Question: How do we “develop a real plan for a better life?”
Answer: We create personally meaningful, powerful goals for the upcoming year.
This week, I’m outlining my straight-forward approach to set forth a motivating set of goals for the coming year, based on a methodology first outlined by Trent Hamm.
So far this week, we’ve selected the areas of our lives on which we want to focus (Step One), outlined where we are currently in each area (Step Two), as well as where we want to be in five or ten years (Step Three), and brainstormed five to fifteen possible actions or projects for each area that will move us from the current state to our desired future outcome (Step Four).
Step five? Let it rest.
What? Why don’t we take action now while all these ideas are fresh in our minds?
“The reason is that while this plan might be exciting, it’s also still fairly rough. It’s full of great ideas in the moment, but we shouldn’t commit our future to something we considered deeply only that day. Our plans will fall flat if we do that,” he warns.
Instead, we let our plan marinate. Percolate.
Trent recommends letting it sit for 30 days.
The benefit?
During this time, Trent writes, “I thought a lot about what I had written, and I revised the plan significantly, eliminating some unrealistic bits, adding some details, modifying the action steps, and so on…
“We might have a big revelation or two during that month, and that’s great. Just pull out our drafts and jot down that idea, then put the whole thing away again.”
[Note: I’m more impatient, so I typically give it a week or maybe a few days before I push onto the final steps.]
Step Six involves setting aside another block of time to read and edit our first draft. We sit down with a pen in hand and read our plan. Whenever we see something that strikes us as not quite right, we edit it. We add new ideas and new sentences.
“That refinement is invaluable,” writes Trent. “It takes something that’s merely interesting and solid into something that really strikes a deep chord.”
3: It’s time for Step Seven: The Big Finale.
We review the list of all the possible projects and actions we’ve written down and choose ten or so big things we will work on in the coming year to move us toward our envisioned future.
We select the ten goals we are most excited about. Note: We may not have a goal in each area.
“Look for ones that really ring out to you as exciting and meaningful,” Trent suggests. “What ones really seem as though they’d produce great results? What ones seem like they’d be incredibly powerful to actually execute?”
Once we’ve chosen the ten, we make a nice, clear list of our goals.
“It’s a good idea to make sure these subscribe to the ‘SMART goal’ rubric: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely,” Trent suggests.
“Is it very clear what we want to do? Can we easily measure our progress (an easy way to do this is to have the goal involve a number)? Is it something we can actually pull off in a year?”
We decide THIS year will be the year of those things.
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Reflection: What are the ten specific actions or projects I am most excited about taking on this year?
Action: Journal about the above.
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