Selecting Next Year’s Goals

As December arrives I always start interviewing new habits, goals, and skills to see what I will reach for in the new year. Some years I do it with angst, urgency, and desperation. Usually when that happens, I’m feeling behind, or worried that I’m not really getting anywhere in my life.

Have you felt that?

It’s as if life can be chasing you, and standing still all at the same time. In angst-ridden years, I often hyperfocus on goal planning, and usually color code an impossible regimen for the first 28 weeks of the new year. It's enough to make a person cry (and I usually do). 

Chances are, if I don’t realize I’m terror-planning before January 1 rolls around, I learn just how impossible my plan is when the first few days happen only by holding my breath…and with the first stumble, I spiral into an inexorable "behindness" that even I can’t dig my way out of.

Plan gets shelved. I feel dejected. And usually the lightbulb goes off, realizing I did my new year’s dreaming from inside the nightmare of unresolved anxiety. 

I could try to tighten my image by saying “it’s been years since I’ve done this to myself.” But that would cover an important truth. Terror-planning is a thread that runs through my personality, a way of coping with the big, existential fears of my life. When I feel like my life isn’t mattering enough, I try to plan my way to becoming more valuable.

That’s what I’ve learned lately, and it has changed everything.

Most years, I have stacked too many new-year-goals and fresh-start-habits on January’s shoulders. Now I’ve come to understand why I do this, and it’s shifting the burden of year-end planning. 

Do I have six different new planning journals sitting in my office right now, waiting for a final evaluation and selection for 2022? Yes. yes I do. But the reason I can write about it with a smile today is because I’m starting to understand that goal planning is a way to grow and be more fully engaged in daily life; it’s not a way to matter.

I do have a purpose in life, and I find days spent honoring and chasing that purpose deeply meaningful. But that purpose dictates how I spend my daily energy. Goal planning is about selecting strategic areas of focus so that I can consistently amplify and expand my ability to serve my purpose.

This year in particular, I’m thinking about selecting an intentional number of goals to pursue, and giving myself permission to focus on them. Not trying to improve every area of my life at once, or advance on every goal equally; I want to make strategic headway.

In part I think I’m encouraged by this because I just finished a successful 13-week sprint. For once I used a guided journal by Best Self that was intensive and thorough, trying to give weight and attention to 3 major goals for those 91 days. 

I had 3 Goals:

• Establish a Robust Writing Practice
• Create Substantial Value for Clients + Prospects
• Increase Physical Strength + Vitality

The ways I succeeded and failed in those 13 weeks was informative. I saw how the areas where my goals were more focused made it harder to delude myself that I was making progress. It also made it easier for me to “mindlessly” follow through on my intentions, and that generated genuine progress. Both things were super helpful.

The guided, physical journal pages forced me to prioritize, and to choose among competing goals and tasks. They also forced me to identify a true goal, and clarify the key factors, actions, and behaviors that would genuinely move me on that goal. 

During the past 13 weeks, I made progress. Actual, quantifiable, and internally resonating progress. And in the immediate aftermath I am forced to acknowledge that the things I didn’t pursue played an enormous role in my success.

It’s stuff I stopped acting like I was working on that freed me up to actually work on what mattered. 

So here’s my little 4-step plan for choosing the right new year goals.

1. Pause My Constant Tracking: I’ve been meticulously charting behaviors and actions during the past 13 weeks to see what moves the needle – and to have a record of my follow-through – to inform my strategy. Great. It’s been so helpful. But tracking can become addictive for its own sake. People like me can easily put time into unimportant activities if it means checking a rewarding box. For now, I want to stop all my box checking so that I can choose which boxes to begin checking in the new year.If you're a productivity tracker, tally master, and streak-keeper you know how rewarding seeing check marks pile up can be. Maybe you could also profit from a strategic break from tracking, to refresh your perspective on what to focus on next year.
2. Evaluate Major Wins + Misses: Even if you haven’t spent the past 90 days “tracking your key behaviors” you can make note of the behaviors and habits that are serving you, notice how you’ve failed to follow through on what you’ve said you need, and sense what would be valuable to you going forward. For me though, it means looking for unexpected patterns about what worked, and what never happened. It means creating a fresh short list of Morgan’s Best Practices for 2022.If you were to put your name in there, and identify your own best practices for the new year, what would they be?
3. Quantify + Focus Priority Behaviors: I really don’t want to take a bunch of leftovers into the new year. Half-baked plans and “should dos” that sound impressive will be anything but impressive next December when they sit un-done. This means stepping away from pretensions, and embracing what actually works. For me, this requires physically writing these things down and establishing the units of frequency and volume for each behavior, as well as reminding myself the purpose those behaviors serve. (That way I can check in to make sure the behavior is giving me those things…otherwise it may need rethinking along the way.)What quantifiable behaviors do you want to see grow in the next year?
4. Connect the Dots Between Big Goals + Key Drivers: One of the biggest light bulbs I had using that particular 13 week planner was the way the planning modules connected each large goal to the specific drivers that would achieve it. In my head I think I’ve had a kind of Goal Goulash, where I say what the big goals are, and then haphazardly throw in all of the “desirable behaviors” that may or may not be related to achieving it. When I do this, my energy gets fragmented, chasing down a rainbow of desirable behaviors, but not lasering in to drive the specific behaviors that will most effectively achieve the goal.What are the frequent fliers in your "goal goulash?" What things do you keep expecting of yourself, but which you don't have a real big picture vision for? Maybe it's time to connect the dots between your big goals and the actions you're asking from yourself.

Maybe you’ve heard the adage: You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. There’s a thread of truth to it where goal pursuit is concerned. 

The future castle of your dream life may require 27 major changes in your habits and skills, and you’re likely capable of all those changes. But if you want to go about achieving them, be strategic. Work through those 27 things like any great builder would construct that castle. Drive your own success by focusing on functional progress. Get a few pieces in place, and build on them.

Make it fun, give yourself some room to breathe as you go, and don’t let yourself off the hook for doing the hard thing that will help your life sing.

If these ideas excite you, let me know your thoughts by dropping me an email, or booking some reflection and strategy coaching sessions. I’m excited to see who you’ll become in the new year.