Your start of year goal setting

Leadership & You #1/2024

The start of another year provides a good opportunity to take a little time out to reflect on the past year and assess what matters to you. This is not about setting huge new year resolutions, but more about identifying and pursuing what matters to you. A 3 x 3 x 3 framework is a useful approach, something for yourself daily, targets to achieve by the first quarter, and some goals for the year. Keep to no more than 3 each – otherwise you will never remember them!

3 steps to adopt:

Step 1: Reflect on past year

Important to reflect on both your career and personal life and the things that matter. To help guide your reflections answer the following questions. Dot points are fine.

• What fulfilled you over the past year?
• What frustrated you over the past year?
• What did you do well? And what could you improve?
• What are the things that matter the most to you?
• Where did you waste your time? What was the optimal use of your time?
• What fuelled your motivation and inspired you? What demotivated you?
• What did you learn last year? And what interests you?

It is easy to have a full diary. It requires careful focus and attention to have a fulfilled diary!

Step 2: Prioritise and filter reflections

Read through your mind map and prioritise the ones that you think are the most important to you. Break them into two categories: professional priorities and personal priorities.

Professional priorities:

Things you need to do, experience, become, master, learn, and achieve. Remember learning is everything you do so do not fill you year with training courses. Pursue things that will fulfil you and enhance your career. Apply the 70-20-10 learning framework:

• 70 per cent of all learning is on the job – so focus on things you need to attempt and explore;
• 20 per cent of all learning is from a colleague – so who you need to liaise with learn from;
• 10 per cent of all learning is in a formal setting – choose these wisely – what you need training in.

Personal priorities:

Success at the expense of your health or your family is failure!

Personal priorities are the things that matter to you, and what you should invest time in. Personal priorities cannot be an afterthought when you have the time, or something you do on weekends. Likewise, your health requires constancy of effort and application. Your habits, routine, daily rituals and personal well-being formula are important investments that require your prioritisation throughout the year.

You need to ensure you have your formula for balancing your professional and personal priorities. “Never miss what you cannot get back” is a useful filter to help prioritise personal priorities.

Critical reflection is the mechanism to fuel personal development.
Without reflection no learning can take place

Step 3: Set goals using 3 X 3 X 3 format

Less is more! People with long lists of goals rarely if ever achieve them. Take your list of professional and personal goals and apply the x 3 goal setting framework, and have no more than three in each, blended between personal and professional needs.

• 3 goals you will do daily (keep practical & doable)
• 3 goals to achieve by the first quarter (deliverables to complete in 3 months)
• 3 goals for the year (targets – milestones – achievements to hit by end of year)

Daily goals: It is the little things you do daily that builds discipline and incremental improvement. These can be simple rituals you undertake such as reading, making family time a priority, setting aside to exercise, or taking up a new personal ritual each day. It is the little things that you do each day that improve your overall wellbeing.

Quarterly goals: Quarterly deliverables are important to foster a sense of progress and achievement and help with sequencing goals and objectives. Not everything has to be achieved or pursued at the same time. Sequence things, complete what you start, and start with what makes sense to you – but above all start!

Yearly goals: Yearly goals are the outcomes of what you do daily and achieve quarterly. A goal can only be achieved by successfully completing milestones along the way. They are an outcome. Effective annual goals help filter your day-to-day decision making. Focus on what will add to your contentment and sense of fulfilment at the end of the year. It may not be that job promotion!

Learning is everything you do.
Not how many courses you undertake!

Finally: Focus on what matters to you. Aim to have a fulfilled year, rather than a successful year. Fulfilment is judged by you. Success is judged by others.

Leadership Lesson:
Goals without plans are merely a wish

Facta Non Verba – Deeds Not Words!

Find the full RYP International article on goal setting here.