Bigger, Bolder, Better: The Annual Reflection Guide to Design Your Best Year Yet 🤘

If you seize the opportunity to slow down, reflect, realign, and envision — you can ignite a bold direction for yourself and what you will bring to life over the next year (and beyond).

This free guide will help you unearth opportunities to do your best and boldest creative work — and be the best and boldest version of yourself.

As a result of going through this guide, you will:

Dial in and Amplify Your Deepest Sources of Motivation

• (Re)connect with your passions and what authentically enlivens you
• Identify your strengths and how to leverage them
• Discover the activities and situations that get you into Flow (the state of optimal experience and peak creative performance) — and how to bring more of it into your life
• Clarify your deepest values and how you will embody them
• Set targets for meaningful extrinsic sources of motivation

Define your Creative Vision for the Next Year

• Create a clear, focused, and compelling vision for who you need to be, what you need to do, and why
• Prioritize and select the creative goals that are most important

Design Personalized Strategies to Actually Make it All Happen

• Apply a set of tools and templates that will help you follow through consistently on your creative vision and bring it to life

How to Use This Guide

This is a comprehensive guide. To get the most out of it, take your time and approach each section with curiosity, openness, and the willingness to challenge your assumptions.

Try to look at things from an objective perspective.

This is not about beating yourself up or feeling bad about what happened (or didn’t) last year. It’s about being honest with yourself and deciding what you want to do and who you want to be moving forward.

Some sections will certainly resonate with you more (or less), but I encourage you to at least reflect on each section.

The sections are intentionally sequenced and organized to help you best:

• Identify what matters most to you and why
• Uncover key insights and lessons learned from your past year
• Discover opportunities for a more aligned, bolder next year
• Define your creative vision and goals for next year
• Make your creative vision and upgraded life actually happen

After you complete the guide, return to it monthly, weekly, or even daily to keep yourself energized and on track. Update and modify it as you and your goals evolve.

I hope that this guide will help you feel clear, energized, and inspired about your year ahead.

*If you’d like to access a free version of the guide in Google Doc form so that you can record your responses and reflections, go here. You’ll get some bonus email tips for getting the most out of the guide as well through that link.

If you need additional guidance or someone to challenge your thinking and nudge you out of your comfort zone, email me — I’m here for you.

Let’s get to work now, shall we?

🎛 Part I: Dial in and Amplify Your Deepest Sources of Motivation

Before you jump into setting big goals for the future, it’s important to make sure you’re setting goals you actually want to work on and achieve.

If you’re setting bold goals that you don’t truly want to make happen or put effort towards, you’ll waste a lot of energy, joy, and time — and feel twice as frustrated should you fail to achieve them (or unsatisfied and empty if you do).

Don’t go after goals that you feel you “should” — go after what you truly “want.”

To see your boldest ideas come to life and become the creator or entrepreneur you know you can be, you need to tap into and amplify your authentic motivation.

With clearer and stronger motivation you simply will be more energized, focused, persistent, and resilient.

You will undoubtedly face obstacles, challenges, and the unexpected.

If your motivation is shallow, forced, or disingenuous, you won’t make it.

Let’s ensure your motivation is authentic and goes deep.

There are 3 types of motivation to think about when designing your creative vision and goals:

1. Intrinsic — what authentically energizes and enlivens you (e.g. your passions, curiosities, inspirations, strengths, sources of flow, values).
2. Prosocial — the impact you want to make on other people, your industry, or your community.
3. Extrinsic — the recognition, rewards, respect, accolades, or money that others give to you for your creative work and goal achievement.

Which of these fuel you most?

How clear and strong is your motivation in each of these areas?

The best way to start getting clear on what truly matters most to you and why is to ask yourself powerful questions that uncover your authentic sources of motivation.

As you reflect, go even deeper and ask yourself “Why?” after each question.

Reflect on the following questions to clarify and amplify your motivation:

1 — Amplify Your Intrinsic Motivation

Start with amplifying your intrinsic motivation: clarifying your passions, curiosities, strengths, and values.

These will serve as the building blocks to your bold creative vision.

You start here because this is the purest source of motivation — if your intrinsic motivation is high, you’ll enjoy what you’re doing and keep going with it no matter what impact you’re making or how people are reacting.

Give yourself time and space to reflect and journal on these questions below.

Be mindful of any patterns or themes you are noticing.

Ask Yourself…

Passions & Joy

• What brings me joy?
• What excites me?
• When am I having the most fun?
• What do I love?
• What am I absolutely obsessed with?
• What did I love to do when I was a kid? What did I want to do when I grew up?
• What could I spend hours learning more about, experimenting with, and doing that would feel like play instead of work?

Curiosities

• What am I curious about?
• What topics do I love learning about?
• What do I want to learn more about next?
• What skills do I want to develop?

Inspirations

• Who do I admire most?
• Who inspires me?
• Who are my role models?
• Who are my top 3 creative influences?
• What types of stories inspire me most?
• Who do I most enjoy spending time around or with?
• Who do I most want to help? What are their goals? Their challenges?

Strengths

• What are my strengths and talents?
• What am I doing when I feel most energized or engaged?
• What am I “a natural” at?
• What have other people told me I am great at?
• What have I done well in the past that I didn’t need explained to me?
• When in the past have I felt “in the zone” or “on fire”?

*Note: To discover or validate your Strengths, you can also use formal strengths assessments, backed by comprehensive scientific research:

• Values-In-Action (VIA) — free!
• Gallup CliftonStrengths — for a fee.

If you decide to take one of these assessments, send me your results and I can help debrief you on what they mean (and don’t mean) as well as how to best put them into action.

Values

Using the list of values next, choose two values that you hold most important — the beliefs that matter most to you — that help you find your way in the dark, and that fill you with a feeling of purpose.

You’ll most likely want to choose 10, but it’s important to select just two because if everything on the list is important to you, then nothing is truly a driver.

When selecting your values, ask yourself the following questions:

• Does this define me?
• Is this who I am at my best?
• Is this the filter that I use to make hard decisions?
• Do I put this into practice (and not just profess this)?

You might start by circling all that resonate and then going back through those to work out which are truly your values. Your core values are where all of the ‘second tier’ circled values are tested. For example, you might truly value reliability but have a hard time not choosing family because that also feels like a value to you. However, the value of reliability is present in the way that you show up for your family.

Our values should be so crystallized in our minds, so clear and precise that they don’t feel like a choice — they are simply the definition of who we are in our lives. Try to resist selecting words representing things you’d like to be, should be, or have just been coached to be. This is about who you are.

2 — Connect with Your Prosocial Motivation

Next, connect to your prosocial motivation.

This is the impact you want to make on other people, your industry, or your community.

Prosocial motivation will elevate your drive to bring your biggest ideas to life — if you dial it in authentically. And it will help you come up with ideas, products, and services that are more useful to others.

Give yourself time and space to reflect on these questions below. Journal your responses. Be mindful of any patterns or themes you are noticing:

Ask Yourself…

• Who do I WANT to serve, influence, or impact? (NOT — who “should” I” serve)
• What impact on others do I want to make?
• How do I want to help other people?
• What contribution do I want to make to my community?
• What legacy do I want to leave?

3 — Align Your Extrinsic Motivation

Last, it’s time to align your intrinsic motivation and prosocial motivation to extrinsic sources of motivation.

But first, a bit of a warning.

Doing things solely for fame, recognition, or money will likely not be enough to create consistent momentum and success with your creative or entrepreneurial goals.

Creative work is just too complex, long-term, risky, and challenging to not have intrinsic and prosocial motivation sources. Many times, there is much outside of your control in creative domains that influence the extent to which you experience extrinsic rewards.

If you’re solely focused on the extrinsic rewards you could obtain, your creative work will likely not be very creative, original, or unique anyway — you likely will find yourself seeking to imitate others’ successes vs carving out your own unique path.

Also, relying on extrinsic motivation can sometimes actually “contaminate” your deeper sources of motivation.

If you spend too much time focused on extrinsic motivation sources, it could more frequently trigger negative self-talk and limiting beliefs (e.g. “I am not good enough, what if they don’t like it?, what if they reject me? etc”).

⚡️At the same time, if your intrinsic and prosocial sources of motivation are dialed in and authentic (and they will be if you thoughtfully went through the previous questions), you can align your extrinsic sources of motivation to deepen and strengthen your motivational well.

It’s perfectly fine and positive to want money, respect, and recognition — and you deserve these things as well as a creator or entrepreneur.

For example, I’m looking to win a Grammy for Children’s Music for the original kids’ music that actually rocks I create under the artist name, MrBoodaddy. It’s not my primary motivator (having fun, being creative, capturing moments of my son’s life, and creating something my son loves, are my main intrinsic and prosocial motivators) — but it adds an extra motivational factor into the mix that strengthens my drive and helps me to focus on what next strategies & actions to take in the future.

To better align your sources of motivation, seek out opportunities to connect them. For example:

• “If I have more fame and recognition… I can reach more people and have a bigger impact on their lives.”
• “If I have more money… I can bring bolder, more complex creative projects to life. And this will fuel my personal growth and learning — which can further open more creative opportunities…and bring more impact and value to my community/audience.”

Ok, now let’s identify and align your extrinsic sources of motivation.

Ask Yourself…

• What types of recognition are important to me?
• Are there any awards or accolades in my industry that would be exciting to be nominated for (and win)?
• What indicators or markers of advancement are there in my industry that are important to me (e.g. promotions, number of sales, job titles, certifications, degrees, etc)
• How might more money, more recognition, more fame, more rewards, etc. supercharge my intrinsic and prosocial sources of motivation?

4 — (BONUS) Your 6 Word Epitaph

An epitaph is a phrase or form of words written in memory of a person who has died, especially as an inscription on a tombstone.

Were you to write your own epitaph in six words, what would it say?

Would it be a reflection of your life, how you lived it, who you hoped you were in that time, what you want to leave others with, a message to loved ones or the Earth, a revelation, an epiphany, a declaration, a softening, a questioning, a farewell…?

How to write your epitaph:

Start by taking 3 minutes just writing words — feelings you have, things you love, adjectives about yourself — just whatever words come to mind, jot them down, without judgment, continuously for 3 minutes.

At the end of the time, look back through your list of words and circle the ones that resonate most.

If a 6-word epitaph still doesn’t come to mind, hone in on one word and freely write about it for a minute or two. Synthesize the ideas that came up in your free-write and continue to distill down the main idea emerging further and further until you’ve reached your 6-word epitaph.

The whole process should take 10–20 min or less.

Examples:

• Well, I thought it was funny. — Stephen Colbert
• Either gave it all or nothing.
• Friends are family; family is everything.
• Love is more important than anything.
• Gave in, gave up, gave out.
• Be Creative. Be Courageous. Be Compassionate.
• Create Long-term Value, Today

5 — Looking Back, Looking Forward

Let’s synthesize and amplify things even further.

It’s time to look back to evaluate how you’ve been doing, as well as look forward to the next year (and beyond) and what changes you’d like to make.

Looking Back…

• How intentionally did I live my life last year (as it relates to my authentic sources of motivation)? How would I rate this on a 1–10 scale?
• In what areas did I feel aligned with what matters most to me?
• In what areas did I feel out of alignment?
• If I could go back in time and do the year over, what would I do differently?

Looking Forward…

• What sources of motivation would I like to tap into more next year?
• What does an authentically motivating life look and feel like to me next year?
• How could I creatively combine my authentic motivations?
• How else could I be more intentional?
• What do I want to commit to?

Other Key Takeaways

• What other insights or lessons learned from Part I of this guide would I like to capture here?
• What would I like to further explore?

🎯 Part II: Define your Creative Vision for the Next Year

In this section, you will:

• Review your creative vision and goals from last year to uncover lessons and opportunities
• Get clear on your creative vision and goals for next year — and the capabilities and relationships you need to develop to achieve them

1 — Review Last Year’s Creative Vision and Goals

Look back on last year to uncover key insights and lessons learned that can be applied moving forward.

Ask Yourself…

• How did I do on my most important priorities this past year? (If possible, try to give a rating of 1–10)
• Where did I face my biggest challenges and stresses?
• What am I most proud of accomplishing this past year?
• What, if anything, do I wish I had done differently?
• What lessons did I learn this past year?
• What trends or signals (internal or external) have I seen that might indicate it’s time to pivot or try something new?
• Am I on the best path to becoming the person I want to become and living the life I want?
• Where have I been making excuses for something I need to take more personal responsibility for?

2 — Clarify Your Creative Vision for Next Year

Your Creative Vision

Now, let’s think big picture for the year ahead.

Given what authentically motivates me…

• What do I “WANT” to actually create or bring to life? (Not: what “SHOULD” I do? This language distinction between “want” and “should” is important!]
• A year from now how would I like my life to look? What’s different? What’s the same?
• What experiences do I want to have this year?
• Who do I want to serve, influence, or impact this year? And how?
• What contribution do I want to make?
• Where am I most afraid of taking decisive action?
• What would I do if I wasn’t afraid? What is the BOLDEST thing I could do?
• What else do I want to make happen for myself or others?
• If I were to give my year a “theme,” what would it be?

Who You Need to Be

To bring your bold creative vision to life, you’ll likely need to shift into being a different version of yourself.

This is not about being inauthentic in any way, but about upgrading, modifying, or letting go.

This might look like developing new skills and capabilities, making changes in your behaviors, or letting go of unhelpful thinking and habits.

• What new skills, knowledge, or capabilities do I need to develop to bring my creative vision to life? What is the best way to develop these?
• What habits, rituals, routines, or systems do I need to develop to help support my creative vision?
• What negative self-talk, limiting beliefs, or stories do I want to let go of?
• What sources of distraction or bad habits do I want to eliminate?
• What other small or big changes need to happen?
• What does the best version of myself look like, feel like, and do?

What Support Do You Need?

If you don’t need other people to help you achieve your creative vision, your creative vision may not be bold enough.

Take a few minutes to reflect on what relationships and types of support might help you accelerate your creative vision.

• Who am I most grateful for in my life?
• What kind of support do I need from others and where will I find it?
• Who could I partner or collaborate with?
• What relationships do I want to create or deepen?
• What relationships do I need to let go of that are no longer serving me?
• What else do I need to invest in to accomplish what matters most?

3 — Specific Projects, Goals, Milestones

Even with an authentic, energizing creative vision, it can still feel like too big of a challenge to actually make it all happen.

To actually bring your big, creative vision to life, you need to make things smaller and more specific.

When you define things in smaller and more specific ways, they shift from big, overwhelming, abstract concepts in your head into measurable, objective, and less threatening steps you can take to experience real momentum.

Respond to these sections and questions to help you get clearer, more specific, and more actionable:

Start Fast

Most bold creative visions die early. Ensure you keep going by accomplishing small wins right at the start.

• What quick win(s) would I feel proud of accomplishing in Month 1? In Week 1?
• What is the fastest way to experience a win or create momentum?
• What is the smallest or easiest thing I could do to get started?

Identify Specific Creative Projects and Goals

What aspects of your creative vision can you make more objective and clear?

What projects and goals can you define?

Next, do your best to identify a simple and clear definition of your creative goal. Ideally, you’d begin with a verb, followed by identifying the result, and a deadline.

For example:

• Produce (verb) a Christmas kids’ music album (result) by July 1st (deadline).
• Meditate (verb) for 15 minutes a day for 30 days (result) by February 1st (deadline)..
• Send out (verb) 30 pitches (result) by March 1st (deadline).

If you’re unsure what deadlines you want to set right now, that’s ok.

It’s hard to set specific, accurate deadlines when we’re starting something new. We often don’t know what we don’t know.

Instead, focus on putting in the time and learning along the way.

Just write out the verbs and results (e.g. Write a book, Launch my online course, Finish my film, Build v1.0 of my app) — and come back later to set some dates after you get started and create some momentum.

• [insert creative goal 1]
• [insert creative goal 2]
• [insert creative goal 3]
• etc.

Identify Anti-Goals and Projects to Pause

Sometimes getting clear, specific, and committed on what you WON’T do can be even more helpful. Make sure you have enough clarity, space, and focus to do what truly matters most.

• What do I need to say NO to in order to create the space and focus necessary?
• What boundaries or rules will I set for myself? (e.g. work on 2 projects at a time at most; create time to rest and recharge, etc.)
• What creative goals might be best to “Pause” until another year (or until I achieve my primary goals)?

Create Your Roadmap and Milestones

You can’t do everything all at once, but if you sequence things thoughtfully, you can make amazing things happen.

• What sequence of events makes the most sense for me to pursue?
• 3 months from now, what do I want to have accomplished?
• 6 months from now, what do I want to have accomplished?
• 9 months from now, what do I want to have accomplished?
• 1 year from now, what do I want to have accomplished?
• What other monthly or weekly milestones would be helpful to set up?
• How will I track my progress?

End Strong

There is a decent chance that the big, bold things you’re committed to pursuing will take longer than estimated — and often due to things out of your control.

• Are there any end-of-year retreats or things I can plan for now (where I will have focused time to make one last push and close things out)?
• Do I want to set any dates at the end of each quarter or month to block time and close out my projects and milestones?

📈 Part III: Strategies to Actually Make It All Happen

Now it’s time to make sure your vision doesn’t just stay a dream.

Implement these strategies and tools and you will create powerful momentum and make your creative vision and goals happen.

1 — Daily Momentum Questions

The simplest way to build momentum toward actually bringing your creative vision to life is to ask yourself a set of simple questions each evening.

Take just 5 minutes each evening to reflect and write out your responses to create and sustain momentum:

• What progress did I make today toward my creative vision?
• What progress do I want to make tomorrow?
• What is my very first step with this?
• When is the best time to do this?
• How can I make what I want to do tomorrow more fun, motivating, or enjoyable?
• What distractions could I minimize or eliminate tomorrow?

Best Practices

• Don’t overthink these questions. Trust your intuition and gut.
• Think of responding to these questions as a daily “practice” or “workout” — the more consistent you are, the stronger you become (and the more focus and accountability you create towards making your creative vision happen).
• Keep track of your responses in a journal, spreadsheet, or document so that now and then you can revisit them and review them to see what patterns are emerging. It’s also great to look back at all the wins and momentum you are creating.
• You could even set some repeating notifications in Google Calendar or phone to remind yourself to do these each evening.

2 — Design Effective Habits

As part of what you identified in Part 1 and 2, you may want to build new habits that will help you transform into your best self and support your creative vision.

Here’s how to design key habits that will help you create and sustain momentum toward bringing your vision to life.

When Deciding on a Habit to Build, Ask Yourself:

• What is the tiniest thing I could do that I have control over, that if done repeatedly, will bring me closer and closer to my vision or purpose?
• How can I make this as convenient and enjoyable as possible for myself?

Elements of an Effective Habit for Bringing Your Creative Vision to Life:

1) Connected to Your Creative Vision

• Each time you do the habit, it should bring you closer to your creative vision or be directly aligned with the person you want to be. The action or behavior isn’t random — it’s purposeful.

2) Tiny.

• Big creative visions can often feel more paralyzing than motivating. Make your habit tiny — ridiculously tiny.

3) Controllable.

• Your habits should be under your control, meaning you can execute them regardless of what else is happening around you. It doesn’t need the stars and moons to align perfectly.

4) Convenient.

• Reduce as much friction as possible. Make the new habit feel convenient — so convenient that you can’t say no to it.

5) Repeatable.

• Make your habit repeatable. Your habit doesn’t need to happen every day. What rhythm feels sustainable? Daily? Weekly? Quarterly? Define what consistency means to you, and stick to it.

6) Enjoyable.

• To supercharge your habit, ask yourself, “How could I make this more fun or enjoyable?” You want your habit to be associated with a positive experience. This helps strengthen your habit (and makes the process of bringing your creative vision to life more fun.)

3 — Make “Getting Started” Easy

When you have huge dreams, it is easy to feel overwhelmed — and when we feel overwhelmed, we procrastinate.

Getting started is always the most challenging part when it comes down to creating momentum and making progress on your creative vision.

But once we DO get started, things quickly begin to feel much easier as we go. It’s that initial resistance that is the hardest to overcome.

This’s why, no matter what approach you take towards breaking your creative vision down into smaller pieces and habits, it’s so critical to have strategies for making it easy to get started.

To make getting started easier, ask yourself:

• What is my “warm-up” routine?

Professional athletes, musicians, and performers always warm up before their workouts, practices, and performances. They don’t just jump in cold — that could lead to serious injury at worst, or lower than their peak performance at best.

A professional’s job is to consistently perform at their highest level regardless of how they feel that day — and to do this they create powerful warm-up routines and rituals that get them ready to perform.

My past client Dave, who was writing a feature film, had a simple, but effective warm-up routine that helped him consistently make progress, regardless of what his initial motivation level was that day.

Each morning before diving into his main work of developing his script, he spent 30–45 minutes watching a critically acclaimed movie or TV show while relaxing on his balcony in the sun. While he was watching, he would just start writing notes about what he liked or thought was interesting about what he was watching.

Then when the 30–45 minutes wrapped up, he reflected on his notes and explored how he could possibly apply them to his own film. After that brief reflection, he effortlessly transitioned into applying those notes and ideas to his actual script development work session.

Rather than just jumping into the hard task of developing his script, he eased into it in an enjoyable, inspirational, and low-pressure way that also boosted his creative thinking.

Creating a warm-up routine can be a powerful way to get started and ease into your most important creative work — even when you don’t initially feel like doing it. After your warm-up, you most likely will naturally just get right into your main creative work.

So, What could YOUR “warm-up” look like?

• What is my “mise-en-place”?

In most professional kitchens, it’s all about preparation, order, and organization.

Mise-en-place literally means “put in place” — and is a French phrase that means to gather and arrange the ingredients and tools needed for cooking.

But for many chefs, this phrase goes much deeper. It can be a way of life, even.

Chefs can easily do six hours of prep for a three-hour dinner shift. They make sure everything that they need to cook that award-winning meal is in an organized, ready-to-access place.

All of their ingredients and tools are at hand, in a deliberate order and organization, so that they are ready to begin their work and perform it at the highest level.

For me if I am creating music my mise-en-place could look like this: my music workstation is decluttered, the song I am focusing on is loaded up on my computer, my guitars are tuned and plugged in — ready to go, my mics are set up properly, my levels have been checked and ready to record.

Essentially — everything is already set up and ready to go — so when I sit down I can jump right into creating.

I don’t need to scramble to find anything. I don’t waste any time getting set up. I just start.

What could mise-en-place mean to you?

4 — Optimize Your Time

Being deliberate about how spend your time & energy is one of the most important things you can do to ensure you bring your creative vision to life.

It can be helpful to identify how to best “chunk” your hours and days — especially if you have many competing priorities that require different types of thinking & decision-making.

One helpful concept to apply to your creative work is Maker vs Manager Time.

Maker time is devoted to strategizing, building, creating, and developing. Ideally, you’d protect longer chunks of time for these maker time sessions. It’s for what Cal Newport refers to as deep work.

Without maker time, you likely will feel “busy” but not “productive” — and won’t experience the desired momentum towards your creative vision.

We all will have manager time activities (e.g. communications, coordination,, administration, etc.) that we need to attend to regardless of what we are pursuing.

But think about how you might more effectively shift them around or batch them together so that they don’t interfere with your maker time.

Check out these articles to get ideas about how to batch your time and activities to best support your goals:

• Read This Google Email About Time Management Strategy
• Follow the 90/10 Principle for Peak Personal Impact

5 — Design Your Ideal Week

Take your commitment to your creative vision to the next level by actually mapping out your “ideal week.”

When I say “ideal,” I am not referring to your fantasy week where you would have no day job, no family or relationship responsibilities, and no need to engage in physical activity.

I am referring to ideal in the sense that given all that you are required to do, how do you want to design your days so that you are also spending time on what is most meaningful to you (e.g. your creative work, your day job, your most important relationships, etc.).

Mapping out your ideal week (and tracking to see how well you can stick to it) will give you a snapshot of the difference between what you say is important for you to do and what you actually do.

This exercise will open your eyes to: a) the choices you make around how you actually spend your time, and b) how much time things actually take you to do (we often underestimate how long things will take us, especially creative work). This process will give you new insights into how to better manage your time and distractions.

Instructions

1. Open up the Ideal Week Template
2. Go to FILE → Make A COPY to create a version for yourself that you can edit.
3. Look at some of the included examples of other people’s Ideal Weeks for inspiration
4. Reflect on the milestones and activities that you’ve identified for your creative goal, your other goals, your relationships, your responsibilities, and other activities that you want to experience.
5. It can be helpful to give each day a Theme to provide intention & focus. (For example: Monday = Marketing, Tuesday = Creative Project Day, Wednesday = Workflows, Thursday = Thought Leadership, Friday = Exploration)
6. Try to strive for at least one 90-minute block of focused creative work time per day to create opportunities for peak performance and “maker” time. If you can’t, do your best to get an hour of undistracted time.
7. Batch your activities strategically into Focus Areas to prevent too much mental switching between task types (which will drain your energy)
8. Create buffer time in between activities for added flexibility — you aren’t a robot! And activities may go over.
9. Feel free to use silly code names or color code your activities in the template to create a more vivid, inspirational picture of your ideal week!
10. Print out or keep your ideal week somewhere that you see it multiple times per day
11. Test out your ideal week. Track how you actually spend your time, what feels most challenging, what feels easiest, where you have underestimated or overestimated time needed for an activity, what patterns you are noticing, what most throws you off schedule, etc.
12. Update and adjust your ideal week based on what you learned and test out version 2.0 (or 3.0, or 4.0, etc).
13. Repeat steps 1–12 until you have created your own personal creative momentum system that ensures you achieve your creative goal!

6 — Find Your Flow

Flow is the state of optimal experience — where you are operating at your highest levels of creativity and performance.

More Flow = achieving your creative vision faster, more effortlessly, and with more enjoyment.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could bring more Flow into your work and life?

You may think getting into this state of optimal performance is out of your control — a blessing from the creative gods that is gifted to you unpredictably.

This may be your current experience with Flow, but it’s simply not true.

You can actually deliberately design your experiences to increase your likelihood of getting into Flow.

7 — Make Your Creative Vision and Plan for Achieving It Visual

Print out your responses to this document.

Create a bookmark and reference it once a week.

Summarize your main takeaways and next actions and put them up on sticky notes on your bathroom mirror.

Write things out on a giant whiteboard in bold lettering.

Turn pieces of this into a screensaver.

Do something so that the reflection, visioning, strategizing, and planning don’t just stay a one-time event.

Make your most important takeaways, plans, ideal week, habits, next steps — anything that you feel is most important — VISUAL where you will see it them least once per week, every week.

🙌 Get Support

I hope this guide has been helpful to you and your creative goals. Please let me know in the comments or by messaging me directly.

I’d love to invite you to strengthen your creative vision and execution of it.

1 - I will be offering a special 90-minute Reflection and Visioning Coaching session (along with post-session support) for $202.40.

Sharpen your creative vision, design specific strategies and milestones for bringing it to life, and create a plan for overcoming any negative self-talk and limiting beliefs slowing you down.

⚡️Book a 20-minute Discovery Call with me to learn more and discuss what this could look like for you.

2 — Save your spot for the next 30 Day Creative Momentum Challenge. Make Progress on your 2024 Creative Vision every day for 30 days with the support and accountability of a group of committed creators and entrepreneurs from around the world.

Best wishes in all that you do and may your next year be momentous!

More About Coach Jeff

My name is Jeff Fajans (rhymes with “lions”) and I help creative entrepreneurs bring their biggest ideas to life and reach their next level of creative success.

I have a PhD in Positive Organizational Psychology from Claremont Graduate University, where I studied under Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the world-renowned author of Flow. My research focused on how to help people learn, develop, and lead more effectively to better achieve creative goals.

I am also an avid music creator and guitar player. 🤘

Through my 1-on-1 coaching, 30-Day Creative Momentum Challenge community, internationally acclaimed digital courses, and speaking engagements, I’ve helped thousands of people from around the world connect with their purpose, clarify their creative vision, amplify their motivation, and create actionable strategies that make achieving their most meaningful goals inevitable.

These are people who are pursuing big goals like starting or leading a business (and scaling it to higher levels of innovation & growth), writing + filming a feature film (and it winning a Sundance award), building an app or product (and getting accepted into Y Combinator or getting VC funding), writing a book (and hitting the Amazon bestseller list) or even exploring a meaningful side hustle or passion project.