The Detailed 8-Step Process I’m Using To Plan Out 2024
How I’m doing goal setting different this year to be more productive than ever
Goal-setting has never worked for me.
Like many, every year, I have set out to set new years resolutions and change my life forever with the new goals I’ve set.
It never works out well.
“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” — Andrew Carnegie
I first learned that there was something more to goal-setting when I first read Tommy Newberry’s book, Success Is Not An Accident. This simple but wise book helped me to realize something about myself:
I was always trying to do everything at once.
It’s probably a product of my ADHD and perfectionism. Either way, this philosophy and goal-setting/achieving approach wasn’t helping me one bit.
The following eight steps are loosely based off of a pyramid of goal-setting and habit planning that he outlines in his book, made my own with a little bit of a different breakdown and examples of real life application for my own goals.
On to those steps:
Step #1: Set life goals
Something that’s important about life goals is that they are broad, general, and more about your vision for life rather than achievements to check off.
For instance, life goals might be to have a family one day, to be an important member of the community, to be an expert in your field, or to contribute to society in some capacity.
“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” — Robert H. Schuller
Yeah — what he said.
Your life goals should be as wildly unreachable as you can imagine — as crazy as you would like. Decide who you want to be, where you want to be, and what you want to do. As long as it’s something that is possible considering the laws of time and space, I would add it to the list.
Maybe your life goals are simply about your character. You want to be a good friend, a spiritual leader, an adventurer, or something of that nature.
For me, I want to be an important person in the field of mental health and family therapy. I also want to be a parent, to have a happy marriage, and to be happy and fulfilled in my older adult life, among other things.
Either way, life goals should be more grand and process-based — rather than something you’ll be able to check off of a list one day.
Once you’ve set your lifelong goals, you can move on to some specific milestones that you’ll be working towards achieving.
Step #2: Breakdown life goals into ten-year goals
I don’t recommend trying to plan past 10 years when it comes to concrete plans. It’s usually easy to plan the next ten years of your life, and much harder to get past that.
“When you know what you want and when you want it, you can always find a way to make it happen.”
― Tommy Newberry, Success Is Not an Accident: Change Your Choices; Change Your Life
Long-term plans like having a successful business, making a certain amount of money, getting married, buying your dream home, or getting your doctorate can usually fit well into this time container of ten years or so.
(If there are some long-term plans that you have that are a bit longer term, you can include them in your life goals or have a short twenty-year goals list going. You don’t have to follow my own steps exactly — do what works for you.)
Remember — it’s okay if these goals feel a little impossible at the moment. You’re going to make them more actionable in just a second.
Once you have your ten-year goals, you’re going to split them in half.
Step #3: Breakdown 10 year goals into 5 year goals
Splitting goals into two can be fairly useful. Just think, if you want to read 500 books in the next ten years, make a plan for 250 books in the next five years and add that to your five year goals.
If you want to be married in ten years, set a goal to be in a committed relationship with someone in the next five years. You’ll get into more specific action steps further on into the process.
“The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.” — Bill Copeland
If you want to get a doctorate, a five-year goal can be graduating with your Bachelor’s or Master’s degree, depending on what stage you’re at in life.
If you want to have $20,000 in savings in ten years, plan to have somewhere around $5,000–$10,000 in the next five — whatever you think is feasible and a reasonable milestone along the way to that.
You can also think more specifically, and set the goal of having a job with a certain salary.
Above is an image I used to demonstrate how the breakdown begins to go. I have a life goal of being a renowned individual in my field. That’s a vague but important goal to me.
In order to actually achieve this goal, I began to think practically. After all, the purpose of a goal is to direct your action to something meaningful and fulfilling.
“You should set goals beyond your reach so you always have something to live for.” — Ted Turner
In ten years (when I’m 31-years-old) I’d like to own or at least co-own a private therapy practice. That’s a pretty daunting ask. However, when looking at it through a five year lens, it gets much more realistic and actionable.
For starters, I need to start figuring out my niche — which will involve having clients who I’m working with on a regular basis, within that specialty.
I am very passionate about ADHD, so I will maybe be able to check this goal off when I have five or so families that I’m helping as a Marriage and Family Therapist with ADHD.
After that, for the next five years, I can start honing in my expertise, and doing research for books that I can eventually publish.
Now that I have some lofty goals in mind that are achievable in a five year span — it’s time to get even more specific about what I can do now to be where I want to be later.
Step #4: Split your ten year goals into 3 year goals
I know, I know, it’s not a perfect split — but you get the idea. Every ten year chunk of goals that you have can be roughly split into three periods of three or four years.
For instance, in order to become a renowned therapist, I have to actually become a therapist first.
One of my three year goals is to graduate from a Marriage and Family Therapy Program — which nicely lines up exactly with a three year timeline.
Examples of three year goals for you might include working on yourself in order to meet the love of your life, finishing your degree, getting a raise, visiting a certain number of locations/countries/states, reaching a certain metric in your job, or reading a certain amount of books.
Step #5: Split your three year goals into year goals
Again, you’re simply taking a long-shot goal for the next decade and dividing it even further into something that you can do in a year.
“One part at a time, one day at a time, we can accomplish any goal we set for ourselves.” — Karen Casey
Like I said in Step 4, one of my three year goals is to graduate with my Master’s. In order to do that, I first have to get into a Master’s program.
Because of that, I’ve made one of my year goals for next year to apply to graduate school — with as many qualifications and solid recommendations as I can. In the meantime, I can focus on graduating.
This is where it gets easy to be overambitious. Don’t go crazy. You cannot do everything.
I repeat — you can’t do everything.
Think about what you can actually accomplish in the year — and make sure that’s something that can be fairly easily split up into four parts. If it isn’t, some adjustments might need to be made when you get down to the smaller time frames.
If it helps, give yourself a rule of how many goals you can have each year. I think a safe number is somewhere between 12–24. Trying to accomplish more than two goals every month can get unreasonable fast. You can have the same types of rules for your quarter, month, and week goals.
Step #6: Divide your year goals into quarter goals
This is where I’ve always failed.
You really can’t do that much in a quarter — yet for some reason I always try and do everything.
Just because you write something down on a piece of paper doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
I think a good rule of thumb is to just have one or two very actionable goals for every larger goal in your quarter goals. These can then be split up into even more actionable steps and related habits in your month plans.
“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” — Lawrence J. Peter
For applying to graduate school, I went roughly step by step along the process to create my quarter goals. Honestly, this is where I could practically feel my brain chemistry change as far as goal-setting goes.
This visual breakdown helped me so much to see that starting early and small would ultimately help me in the end — and be very prepared by the time the applications close in December.
Recently, I was told a common trail-running phrase that is already transforming the way I view my life. It’s simply:
“Forward is a pace.”
Progress is progress. And not everything has to be done at once. Slow and steady wins the race, and it’s better to have something done than nothing at all, even if it’s a while before you pick the thing up again.
Step #7: Divide quarter goals into month goals
Maybe here is where you realize that you’ve been unreasonable.
You’ve set outlandish goals for yourself that simply cannot whittle themselves down any further into a month’s time.
Recently, I was walking into my room and glanced down at my whiteboard that simply read “November goals” with nothing written beneath it.
I had given up on setting goals after rudely crossing out the October goals I’d set in my journal weeks before— writing a note next to them in a moment of clarity that simply said:
“These are stupid goals.”
Upon noting my absent November goals, I called out to my roommate — “Is it even worth having November goals at this point?”
If this is you too, know that you’re not alone.
It’s human nature to become a little bit prideful and to think that we’re capable of more than we actually are in a given period of time.
Don’t sweat it.
Simply take a step back, and return to the drawing board to figure out what step you became unreasonable in.
That’s what I love about these 8 steps. If you think that your three year goals are a little unrealistic, make them your five year goals. Make your one year goals your three year goals, and your quarter goals your year goals.
It’s never a bad idea to do some rearranging if it means you’ll be able to actually accomplish what you’ve always dreamed of doing.
Step #8: Divide your month goals into week goals
Once you have your goals for the month, you can plan out roughly what you’ll be doing each week. Remember, this should be a process that builds upon itself.
What you do the first week of the month should lend itself to what you want to accomplish the second week and so on and so forth.
The gradual steps help to not only accomplish your goals, but also help you really visualize and experience fulfillment from achieving the realistic but meaningful micro goals you’ve set for yourself.
I think a good rule of thumb for week goals is somewhere between 3–5, depending on the nature of the goals.
Important note: I do distinguish between tasks and goals in my life. Goals are things like completing projects, a series of multiple tasks together, achieving some result, or advancing to the next step of something. Tasks are generally something that can be done in under an hour or so in my mind, and I distinguish those in my planner from my goals.
Bonus 9th step: Create a habit tracker
Specifically, create a habit tracker that goes along with the goals that you’ve set for yourself. If your goal is to have all A’s in a semester, make it a check-off-able habit to study every day. If your goal is to read 100 books in a year, make it a habit to read 100 pages a day, or something of that nature.
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” — Walt Disney
Whatever daily steps will help you achieve your goals is what belongs in your habit tracker — the ultimate location of rubber meeting the road.
Keep in mind, this new strategy hasn’t been put to the test yet…stay tuned for results in the new year. In the mean time, I’m feeling more confident than I’ve ever been about my vision for life and my ability to bring it about — one chunk at a time.
“A year from now, you may wish you had started today.” — Karen Lamb
I hope that this little insight into my goal-setting process has inspired you in some way — and will be the catalyst in some capacity to your best year yet. Best of luck!
