How to Goal Set like A Pro— Part 1
It’s that time of year again… Time to set my goals for 2022! I’m already running late on setting goals so not the best start to the year! I would’ve liked to have set goals by the end of last year but with moving house and all the craziness that was in our life at the end of 2021 it has had to wait until now.
Now with the excuses out of the way, I want to share my method to setting goals and provide the templates that I use and hope that at least one person might find them useful. I only started using this method this time last year and the results were amazing.
A quick review of My 2021: I started playing guitar and now own my own guitar and can play more than just Seven Nation Army on repeat. I climbed the hardest climb I’ve ever climbed. I learnt how to lead climb outdoors. We were very close to our goal of getting our savings up to $50,000 however have now invested a lot of this in our own self development in the aim to set ourselves up to be able to earn even more in the future. I completed the Profitful investing course and have now begun my journey into investing and learning about the stock market. We managed to visit family in NZ in July in between lockdowns. We moved house and have started renting a property close to the beach and we love it! Exotic mushroom growing was a bit of a fail but I have learnt a lot about how to (or how not to) grow edible mushrooms in the process. All-in-all a very productive year for me and I believe it was all down to goal setting.
My Method
The goal setting method I have developed over the year has definitely been a case of trial and error and has evolved to work for me. It might not work for everyone but I hope that someone finds it useful. The main principal is breakdown your largest goals into manageable chunks. The more granular and detailed you can be the better.
Step 1: Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs).
First you need to write down your BHAGs. These are goals or even dreams that you would love to achieve yet seem so out of reach that you have no idea how you’re going to achieve them. As long as they are not literally impossible to achieve then you can set them as your BHAGs. See my 2022 BHAGs below for your reference on how I have set mine. Looking at them now, maybe they cold even be a little more ambitious but lets continue.
These are the goals that drive the rest of the goal setting process so I would recommend spending sometime thinking these through and don’t limit your possibilities. Your BHAGs shouldn’t be changing from year to year however if you have a new dream then make sure to update it!
Step 2: Set your “Next Chapter Goals”.
Some people like to call these life goals or long term goals however I think a chapter better describes the timeframe. The Next Chapter Goals cover a period of 6 years. This is because the world can change a huge amount in 6 years that setting goals for 10, 15 or even 20 years is too uncertain. Technology is a huge driver for this change and means that we need to keep adjusting our goals over a more stable timeframe. Who would have thought 10 years ago that the largest transport provider would own no cars, the largest travel accommodation company would own no properties and the largest retail company would own no shops! Not to mention the chaos caused by the pandemic! So I just stick to 6 years. This doesn’t need to be a goal for each year however it is always good to try to set some time limits on these goals. The number 6 is also a factor of 12 so helps when setting your yearly goals but we’ll come to that soon…
I have set my Next Chapter Goals based off my BHAGs in the attempt to always work towards and get that little bit closer to them as the years go on. The aim is to incrementally level up year on year to get closer to my big goals!
I have reset some of my Next Chapter goals as they have changed since I set them last year. I believe it is important to review my goals as my priorities and motivations change. I have divided these goals up into years I aim to achieve them by. I use these as guidelines to help prioritise my yearly goals.
Step 3: Set your Yearly Goals
These are the goals you aim to achieve this year to get a little closer to your Next Chapter Goals (and a tiny bit closer to your BHAGs). I like to choose 12 goals that I would like to achieve before the end of the year. These goals aren’t necessarily set for specific months (although you could!) but just enough to push yourself. This also helps to get more granular with your goals as you can set multiple goals for each of your Next Chapter goals.
This year I feel I have a lot of ambitious goals and some of which are going to be hard to reach! But I learnt from last year:
“Sometimes when you aim for the stars, you hit the moon” — Ian Holloway
This is such a great way to look at goal setting. Even if you don’t hit the goals, you will have gotten a lot closer through trying and sometimes you might even surprise yourself!
You can start to see how the goals are starting to be broken down into more manageable chunks as we go through the process. This detail only gets greater as we progress to monthly, weekly and daily goals. I think this is enough for this post as there is a lot of to be done to plan these first larger goals. Part 2 will include goal setting for monthly, weekly and daily goals where we get even more granular!
Thanks so much for reading to the end! It would be awesome if you could help me reach my Medium and Twitter follower goals and hit the follow button and clap like crazy! I really hope you have enjoyed by blog posts so far and come back for Part 2 of goal setting. Please let me know your thoughts!
