Why do I need to make a plan?
I’ve spoken before about my 2017 conversion to the art of planning, and it has genuinely made a huge difference to how I live and work on a day-to-day basis. A plan gives you a lovely little structure to follow throughout the year to achieve all of the things you dream of. Without one, it’s simply too easy to get distracted, de-motivated, and discouraged.
So, to make the process a little less painful and aimless for you beautiful people, I have put together these 5 simple steps to planning a great 2018! With a solid plan in place – tailored to you and your heartfelt desires – you can make 2018 the best year yet. You’ve got this!
5 Steps to Planning a Great 2018!
I love a good list. And this one has the added benefit of being short, simple, and easy to follow. In 5 simple steps you will have made yourself a personalised, and proactive, plan for your year. You’ll be ready to tackle those big projects and goals, and can work your way through bitesize tasks for maximum achievement. Celebrating those little victories is super important, so don’t forget to reward yourself at every step, okay?
1. Reflect on last year.
I can’t emphasis enough how important this is. It can seem like a difficult task – looking back can make you think of all the things you didn’t achieve. But I promise you, you did more than you think. And even looking at the negatives is an important way to see what you want to do differently this year!
Check out how I reflected on my year and use the 10 questions I put together for a practical and positive review of your year. Having a clear view of your successes and challenges for the last year allows you to make a relevant and realistic plan for this year. When this is complete and you’re solid on what has gone before, you are ready for step 2!
2. Decide on areas to plan.
This is where your review of last year comes in handy. What areas of your life do you feel you want to develop and grow? It could be your health and fitness, your family life, your career, your finances or your creative life. There’s so many aspects to your life, and they are so unique to you!
I have broken my own 2018 plan into the following key areas:
- Family & Friends
- Health & Fitness
- Work/Career
- Travel
- Finances
- Personal Growth
Once you have your key areas decided, you can move on to step 3!
3. Set clear goals within your life areas.
Goals. We’re all talking about them these days. It can become the kind of term that annoys you. Because we all set them, and so often they end up by the wayside, unattended to and unachieved. This may be because the goals set aren’t clear. It’s all well and good to say ‘I want to be fitter this year’, but how are you going to achieve that?
Making your goals clearly defined means that even if they are huge dreams – like saving £10,000 – you have a definite outline of what you want to achieve. Without any vagueness or wiggle room you have no choice but to face your goal and think ‘okay, lets do this’.
Thinking enough about your goal to define it clearly is also a way for you to really interrogate your motivations and reasoning behind making it a goal in the first place. Clarifying the goals in your plan is key in solidifying it in your mind and really committing to it for the the whole year!
4. Set actionable steps to achieve your goals.
So, we’ve got our goals set. Big, inspiring, challenging goals. We are going to radically improve our lives this year and we know what areas we are working on, and what goals we want to achieve. Now you need to break them down. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a beautiful life. We need to work on this every day so these amazing goals need to be chopped up into neat, achievable, bitesize chunks.
Want to save £10,000 this year? Great. You need to save £833 a month, which means you need to assess your spending habits (and reduce them!) You might need to look at developing more streams of income, overtime or selling on Etsy, tutoring or a little weekend job. And this financial goal may end up overlapping and linking with other goals. Saving money might mean you decided to make your own lunch to take to work everyday, thats a brilliant opportunity to make your lunch healthier as you will control what goes into it. Boom! You’re working on two goals at once – finance and health!
This is the beauty of a plan. By being strategic about your goals and your work on them, it allows your effort to be more efficient. You have an oversight of the bigger picture which means that you have insight and control into how your daily life can be working towards your big dreams every day.
5. Review and refocus.
This final step is one of the most important ones. You need to make time to review your progress throughout the year. I literally make appointments with myself in my planner. Every Sunday morning I have a weekly review session and plan ahead – using my master list of my yearly goals I pick a chunk of a goal to work on.
This means that on a week-by-week basis I am checking in, refocusing, and reviewing what is working and what isn’t. And sometimes a goal turns out to not be what makes me happy – so I delete it from my list! Or you achieve a goal earlier than expected. That’s a fantastic chance to either grow that goal to even bigger heights, or pick a whole new goal to focus on next.
By making this time to reflect on a weekly basis you ensure that you stay focused on your plan for longer than the ‘new year, new me’ vibe of January. Building this habit into your life means that you maintain your momentum, and your motivation – because you will be seeing the results every week!
Final thoughts:
So, there you have it – my 5 steps to planning a great 2018. This is how I’ve made my plan for 2018, the exact steps I used – informed by my overall life plan and my review of 2017. I will be checking in here on the blog with monthly reviews of my progress and my thoughts and reflections on the process to keep you all updated. Especially if I find some fantastic new ideas to make the planning process even easier and more effective!
Do you make a plan for the year? What are your big goals for 2018? Come and share them with me. I love to hear what you lovelies are all up to so I can cheer you on and celebrate your successes with you! Prosecco anyone?
Love, Isobel x
Photo by freddie marriage on Unsplash
