Every year between Christmas and New Year’s I schedule a Power Week. I first heard of this idea from Charles Kirk of The Kirk Report who talked about his year-end planning session. As with many other personal development projects, I used that as an inspiration and made it my own over many years of trial and error.
I often find that people are looking for the Holy Grail. That one strategy/planner/organizational plan/book/expert that will be “the answer” for their time management needs. If I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s that the best approach is one that you make your own. The more personal it is, the more relevant it is to your particular circumstances, and the more likely that you will stick with it!
My goal with the last week of the year is fourfold:
1) Get organized;
2) Review my progress toward long-term goals in the past year.
3) Set goals for the upcoming year;
4) Create a game plan.
Let me briefly describe each of these three steps.
1) Get organized
By the end of the year, my desk and my home office tend to look like my dorm room in college. An intricate web of stuff has amassed, and even though I’m pretty sure I know what everything is and why it’s there, it’s certainly no way to keep your workspace organized.
I start with my desk and use the FAD system: File, Act, Delete. File it away, act on in immediately, or recycle it. This is an approach I could certainly have used all during the year, very true. But these are things that were not urgent, but they were important. I threw them in a pile for “a rainy day.” Today is that rainy day.
I also use the FAD system on my e-mails (the main form of communication), my Pocket (webpages saved for later viewing), and my Evernote (repository for everything else). I am truly trying to just get everything in its right place. Once it’s organized, then I can start to actually review my progress.
I should note that I try to lean on the “D” as much as possible. If something has been in the pile all year, and I haven’t felt the urgency to take action on it, perhaps it just needs to go away. I tend to have lots of half-started projects around, and this is the time to cut some of them loose.
2) Review progress
This is where I bring up my goals from the previous year and see how I did. I keep my goals in Workflowy now, so every week when I bring that up I can see my goals at the very top of the list. I tend to set ridiculously unattainable goals, so this can often be a humbling experience. I’m working on making my goals more attainable. I may be working on that my whole life. But that’s ok.
People love to skip this step and just focus on their “New Year’s Resolutions” instead of evaluating their performance relative to last year’s resolutions. This review process is arguably the most important step because it will help you set more reasonable goals later in the process, and also help you identify potential weaknesses in your previous game plan.
What enabled you to achieve your goals? When prevented you from making meaningful progress toward other goals?
3) Set goals
Now that you have reviewed last year’s progress, where do you want to go in the next year? Twelve months is a significant amount of time. What are you going to do with that time?
I set goals for each of my passions: Music, Markets, Mindfulness.
Goals are always best when they are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Oriented. I often struggle with the “attainable” part and set way too many goals with way too high a bar. If you set unreachable goals, it can often feed feelings of self-doubt and also fuel perfectionism.
I should note here that as much as this is a linear 1-4 process, I often backtrack as I go through the week. Once I get to Step 4 and try to create a game plan to achieve my goals, I realize that there is no humanly way possible that I could accomplish what I first laid out. So I go back to Step 3 and adjust my goals a bit. That’s ok.
4) Create a game plan
How are you going to achieve your goals for the next year? I use a mix of web-based planning systems and paper planners to lay things out. My long-term goals go in Workflowy and also on a whiteboard in my office. My short-term objectives and action steps go in Workflowy. Actionable tasks as well as routine tasks, especially those involving my Virtual Assistant, go in Asana. My “One Big Thing” for every day goes in my paper planner.
This combined approach works for me (although I reserve the right to change it again at any time) and it’s most important that you find an approach that works for you. I do know that having your goals front and center in a place that you will see every week is vital to keeping the right mindset, and that’s why they are in multiple places for me to see.
This is also the point where goals feel more attainable as you’re actually sketching out a general timeline. Which goals are most urgent? Which are time-sensitive? Which are dependent on someone else and their own timeline?
My wife often reminds me to stop trying to “over-perfect” every day. As a recovering perfectionist, I usually want to spend each day reading, writing, working, composing, singing, hiking, meditating, watching a movie, playing, etc. Now granted, that would be an awesome day, it’s highly unlikely that I could pack all of those things into one single day.
She has helped me think in terms of the weeks instead of days; in quarters instead of weeks. Step 4 is where you remind yourself that with an entire year to work with, you can spend certain times focused on certain areas of development. You will not move the ball forward on every single goal every single day.
Once this Power Week is done, I make a point of focusing on only the actionable tasks for each week and each day. I don’t have to worry about the big picture goals every day. I have laid out a game plan and I know that if I generally follow my plan, I will make meaningful progress toward my goals and be more and more the person that I want to be.
How do you set goals for the upcoming year? Let me know on Twitter.
RR#6,
Dave
Disclaimer: This blog is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. Please see the Disclaimer page for full details.