ends my planning TED Talk. I honestly could probably do this over the course of like two hours. But again, I really think it's one of those things where you do not need to spend a huge amount of time on it. There is a reason we love planning at the beginning of the year and never looking at it again.

17:20It is a dopamine release that we get through acting like we've achieved those goals at the beginning of the year because we're excited about setting them and never looking at them again. Do not do that to yourself. Like that is such a disservice to yourself. You are getting through every day, week, month anyway. You might as well make it count. Here are your goals. Put them in your monthly calendar. If you put them on the first of each month or the first Monday of each month and you're like, by the way, remember these are your yearly goals this year. Make them visible, like whether it's on your vision board that you're looking at every day because it's in your digital planner or whether it's on your wall or whether it's literally in your diary, like you write them at the beginning of every month.

17:56Make them visible. Take the hard work out of yourself, the you that's in like March that's like, for fuck's sake, I already am not where I want to be. Haunt yourself with the ghost of you past that set these goals at the beginning of the year and wants you to reach them. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. I personally, after having set these goals, I feel ready to slay through the next year, a professional term aligned on all my goals and priorities, which as I've said, is incredibly important. Do not use it as a procrastination tool. Use it as an inspiration tool and a planning tool. It's not a goal if it doesn't have a plan, okay?

18:31I think it probably goes without saying that I definitely think the planning is one of the best ways to enter the new year feeling in control and I honestly have perfected this technique of these templates over so many years of setting bad goals and not necessarily reaching them so do try it if you haven't already um if you also haven't given the digital planet a try yet I will give the first a thousand of you 50 % off with the code working hard so go and snap these up now if you are in the first a thousand and you will get the link straight to your inbox so that you can start planning straight away.

19:02If you've enjoyed this episode, please make sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts. I don't know why I feel the need to tell you all the podcast platforms as if you are not a person in the world. It helps us to get more and more amazing experts on the podcast. I say that like I'm saying that it's lucky that we've got me as an expert on the podcast. That's actually my job, but yeah, sure. And also I want us all to share our wisdom. So if you're listening on Spotify, I've added a few questions to the Q &A section below this episode for us all to share our best planning tips and tricks so we can all go into 2024 feeling strong and aligned and clear on our goals for the year and exactly how we're going to get there but thank you so much for listening we are going to have a great 2024 and how are we going to have a great 2024 we are going to plan and then we are going to realize that setting goals does not mean we are going to reach them we are going to plan exactly where those goals are going to go and how we're going to reach them and that's how we're going to take over the world.

19:55Thank you and good night, good day, goodbye.

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