2023 Goals: How I Plan, Track & Achieve My Goals
2023 Goals: How I Plan, Track & Achieve My Goals
Now is the time of year when you’ll probably get online and be bombarded with people sharing their goals, or telling you what you should focus on for the year and why it should matter to you. It can feel noisy, overwhelming, and make you unsure of what to actually concentrate on.
Instead of making a piece about “healthy habits you should incorporate” or “things to focus on this year” I thought it would be more beneficial if I instead shared my methods for setting goals and structuring my year in a way that makes things achievable without adding stress to my day.
It's important to set some kind of intention each year because it will help you stay focused and motivated. When we don’t know exactly where we’re going it’s easy to get lost.
Having specific goals or objectives in mind gives you purpose, allowing you to prioritise tasks that will help you reach your potential. It also helps you track your progress, so you can celebrate your successes and adjust your plan accordingly.
Aside from teaching you how I structure out goals I’m going to dig in and show you the formula I use to make sure there’s almost no way to go off track, so hang on until the end.
Pick a theme
I'm a big believer in setting a theme for the year! Doing this helps me focus on what I want to achieve and prioritise the goals that align with that theme.
Having a clear direction also helps me plan better and track my progress more effectively. It's like having a compass to guide me throughout the year, because when you’re having moments that don’t align with that theme you can become more aware and change your direction accordingly.
Here are some theme of the year example words for you. We are currently exploring yearly themes and building your habits around them in the January challenge inside the MORE+ Membership. Click here to jump in and join us.
Breaking Down Your Goals
Breaking down your goals into categories can help you better understand what you need to do to achieve them. Consider the following categories:
Financial: setting a budget, tracking expenses, and other money-related goals.
Health: eating healthy, exercising, getting enough sleep, and other health-related goals.
Career: improving your skills, networking, and other professional goals.
Personal: learning a new skill, spending time with family and friends, and other personal goals.
By breaking your goals down into categories, it will be easier to focus on each one individually and create a plan for how to move forward.
I’d recommend just setting one major one for the year in each category.
Objectives
Objectives represent slightly more aggressive guidelines and define the exact steps you’ll take towards achieving those goals. To build these out I like to plan my year in quarters so that I have some time constraints to work within.
Q1 = January - March
Q2 = April - June
Q3 = July - September
Q4 = October - December
Breaking down our objectives into quarters is a great way to ensure that you stay on track with them. It can be hard to stay motivated when you have a long-term goal because it feels so far away, but breaking it down into 4 smaller, more achievable objectives helps to keep you on the right path.
Having shorter-term objectives also allows you to adjust your plans if something unexpected comes up. You can focus on what needs to be done in the next quarter and adjust your long-term plan accordingly.
Let’s say your theme for the year is, “Nourish”
And 1 of your goal categories is “Health”
Specifically you want, “to eat nourishing food consistently, and cut down Uber Eats to just once per week”… sweet!
So what’s our objective?
Building out your objectives will depend on your personality, if you’re someone who likes the whole road map ahead of you go ahead and plan Q1-Q4 right off the bat.
This might be controversial to some but I only plan one quarter at a time, moving instead with what intuitively feels right and setting up Q2 as Q1 comes to a close and I have time to reflect on what changes need to be made. We will grow and change as people throughout the year, so it makes sense that our objectives may need adjusting too.
Going back to my previous goal example, our Q1 objective could look something like, “Build the habit of meal prepping twice per week and ordering groceries online every week so I know I have all the ingredients I need.”
This might sound ultra-specific, but it is looking for areas of weakness.
Let’s say you know that you order Uber Eats when you’ve:
a) run out of ingredients to cook with, or are
b) feeling disorganised.
So essentially, your objective is a very specific HABIT-based goal that you are looking to incorporate for that quarter. This way it’s not wishy-washy and you can track whether you are staying aligned with your goal and theme or not.
Failsafes
When it comes to achieving our goals, it's important to plan not only for success, but also for failure. By planning for potential failure, we can prepare to manage it and come up with alternative solutions if needed instead of getting frustrated and thrown off track.
This helps to reduce the risk of our goals not being achieved and minimises the impact of any possible times when things don’t go according to plan. Additionally, planning for failure can help us to develop resilience and learn from our mistakes.
With a plan for failure, we can turn a setback into an opportunity for growth and progress.
Using our same example:
Theme: Nourish
Goal category: Health
Goal: to eat nourishing food consistently, and cut down Uber Eats to just once per week
Q1 objective: Build the habit of meal prepping twice per week and ordering groceries online every week so I know I have all the ingredients I need.
Failsafe examples:
Prepping and chopping fresh ingredients as soon as I get groceries so I don’t need to prepare them later
Batch cooking long-lasting foods like soup or stew and putting them in the freezer in case of busy days or emergencies
Uninstalling food delivery apps from phone and only downloading when you’ve planned on having something intentionally (instead of it being your “go to”)
Share the cooking with someone else if you have a partner/family member or friend with a similar goal
Create a back-up list of easy (<5 min) recipes and store them on your phone for other food options when you’re not feeling creative
This way you have NEVER failed. If option A didn’t work, you have option B, C, D, and E there to act as a back-up. Life becomes a whole lot more fun when you treat it as a “pick your own adventure” rather than as something you pass or fail.
It can be intimidating when we set goals that seem daunting or out of reach. However, setting goals doesn't have to be overwhelming. Instead, breaking them down into smaller, more manageable pieces that are time-bound can make them much easier to achieve.
This way, you can focus on one task at a time and make steady progress toward the larger goal. Focus on the habit and the outcome will happen anyway!
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Hey there, I’m Rachel!
NUTRITIONIST, PERSONAL TRAINER, WELLNESS COACH
Here I share healthy recipe ideas, training plans, and nutrition & wellness advice you need to know.
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