How did I plan my year — 2021

Targets and Planing

For a long time I haven’t had the habit of planning or setting some objectives for the next year. I felt like I was just like many people, jumping 7 waves, asking something quietly on the news year’s eve, some of the things happened and some never.

As I have changed a lot since 2018, I decided to dedicate some time to planning my year properly, so almost like a ritual of dedicating the whole me to create “targets” to at least guide me to my true north.

The Process

I have created a tool, based on some methodologies I have used at work to help me build the targets, this is how it look like:

“Understanding Yourself” board

I used a “Understanding yourself” board in the top left. Looking at my behaviors in the past year, helps me a lot to try to understand what I have been doing, why I can be successful or not, where Iost time or get myself lost along the way. Its composed by 4 simple questions:

1. What behaviors should I leave in the last year? (RED)
2. What am I thankful for (Blue)
3. What I need to START Doing (Green)
4. What I can’t afford keeping (Gray)

The Golden Circle

Many of us have been living this guidance from Simon Sinek, I incorporated this method in my planning to truly connect me with my purpose of life. The idea is that after understanding yourself, you tightly connect with the essence of why you should plan something. I strongly recommend you to watch at least Sinek TED talk.

The targets board

For some areas that I defined by the last two steps I have a simple target board to define things that connect with the exercise. Rule is simple, write your target connecting with previous exercises, if there is no connection, you should not do it. Be careful with overplanning, try not to have more than 5 important targets.

2021 Targets Results

Digital Transformation

Health

Own Business and Advisory

Family and Lifestyle

Coach and Charity

2021 Target Planning learnings

1. Do no OVER PLANNING
2. Be easy with yourself
3. Targets can’t change priority during the year, some become more important and some just lose their meaning.
4. Life can change drastically, but if you are really connected with your purpose, your targets won’t get too lost.
5. Having a morning routine helped me in 80% of my targets.
6. 2021 was a tuff year full of intense emotions and even like that I could focus on my health habits and body problems.
7. Target cycle should be shorter than yearly I should think in milestones like OKRs.

Conclusion

I created a method to plan my year because I didn’t have the feeling I was evolving in my personal life and my career. Having dedicated time in the year to do it made me aware of where I truly need to go, and more than that, gave me the opportunity to write down some targets that help me get there.

I don’t have the ambition of having 100% targets completed by this point of life, I do understand that planning cycles should be shorter but I’m happy with the progress I made. For sure the method will get better year after year, and if you like you can call me to contribute as well.

As much as I still write for me, I hope you like it!

Cheers and Happy New Year.