This post is to share my current method of goal planning, yet it is also to hopefully gain some insight on how to better implement plans. I find that the planning aspect is fine – I know what I am working towards and what I would like to achieve – but I find my weakness is the actual implementation of it. I find I am so much of a planner that I just forget to actually do any action, which is obviously the biggest aspect of goal planning.
I like to plan my goals in reverse, i.e. I plan where I would like to end up and work backwards from there. So for example, I will plan where I want to be in 5 years (depending on the goal this may vary, but usually my minimum ‘long term’ time frame is 1 year) and then I will break that down into, for example:
- Where do I need to be in 4 years?
- Where do I need to be in 3 years?
- What would signal I was at the true half way point at 2.5 years?
- Where do I need to be in 1 year?
I will then break it down further, and recently I have started to think about a year as four quarters. Over the years I have learnt that as great as it is to have monthly goals, there are times where life simply gets in the way and I may not be able to always stick to the goals every single month without any issues. For example, I used to say I would write 10,000 words every month on one of my creative writing projects. But of course, there will be some months where I am out and about more often (birthdays, holidays, work commitments etc) and so 10,000 may be way too ambitious in those very busy months. Instead, I am trying to focus on reaching certain mile stones during the quarter period. So within 12 weeks, I want to have at least 4 chapters finished for example. I have found this method is just a bit more flexible for me and means I am not getting too caught up in the details.
With all this in mind though, I still like to set myself weekly and monthly goals but these are most focused on ‘gamifying’ my goals. My big example of this is with my running. I will set myself a target at the beginning of the month to run a set number of kilometres by the end of the month. If I hit it, then fantastic, I may even treat myself to a little something to celebrate, but if I don’t hit the target I don’t get too upset. Obviously at the moment this is a bit less of a game – I am following a set training plan to run a marathon so for at least 16 weeks I know exactly how much I will be running every week and month in order to cross that marathon finish line. Although it seems that August will be the first time ever in my life that I will run 100km in one month! Something that little me had always wanted to achieve and it baffles me that I will do that this month. Truthfully, I should have achieved it in July, but a dose of Covid knocked me out for a week so I finished on 94km. I nearly went back out for a spontaneous 6km run to hit that milestone but I know better than to mess with a training plan!
I also have found that whilst it is nice to have time every day to work on your goals – even if it is only 10 minutes of writing every morning, or 5 minutes of stretching as soon as you get out of bed – I found that trying to fit all my little goals into every day could get very overwhelming and also, again, life would usually get in the way and I’d have to miss days. I therefore find that I set weekly goals which work better for me. A good goal for me is that I want to spend at least an hour every week working on a writing project – this could be writing, planning, researching or story boarding – so that I am making progress towards a goal over a week. Some days I have the time to spend two hours working solidly through a chapter, whereas other days I only manage 30 minutes of research whilst I am sat on the train to work. But either way, I am working on the goals and I am making progress even if it is tiny. I find this takes a lot of pressure off me to constantly ‘be productive’ but still lets me get that dopamine hit from making tiny steps of progress.
Taylor Talks Vegan 