The new year is nearly upon us and so I have been working on a plan to make sure that it’s going to be an awesome one.

For the year ahead I have set a bunch of different goals to help me stay focused and make sure I have an interesting and packed year in which I get to do a lot of different things.  At the end of 2013 I want to be able to say that it was an amazing year in which I’d made the most of the opportunities afforded to me by virtue of living in one of the most fortunate places in the world.

Some people may scoff at the idea of setting regular goals and tasks in order to accomplish them.  I didn’t used to set goals either but I found that planning gives me a structure upon which I can prioritise several areas of my life and accomplish way more than I would ever would think possible in a year.  It also helps focus my mind on the fact that I have control over what I do and the ability to shape my future and achievements.

This isn’t really a New Years Resolution based around a loose ideal that I’m willing to let slip a day, a week or a month into the year but a pretty thorough life assessment whereby I set out my priorities and work hard to make sure I get the stuff done that I want to, I get to see the places that I want to see and I can devote time to both improving myself through learning and fitness as well as spending time with friends and family without feeling guilty or like I should be doing something else.  It’s not rigid and I can change, drop or adapt goals at any point but the idea is that these are things that I would like to do and so generally I’ll stick to them.

Why bother setting goals?

Whether you work a job, look after kids or run a business, the day to day routine of life can easily turn into a slog.  You slip into to a cycle of non achievement and monotony that leaves you unhappy and unfulfilled.  You put off the things you always dreamed of doing, the places you dreamed of seeing, you don’t lose the weight you wish you could lose or gain the freedom (financial or otherwise) that you have long yearned for.

You hear it all the the time; ‘I wish I could do X but…’  Only you have the ability to stop making excuses.

The thing with setting goals is that when you want something badly enough,  you actually commit to working towards it and you prioritise things in your life to make sure it  happens, the things that you want, but you are making excuses about not being able to do, are usually more easily in reach than you thought.

In the past I have been in the situation where on paper everything has been going great but I’ve still felt as though something was missing.  My business had been growing and I’d been able to visit new places, take more time off work than in previous years and generally do some great stuff.

Due to a lack of goals and not tracking accomplishments I still felt unsatisfied.  In the day to day bustle of life it was difficult to pick out and celebrate the small victories and accomplishments.  I had no goals set for the business, I had a lack of challenges outside of my work to help me focus and push forward in other areas of my life whether in fitness, learning, or generally experiencing new or fun things.  I also found it hard to relax when I traveled or had time off.

I felt unsatisfied because I hadn’t decided on what I actually wanted to do with my life.  Sitting down, thinking about what you want to do / see / be and then actually setting goals that help you fulfil your ambitions can be a very positive thing to do.

18 months ago I was feeling sluggish and overweight so I set the goal of running a half marathon and set about training regularly for 8 weeks.  Crossing the finish line felt great and I’d not only achieved something new in completing a 13 or so mile race but I’d improved my fitness and dropped weight in the process.  Added benefits were that I found myself more motivated at work and more relaxed in my time off.

Setting goals and plans has helped me in other areas too, particularly finance.  Paying off debt, saving to allow regular travel and towards my wedding were all possible with an assessment of where I wanted to be over a 2 year period and what I needed to do to get there.

Setting and tracking your goals

There are an abundance of blogs and books around this subject but I have chosen to follow the ‘Annual Review’ model that Chris Guillebeau carries out every year and has posted about in some detail on his blog.

This involves looking back on the past year and asking what has gone well and also what has not gone so well.  When I looked at all of the things I had actually done over the past year it was amazing and really helped me think about what I wanted to do, improve upon or change in my life in the new year.

You then set yourself a number of goals for the upcoming year, broken down into measurable ‘next tasks’, in an easy to follow spreadsheet.  This is designed to help you identify and take the next step towards your goal so that is not as daunting, so that you actually start to act upon it and so you can see a clear path to reaching your goal.

The past five weeks Charlotte and I have been travelling with friends around Laos and Vietnam which has given me time to step back from day to day life and make some assessments on both the past year and what I really want to get out of 2013.

My goals are based around business, finance, travel, fitness, learning, developing this blog as well as a few others.  I’ll more than likely add a couple of additional small goals as things change or come up throughout the year.

I’ll be posting some of my review of 2012 and my goals for the coming year in the next couple of days and I’m excited about the challenges ahead.

Question:  What do you really want to do in 2013 and how are you going to make it happen?