The new year is upon us, and now is the time to prepare yourself for a great new year. You can start out of the new year gates with a clear path ahead while most people spend most of the first quarter before finally deciding on their annual goals and then they are three months behind.
Before you begin looking at what you want to accomplish in the new year, you need to spend time reflecting on the past year both personally and professionally. Write down how you finished each of your last year’s goals, what went well and what you can improve on. You can then determine if any of this year’s goals need to continue on into the new year. You should also spend time on identifying and reflecting on your top three to five accomplishments for the year. The next items to write down would be what you want to start, keep, improve, and stop for the upcoming year.
Now you are ready to focus on the upcoming year. You can accomplish so much more when you are focused on the important and right goals and tasks. I have found through my experience that you need to do more than just simply create a goal. You need to actually write the goals(s) down. Writing them down increases the likelihood of achieving them by 42%. Just by writing them down!
To further improve the odds of successfully accomplishing the goal(s), they should be structured goals. There are different goal frameworks out there, like SMART goals for example. Under the SMART framework goals are written using specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time bound parameters. These elements enable you to get very clear and precise on what you need to accomplish. An example of a SMART goal would be something like: I will complete two half-marathons by the end of the year.
Another framework would be Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). In this framework you write down your main objective like I will complete a full marathon by the end of the year. Then you create key results you will need to do to accomplish the objective. An example of key results for this objective could be to identify and execute a training program through a local running club, sign-up early to lock in your commitment, etc.
Having these big annual goals is a great step and an important accomplishment. If you want to “Be Great…Today!” and accomplish even more, start with the big annual goals and then break them down. Create quarterly goals that keep you moving towards those annual goals. Then break the quarterly goals into monthly, weekly and finally into daily goals.
Every week you create three things you must accomplish that week to move you towards your big goals. Then you refer to those three items each morning when you are creating your daily tasks to ensure you are doing three things everyday to move you towards hitting your weekly goals.
Sometimes you may just have quarterly goals and not a big annual goal(s). You would still break those down to monthly, weekly and daily. The key is to break them down no matter the duration of the goal(s) to daily actions you need to take to accomplish the end result. This should be done for your business, any side-hustle and your personal goals.
The critical action is to write them down. The picture is the template I use every day. Each page has the gratitude at the top I introduced in the Mindset blog post, and then you see the goals sections. I break my daily tasks down into the Have to Complete (HTC) and the Nice To Complete (NTC) actions. The HTCs are the three daily actions I need to take today to move me towards my weekly commitments.
The NTC’s tasks have to be done, but are not the most critical. They may end up moved to the HTC list on another day, delegated to others on the team, deleted at some point or completed by me after completing the HTC items. This system also allows me to see what items just keep getting pushed to the next day so I can re-evaluate my tasks.
I schedule time in my schedule to do my daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual goal reviews. I have been able to accomplish so much more using this system of HTCs and NTCs because I am focused on what is most important each day to keep me moving forward. I am also still handling all the minutiae that comes up in my role, but I don’t let it fill up my entire day anymore.
Breaking things down into bite sized chunks will increase clarity, be more manageable and allow you to “Be Great…Today!”
Brandon Brazeel, MBA, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
VP, Chief People Officer
