Happy New Year! Welcome 2021: Goal Setting
"A goal without a plan is just a wish." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Happy New Year! If there was ever a year I was ready to wrap my arms around and give a big hug, it is 2021. There was lots to learn from 2020: resilience, patience, focusing on what truly matters, simple joys, and not taking things for granted. As we say goodbye to 2020 and look forward with hopeful anticipation, In the spirit of selfcare, wellness and daily routine, I thought I’d share my three favorite books on goal setting.
Filled with practical tips and inspiring stories, Henriette Anne Klauser’s book, Write It Down, Make It Happen, explains how writing down your goals is the first step towards making them happen. Writing your goals puts an intentionality behind it. Klauser shares, “Getting our thoughts out of our heads and onto a page can have a curative effect. Writing provides grounding; writing is therapeutic; writing is healthy.”
Brian Tracy notes that “Only 3 percent of adults have written goals. Everyone else works for them.” In his book, Goals!, Tracy provides structure to help you identify what you want, create plans to achieve them (setting deadlines), and how to follow those plans best. If you head to Tracy's website, he frequently offers helpful free downloads on a variety of topics.
The 5 AM Miracle is an excellent book about increasing productivity (and no, you don’t have to get up at 5 am to implement his many ideas). For me, the best take-away from this book is his recommendation to organize projects and annual goals into 3-month chunks. Sanders suggests, “An extremely simplified list of grand goals combined with a significantly shorter timeframe is your ticket out of the chaos. It is the healthier and more productive alternative to setting annual goals or making multi-year (or multi-decade) plans.” I would concur and have found this method to be more successful and more rewarding. In particular, in this time of COVID, lockdowns, and quarantining, it is quite challenging to plan too far ahead. 90-day increments at least feel like a timeframe that can be somewhat controlled (even if illusory).
Goodbye 2020, welcome 2021. Wishing you and yours, first and foremost, a healthy new year; along with a happy, prosperous and hopeful one!