What I've learned about annual planning from a decade of helping people change their lives

Hello all!

Below is everything I’ve learned about reflecting on the year past, planning for the year ahead, and make concrete annual, quarterly and weekly goals that are sustainable and values aligned. Phew, that’s a mouthful.

Don’t worry, I made us a Google doc template.

So how to go from 2023 to 2024 with a little more intention?

1a. Identify your North Star or guiding principles.

This is a mission statement about what you are about and what you stand for. These phrases or images will be what you return to when things are hard. (Your mood board is a great start.)

• What am I about?
• What do I believe in?
• What inspires me? 

1b. AND/OR Use the best possible self writing exercise

This exercise was originally developed by researchers in the Netherlands to teach people to practice positive future thinking. I find it incredibly useful to help people identify what they most wish to create in their future.

In this exercise, you imagine your best possible self, write about what you imagine, then take a few minutes to solidify these images in your mind and heart.

• Begin by imagining your best possible self. “Imagine yourself in the future, after everything has gone as well as it possibly could. You have worked hard and succeeded at accomplishing all the goals of your life. Think of this as the realization of your dreams, and that you have reached your full potential. Thus, you identify the best possible way that things might turn out in your life.” Just visualize this beautiful best-possible-life for one full minute.
• Now take fifteen minutes to write about your best possible self. Just keep writing for the full time; if you get stuck, repeat what you have already written.
• After writing, take a few more minutes to “imagine as vividly as possible the things you have been writing about…Imagine your ideal future life with as much detail as you can.”

After you complete this writing, answer the following questions: 

• What does this tell you about what you value? 
• What does it tell you about what you love and hope for in your life? 
• Knowing these things, how would you like to move forward? 
• What would you like to add to your life? What would you like to subtract?

Full citation: Peters, M. L., Flink, I. K., Boersma, K., & Linton, S. J. (2010). Manipulating optimism: Can imagining a best possible self be used to increase positive future expectancies?. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 5(3), 204-211

2. Make some goals

Using your life buckets (e.g. self, love/family, community, and trade), make a list of goals or dreams for each bucket. What would you like to accomplish or practice in 2024? 

3. Success is not linear

Break it down into practical habits and small moves. A few ideas of how to do this:

Prioritize: (a) Look at the long list of goals, pick 1 - 3 items for *now*, 3 for next, and all the rest are later. You will work on them when and if you have time and energy.

Or (b) Pick which 1-3 things you will focus on during quarter 1; we’ll revisit together in about three months.

4. Take notes and keep learning.

The perfect first plan knows it is imperfect. Take daily or weekly notes (using a bullet journal, a weekly planner, and the streaks app). Of course there were problems! You might feel bummed. It’s tempting to think we’ll get it right the first time. But again, let’s channel the lessons of Darwin. Evolution, and behavior change, depend on three key skills: variation, selection, and retention. 

Look at what you learned over the past few days (or weeks). Choose what is working (selection) and keep doing that (retention). Make small improvements and add new experiments to your plan (variation) based on what you know now. On and on, over and over, till you reach your goal.

That’s all for now. Wishing you all peace, pain that leads to learning, and the energy to keep working for a better world.

Love, Kerry