Harnessing The Power of Momentum

Have you begun writing your 2020 goals yet? Photo courtesy of STIL on Unsplash.

Last year this month, I wrote a piece for Inc.com that went viral (meaning 120,000+ views) – 20 Questions That Can Help You Reach Your 2019 Goals: Reflection and self-awareness can help set you up to achieve your goals in the new year.

I began writing today’s post yesterday, on Halloween, and whenever I’d glance up from my computer, I’d see Chicago’s first snow coming down so hard that the kids made their first snowman for the season. I was in no mood to work but I had started working on my 2020 goals and business plan so I wanted to harness the power of momentum and keep going. So I did.

Part of that exercise was reviewing these 20 questions and answering them truthfully. I also came up with another set of 20 questions which I can’t share right now (but hopefully I can soon!). From there, I came up with a game plan for 2020. Among them are five goals I hope to achieve and tactics to help me reach each of them, broken down by month and, in some cases, by week.

What’s your game plan for the new decade?

I’ve included the list of 20 questions I drafted last year below, in case they might stimulate some reflection.

For those of you who’ve been reading this blog post religiously, or supported me in some way, large or small, throughout the last decade, thank you. What a decade this has been.

20 Questions That Can Help You Reach Your 2019 Goals

~ Reflection and self-awareness can help set you up to achieve your goals in the new year ~

Reflection and self-awareness can help set you up to achieve your goals in the new year. Photo courtesy of Ana Juma on Unsplash.

It's about this time of year when people start wondering what they can do better next year. With a few exceptions, this calendar year's revenue is accounted for, so we turn our attention to next year, determined to beat this year's results.

Reflection is key to this process, as is self-awareness. Ryder Carroll, founder of the Bullet Journal--a popular method of organizing your work and life by writing them down--often talks about the importance of understanding why we're doing something, because it will help motivate us, as well as help determine if we're even heading in the right direction.

Earlier in November, I wrote an article about Carroll and his Bullet Journals. When I shared that article with some friends of mine who were going through this process, it became clear they were willing to ask the tough questions to get to their whys but didn't really know which questions to ask. So we started brainstorming the questions.

If you're struggling to find your why for next year, here are 20 questions to get you started:

1. What do I enjoy, and what am I good at doing?

2. What do I enjoy but could get better at doing?

3. What do I enjoy doing but don't do well at all?

4. What energizes me?

5. What tires me?

6. How much sleep do I need to really function well?

7. What relaxes me?

8. What stresses me out?

9. What distracts me?

10. What is the most important thing in my life?

11. Who are the most important people in my life?

12. How can I be a better friend or colleague?

13. What do I want more of in my life?

14. What would I prefer less of in my life?

15. What am I most afraid of?

16. What is one good habit that I have?

17. What is one habit I want to change?

18. What is one thing I set out to do this year that I succeeded in doing?

19. How do I define success?

20. What's the one thing I want to accomplish next year?

Start by answering each of these questions with the first answer that comes to mind. Since they are unique to the person answering them, there is no one right or wrong answer--it's your answer.

At this point, you might start to see a pattern emerging. When I engaged in this exercise last year, I set a goal of adding more teaching to my life, as well as more speaking engagements. I attached a number to those goals. I took the time to answer the why question, which helped motivate me to keep at it every month and find ways to help make my goals a reality. By November, I had met both of my goals, and a big part of the reason was having gone through the exercise and determined my whys.

The idea is to do more things you enjoy next year, and fewer things you don't. You'll be happier, and you'll likely succeed in reaching those goals, since you'll be having fun working toward them.

Commitment and Focus: 2016's Goals

Writing out my goals at the beginning of the year has allowed me to stay focused. Before I accept or consider a new client or project, I look back at my goals and ask whether working on this project will help me get closer to meeting my 2016 goals.

One of the things I committed myself to doing this year was to focus on my five “top goals”. We all talk about things we want to accomplish in addition to our regular commitments, whether it’s work with our clients, regular assignments from our editors or our involvement with the community. The reality is that we’re already busy so how do we gain the bandwidth to add yet another things to our already-overloaded “to do” list? We can’t – unless we plan for it and make time for it.

Last year was such a professionally and personally-rewarding year for me. I stretched, reached and proved to myself that I had what it took to make things happen. Things that I’d be working on for years finally seemed to fall into place. I don’t believe in luck. I believe that things happen when you plan for them. Maybe not immediately but eventually, when you work at it, they do.

In December, I decided to hire a business coach to help me synthesize and focus my goals for 2016. She helped me realize that I don’t need to do everything in 12 months. Rather than 9 goals, we pulled them back to 5 goals. The others would be pushed to the following year. Notice I didn’t abandon them – we just put them on the backburner (she calls it the parking lot) so we could focus on just 5 for this year.

Then she pushed me further and asked me to put together a timeline with action steps for each goal. What would I do this week, she asked, to push along each of my goals to fruition? Did I need to reach out to someone for more information? Did I need to read a media outlet in greater detail because I wanted to secure a byline in that outlet? Who might be able to help me achieve my goal? Did I need to attend a new conference to meet people who might be helpful in meeting my goal?

None of her ideas or prompts is revolutionary but having that out-of-my-circle feedback has been invaluable. My coach and I don’t have a professional or personal relationship outside of a network of female writers. I reached out to her because she’s planning a conference I’m seriously considering attending and she mentioned that if I needed help with my goals, she offers coaching services. I knew her work and respected her as a professional writer and I wanted to talk to someone who I admired and didn’t have any agenda outside of helping me hone my focus.

Since I don’t work in a traditional office, I have to find ways to grow outside of getting just receiving general feedback from clients or editors. I invest in myself through classes and professional conferences. A friend and I started a monthly writers accountability group. I’m very active in professional associations.

Through it all, though, I still wanted to talk to someone who didn’t know me or my work well and could be objective. Am I insane to think I could crack into any of my 13 “bucket list” publications? What do I need to think about and to my book proposal so it can shine and find the right publisher?

The Benefits of Outside Perspective

One of my goals for this year was to formalize my own marketing services. In addition to my now wildly-popular 52-Week Marketing Monday Checklist for Independent Retailers Subscription, I’m offering one-on-one coaching to small businesses interested in incorporating a robust marketing plan to their business plan. 

The idea behind this goal came about after several retailers asked me to help them craft their own marketing plan because it wasn’t financially feasible for them to hire a marketing and PR consultant like me.

Having an outside perspective isn’t just smart, it makes good business sense. Rather than constantly being “busy” doing things we feel we should be doing, working with someone outside of your daily grind helps them see what’s blocking you from moving ahead and also gives you a different perspective as well as ideas on what we can done better.

Now, every Sunday evening, I open my Passion Planner, review my week ahead and PLAN FOR IT with my goals in mind. I also schedule time on my planner to specifically work on my goals. I don’t work on all of my goals every day or even every week, but they follow me week by week so I can be reminded of them and I schedule things I can do to help push my goals in the forward direction.

How do you focus and commit to the goals you want to meet this year?