“A Goal without a plan is just a wish”

This quote always comes to mind at the beginning of the year as students begin to make goals for the year and come up with a number of new year’s resolutions that will most likely at some point, fall by the waist side!!

Goals are great to have, but in order to actually achieve them you need to create a plan, and to create that plan you must break the goal up into a number of smaller chunks, and commitments that you will abide by in order to achieve those goals.

This process is something that I do at the beginning of every year as a way of holding myself accountable as the year goes on. Over the last 10 years I have tweaked this process almost every year in order to perfect my formula in order to achieve my goals, that said your formula may be slightly different, but I hope this will give you a reasonable starting point to help you in 2021. If there is one thing I can promise you is that there is no “Correct way” to do this, you must make a start somewhere and begin to perfect your own formula as you go on.

Start with an assessment

To begin with your plan you must first look back at what you have done to date. I start by looking back at the last 12 months. If you had set goals 12 months ago, take a quick look and see if you have achieved them or not. Then get a notebook and answer 3 questions:

1) What did I do well in the last 12 months?

2) What could I have done better in the last 12 months?

3) How could I do these better in the next 12 months?

Go Big or Go Home!