5-Step New Years Plan

Set & accomplish goals for the new year

In honor of the end of December, the time to reflect and plan for the coming year, I’d like to share with you the process I use for clarity and goal setting.

This has been a very important part of my life for at least a decade now. I’ve studied many different processes and built my own over experiencing what works best for me.

Visualize, Goal Storm, Organize & Prioritize, MAP, then execute & refine.

Vision

We begin with a vision, and there are a few questions and exercises that I’ve found to be extremely effective for building a clear vision.

The point is to imagine the ideal circumstances of your life and your self. In other words, what you are like and what your life is like.

Yes, this part is sort of a “dream”. You cannot get caught in the how yet, that is to come. In this step, you have to satisfy what your heart truly calls for or your vision is false.

Here are 2 questions I use:

How would you spend your time if you had unlimited money?

Of course you can go down the natural initial response of producing a vacation utopia. Play that scene out to the end of your life. That’s all you did your whole life? You had no interest in service or contribution to others? Personally I don’t understand this but perhaps there are some who truly want to live their life on a beach. Maybe this question isn’t for them, or maybe they’re not being honest. There is a difference between pleasure and fulfillment.

This question effectively allows us to see what our heart truly desires without the constant worry of finances and paying bills. If we cannot see what we are passionate about, what interests and fulfills us, how can there be hope of moving towards it?

What do you want people to say and feel about you at your funeral?

This one forces you to consider death and what you leave behind. It makes the utopian vacation a little harder to justify. But it also hones in on what is most important to many of us, and that is our loved ones.

I usually answer these questions in writing. Obviously you might be able to tell by now that I enjoy writing, but even if you don’t, writing is an exceptional tool. It’s a form of thinking and forces you to think coherently (because if you don’t, you don’t write coherently.)

Many times, if you struggle with writing, you struggle with thinking. Thus, for something so important and complex as the purpose and vision of my life, writing does more for clarity than almost anything else.

Goals

Once I have a vision for my life, I am primed for what I call the “goal storm”.

This is my favorite part of the process to be honest.

Yes, sort of like a brain storm, but the focus is on goals and desires, things you’d like to accomplish, achieve, or obtain. By getting it all out of your head you can take an honest look at it and build a path towards it.

Get a piece of paper, set a timer for 30 minutes, and don’t stop writing. Health, wealth, business, service, family, recreation, write it all down.

You still cannot think about how or if it’s possible. You must let it flow.

Once this is done, we organize and prioritize. Now we get more concrete and “realistic”. You look at this goal storm and assess each goal: how long will it take? Put a number next to each one. 3 months, 6 months, 2 years, etc.

I truly believe there are no unrealistic goals, only unrealistic timelines.

Then, prioritize which is most important to you. Number them, with 1 being most important.

Once you have your goals prioritized, we can move on to the 4th step.

MAP

This is where it becomes real.

I wrote an article last year around this time on the 3 Critical Factors for Goal Achievement. (There is also a 7 minute video)

The 3 critical factors are purpose, faith, and alignment.

In the previous exercises, we tap into purpose.

By mapping out the goal, that is, determining exactly how we will accomplish the goal within a clear timeline, we assure ourselves it can be done - remedying a lack of faith.

There are 2 resources we have to focus on: time and money.

First, I create an exact schedule for myself by 30 minute increments each day of the week. It is not intended to be adhered to religiously; but you must have an idea of what to invest towards each goal. And you will be able to see where you cap off. You cannot focus on 10 goals at once. You might have only 1 or 2 major goals you’re able to work on at once.

For example, obtaining my bachelors in 2024 is a major goal of mine. I know I must allocate 7am-12pm almost every morning to study and work on assignments.

I tried to take on clients during some morning times, and my grades and studies were effected, so this was corrected immediately. You might not hit the schedule perfectly on the first time, or ever, but you can constantly adjust and refine until your results are positive.

I also know my focus is peak at this time of day; I can’t put studies off for 12pm-4pm, the level of energy and productivity is too much lower and I start to crash if I'd already been working 7am-12pm on something else.

Second, we need to dial in our resources, chiefly money. Create a spreadsheet with cash flow: income and expenses. If I am going to pay for college, I better have an understanding of how much money I need to bring in.

If you don’t have money, you have time. If you don’t have money or time, you need to get better at spending time. I realize these statements are worthy of articles or books in and of themselves, but hopefully you get the message.

Execute & Refine

Once you have a clear plan scheduled and budgeted, you know you can accomplish your goal. The only thing left is to execute and refine.

Plan daily, reflect weekly, review monthly.

With a document or calendar, every day, determine what you must accomplish.

Every day I look at that days tasks, and schedule the next days tasks.

Every week, I schedule time Saturday morning to do this, I reflect on the past week. I highly recommend journaling for this purpose. Whenever I neglect my weekly journaling, I experience a significant, noticeable loss of clarity and motivation.

When I know exactly where I’ve been the past week and how I’m either going to correct insufficiencies or continue momentum in the next week, I feel much more clarity and drive.

You will be surprised how quickly you end up robotically going with the flow and forgetting your purpose, losing your alignment.

Then, every 1-3 months, I completely look over the past 1-3 months and assess what I’ve accomplished. Where and why have I been inefficient or ineffective and how can I remediate that? Where and why have I performed with excellence and how can I replicate that? What are my current goals and my focus for next month?

Typically I plan to reflect at important milestones, such as the end of a semester.

Summary

To many this is a great deal of work. To me, it is far more work to live without clarity and drive. I personally can’t stand that feeling and nothing else matters to me when I lack clarity and alignment, it’s like a gaping wound that must be treated immediately.

Sometimes one of these exercises will take me many hours. At certain times of turmoil in my life, clarifying my vision has taken many hours over several days.

Ultimately, I hope this system streamlines the process for tapping into a powerful vision for your life and how to manifest that vision.

In strength,

Daniel J. Furtado, CPT, LMT, Owner of Honor Strength
www.honorstrength.com

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