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Your checklist for a successful start to 2021

Setting yourself up for a successful year ahead does not have to be complicated or time-consuming. I have created a simple 5-step process that enables you the best start to the year. This process ensures that you build on your success and learnings from the previous year, align your activities with your values and create a system that keeps you on-track for the year.

Step 1 – Review your review
Did you complete a review as I recommended in December last year? If so, get it out and read through it again. If you haven’t done a review of your 2020 year, there is still time. Click here to get started on one now. It takes just a few quality questions to provide you with key learnings and an overview of your outcomes for the year. 2020 was a challenging year on many fronts and for this reason, you will likely have learnt quite a lot. The review will capture this important information and provide a springboard for the next actions you will take to move ahead into 2021.

Step 2 – Highlight your key learnings & required actions
A review is not a process to be completed and then set aside. Your answers to the review questions are incredibly valuable and you should absolutely utilise them in your early planning for 2021. Start by looking at your review answers and make a note of the key learnings. These learnings could be what you learnt about yourself, your work or the way in which you work. Certainly note what did and didn’t work for the year. Next you want to note the actions that need to take place to move you forward. This is where you tap into the power of the review, it can act as the springboard to move you forward. What do you need more of in 2021? What 1 thing do you need to change in 2021? The answers to these two questions will create some basic actions that you can build on.

Step 3 – Check in with your values
Do you have a list of your personal values? Are you even aware of what your values are? Your personal values are the intrinsic foundation to your experience of wellbeing and fulfillment. In other words, if you want to experience wellbeing and fulfillment, you simply must live in alignment with your values. Values by their very nature will shift and evolve as you do, most particularly when you have experienced changes in your life. As 2020 was the year of change, make sure you check-in with your values to assess if they have changed.

Step 4 – Set your SMART goals
What outcomes do you want in your personal and professional life this year? What changes would you like to make? Express these outcomes as a Specific, Measured, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound goals.

Step 5 – Set your tracking system
Did you know that the main reason for goal non-achievement is simply just “getting off track”? Most goals require you to engage in new habits, new ways of doing things and new ways of thinking. Acquiring a new habit takes practice until our brains have created a well-worn neural pathway and the task feels more natural. The key to habit formation is staying on track long enough to establish this familiarity with the new habit. Your habit building solution is therefore to set up a tracking system. If you track your habit you ensure that you maintain it more consistently for a longer period of time until it becomes easier. It’s natural to “get off track” when starting a new habit, so this system is the key to your success. Check out my tracking system here.

Follow these 5 steps and you will be ensuring that you give yourself and your goals the best opportunity for success in 2021.

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You CAN make plans and you SHOULD

I’ve been hearing the declaration “I can’t make plans” a lot lately. This is usually followed by an explanation that, clearly in this time of uncertainty, “it’s just not possible to plan ahead”.

Bullocks.

Not only is it possible, it is now more important than ever!

As a leader(and most people reading this are) you must still have a plan. Your team, your employees, your family, yourself all want you to have a plan. They will not say this out loud perhaps. They may even scoff at the notion of planning when the world will likely be upside down again by next week. But so what? 

Plans change. All the time. Not just in times of uncertainty. I’m sure you’ve had many plans and projects where you’ve set out on one course and ended up changing it more than once to get to your destination. 

It’s okay I do get it. I understand that things are changing more often and it feels like nothing can be certain.But when is anything ever certain? And why should that stop you from moving forward, from leading however best you can with what you have?

Here is how it works. You consult the current information about the landscape you and your business/team find yourself in. You may also consult with others around you. Then based on the information you have now, you make a decision on a course of action. The point is, you must make decisions about your strategy and run with that model so long as it’s viable.

When we stop making decisions become inert, we feel powerless. Those around us, who look to us for leadership, get confused and apathetic. Now is the time when your leadership is needed more than ever.
Whether you’re leading a team, a company, a family or yourself – all are important. Don’t stop making decisions and taking action. Just adjust some other things…

Yes, you will need to adjust your expectations.
You may have to change the plan again when you have new information. But that’s good right? You want to making decisions with the best and most up-to-date knowledge.

You will need to be flexible.
Holding on too tightly to your plan is not a winning strategy. Goals are always meant to be guideposts and you while you still continue to look to your destination, be a little flexible with how you get there and how long it takes.

You will need to review your plan.
Of course it goes without saying that you will make a plan and also a plan to review it in a month’s time (or week’s time..).

All of these three things work together: adjust your expectations, stay flexible on your path and review regularly. Apply this approach and you can make any plan right now.


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5 ways to make your 2019 goals achievable

It’s that time of year again! Talking plans and goals for 2019. The last few weeks I’ve been focusing my blog and Facebook lives on the theme of Planning for 2019. Today it’s all about goal setting and more specifically, 5 ways to make sure you achieve your 2019 goals!

From my own personal experience and working with my clients through the goal setting process, I have found specific things that hinder goal achievement that can be very simply overcome in the initial goal-setting process. What I mean is, getting off to the right start and laying the right foundation is the key to you avoiding the pitfalls of non-goal achievement. The great things is that these 5 basic “rules” for goal setting are really easy but will make a big difference!

Here are the 5 ways to ensure that your 2019 goals are achievable:

1. Write your goals down
I know it may sound obvious and you are likely already doing this, but did you know that by doing this one simple step in writing your goals down, you have actually increased the likelihood of goal achievement by 42%? Yes, it’s true! Alarmingly, most people don’t write their goals down, so just by doing so you’re way ahead! The act of writing or typing the goal out also brings it into the physical realm. Your brain can literally see the idea on paper or on your screen and so it already becomes more realistic, more tangible, as opposed to a thought floating around in your mind.

2. Follow the SMART goals format
Your goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-framed (SMART for short). This ensures you have defined the goal well and it is clear what the successful outcome will be. It also ensures that there is a way to measure success. How will you know you’ve achieved your goal? The goal must answer this by clearly indicating measurement. Your goal must be attainable (there is an actual chance that the goal can be attained) and it must be relevant. Are your goals relevant to you and your business growth? (Make sure you review my blog on Power Priorities before you answer this.) And lastly and perhaps most importantly, the goal must be time-framed. In other words, there must be a deadline to achieving the goal.

3. Create a written goals plan
This is by far the most overlooked step in the goal setting process. Goals are often written down but there is no plan made. When you have no plan, it is the equivalent of standing at the base of a mountain and looking up to your goal at the peak of the mountain. It’s overwhelming and more daunting than inspiring! You want to create a plan of action to get you up the mountain so-to-speak. A step-by-step process on how to achieve your goal makes the process easier as it breaks it down into smaller steps and gives you smaller goals to work on and achieve. As you achieve each smaller goal you get closer to achieving the big goal. This will help you get started as you’ll know what to do and when, you’ll be more efficient and you’ll be able to monitor your progress. So many benefits, you simply must have a goals plan!

4. Create accountability
We are all human and can at times fall off the wagon. Even the best, most disciplined of us, can have moments when we do not follow through. It’s not because we are lazy or because there is something wrong with us, it’s simply because we’re dealing with the change process. Working on any new goal will require you to do new things, essentially enact new behaviours and ways of being in the world. This process of change by its very nature is unnatural to us. Our brains tend to resist change. So creating new habits and behaviours can be challenging.  Ideally, working with a coach who is familiar with the change process, will make this process much easier for you. The key here is accountability. You can create accountability by stating publicly what you intend to achieve. Knowing that others are expecting you to do something can keep you more on-track with your goals. You can also get an accountability partner, someone who will hold you accountable for what you said you would do and you can do the same for them.

5. Stay focused on one step
The goals you set are likely challenging and require a certain amount of change from where you are at the moment. If we go back to the mountain analogy, you really want to make sure you are not gazing up at the top of the mountain the whole way as you may find you want to give up. In other words, stay focused on the smaller goals, the step that you are working on at the moment. If you have your goal plan laid out, that’s all you need to do- focus on the step you’re on, then move to the next, and repeat until goal achievement is inevitable!

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Have you set your goals for 2019?

Have you set your goals for 2019 yet?

Yes I’m serious. Have you written your goals plan for 2019? Or will you just wait until January, after you return from a break to then start working on your goals? The answer to these questions impacts your business bottom line. Yes, what you are doing, or not doing, in the next months will show up on your P & L next year.

Planning is invaluable. I can’t stress enough how truly valuable it is to plan ahead for your business. The most common problem in smaller businesses is the time spent (wasted) on fighting fires- dealing with “urgent” things that have come up. Planning is not done because there is “no time” to plan! The irony is, the more you plan, the less fires you have to fight!

If this is you, it’s time to get out of this tail-chasing circle. You need to embrace planning to create results in your business. The other benefits that also go hand-in-hand with planning are: increased momentum , increased productivity and increased enthusiasm. Certainly worth trying out with these added benefits, surely?

Now is the time to think strategically, to take the time to write down your ideas and goals that you want for yourself and your business in 2019. Now, before the party season kicks in and you get swept up in the busyness. So, can you commit to taking an hour or two this week to put pen to paper or open up a doc and start typing?

What you commit to doing now will bring you rewards next year. When January comes around, you can hit the ground running. You can walk into 2019 with a clear vision of what you will be creating and working on. Wouldn’t that be a great start to the New Year?

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How you waste time…

When you sit down to do a task, do you just start? Okay, you may think about where you’re at with the project so you can jump back in to where you left off. Is this how you are working on your tasks and projects?

Often, I’ve found, the majority of people start a task without the most important things in mind. It’s this basic error that truly limits your productivity capabilities. There are 2 specific parameters you must define before you begin working on a task or project:
1. What is the specific outcome I will achieve?
2. What specific amount of time will I set to complete it in?
Let’s start with Number 1: A specific outcome is measurable. You either achieve it or you don’t. There is no confusion as to whether this has been achieved or not. Doing “more”work on your blog post is not specific. “More” is not measurable. Here’s an example of a specific outcome: “Complete the introduction and outline of 3 blog posts.” It’s specific so you can easily tell if you have achieved it at the end. The result must be 3 outlines and 3 introductions. Rather than sitting down “to work on” something, create a very specific outcome…with a specific time-frame (this is part 2).

Part 2: A specific amount of time. Again it’s all about measurement. You need to define a specific amount of time in which you will complete the task. The common mistake is that we often think “well, I don’t know how long it will take” and decide not to put a time-frame on it or allow a huge amount of time in which to complete it. These critical mistakes will severely limit your productivity. You must have a specific time-frame in which to complete your specific task. And don’t be afraid to make the time-frame tight. Here’s why: If you give yourself 2 hours to write a report, you will take 2 hours. If you make sure it has to be done in 1 hour, you will take 1 hour. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you can’t get the same task done in a smaller space of time because you can. Ever procrastinated? Done something right at the last minute? In a very tight time-frame you produced a large amount of work. How? You had a tight deadline and it made you focus. You can apply this to your normal workday tasks to increase your productivity dramatically.

The easiest way to start doing this is to implement a basic tool: a timer. Set a timer for the time you’ve allocated for the task and work towards getting it done before the time runs out. You will find that when you have a tight time-frame and a specific outcome and the timer running…you focus, you block out distractions and you go to work! You will surprise yourself with what you produce and how good it feels to work in such a clear and focused way.