A Fresh Take on Goal Planning

Happy 2017 peeps! Here’s to a successful, rewarding, joyous and blessed year ahead Insha’Allah!

As I went through my previous rants, I found one I had written some eight years ago for my career development blog on goal planning. Now as you have your resolutions set for the year, let me ask you, “when was the last time you actually went passed February with your resolution in mind?” Assuming probably minimal to oh dang, right?

Here’s my fresh take on goal planning and what you can take from a habit done eight years ago to apply it in 2017.

Is your new year’s resolution to lose weight? Finish college? Travel the world? That can be your resolution but with no real set goals, it’s never going to happen.

I think what many of us forget to do when we talk resolutions is coming up with tangible ones. We need to talk goals, break it down and work our way towards it. Remember, resolution technically means to solve a problem not achieve a milestone. We want to focus on achieving milestones, hence you want to focus on goal planning.

For example, If you have a weight problem, then your resolution is to lose/gain weight. Yet, if you have a weight you’d like to achieve, then your goal is to reach that weight.

Here’s an example I use often. I’m a bookworm, I love reading. Yet because of my hectic schedule, I’m not reading as much as I’d like. My new year’s resolution is to read more. Done, nothing tangible, nothing structured, nothing really to motivate me to read more books.

My new year’s goal is to read twelve books. How will I do so? Here’s a copy of what I drafted for this year, a monthly and weekly goal plan to achieve my reading goal and resolution.

So take out a clean sheet of paper, write out your goal plan and post it somewhere you’ll see it. Also, highly recommend using that calendar on your phone and posting reminders for yourself. Every day, every week, every month. You’d be surprised come December 2017, and pat yourself on the back.

Happy New Year peeps!!