How to Set Goals & Intentions for Your Best Year Yet
Right around this time each year, the internet is full of blog posts on New Year’s resolutions, intention setting and goal planning.
I’m actually not a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions (maybe because January in the northern hemisphere is more a time to rest than to set big ambitions). So, I tend to read alternatives to them this time of year.
What I’ve learned in my own business is that intention and goal-setting has to be a more holistic process. If I only sat down once a year to write down some goals and never looked at them again, I wouldn’t cross anything off of my list.
Over the last few years, I’ve developed the intention and goal-setting method that works for me, and part of it is making myself come back to my intentions and my goals almost every single day.
From my annual “word of the year” practice to my weekly journaling check-in, these are the steps I take to keep my goals on track and my intentions strong, all year long.
My Yearly Intention and Goal-Setting Process
Overall, I don’t consider myself big on traditions. I like variety and get bored easily.
But, there’s just something about my yearly intention and goal-setting processes that I’ll never get tired of.
I love picking up a fresh new pen, pouring a cup of coffee, and taking a few hours to dig into two things: choosing my word of the year and filling out Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year.
Choose a word of the year
If you’ve never chosen a word of the year, I encourage you to make this next year your first. By choosing a word to define your intention for the year, you’ll go into January 1st (or whenever… who says it has to be at the New Year?) with a small goal in mind.
Though you might not remember your word of the year every day, it’s a great way to set a small yet meaningful theme for the year.
For example, my word for 2020 was “presence.” Because I was expecting my first baby, I felt like the word presence would embody what a lot of my year would be about… being present with whatever the moment called for.
Presence was a wonderful teacher. She reminded me regularly that my son won’t always need so much of me and the baby stage doesn’t last forever, and she encouraged me to slow down and savor every second of it. (I swear I’m not crying right now. Just kidding, I totally am!)
Reflect with “Unravel Your Year”
If you’re not sure where to start for creating a plan for your goals or picking your word of the year, I recommend checking out “Unravel Your Year” by Susannah Conway.
I’ve used Susannah Conway’s “Unravel Your Year” since 2017, and I love it more and more every year.
The workbook is a PDF sent straight to your inbox, so you’ll have to sign up for her email list to get access. But, she only sends a newsletter about every other week and I find them so interesting. (Plus, you can always unsubscribe if you don’t care for them.)
The questions she poses are powerful, and this resource helps me slow down, think about what I want for the next year and challenge myself to reflect. Plus, she has a section on selecting your word of the year (!).
I print the whole thing out and spend the last couple weeks of every year working through it page by page. It’s also a great resource to look back at when the next year comes around, and I’m always pleasantly surprised when I re-read the thoughts of last year’s Emily.
The Goal-Setting Processes I Go Back to Every Season
When I was in the corporate world, business planning only happened once a year. So, when I first started out in my career coaching business, I tried to make an annual plan.
And... it didn’t work. The plan was usually shot by February, and I was left feeling confused and uncertain about which way to go next. The thing is, the problem with this type of planning as a digital entrepreneur is that it doesn’t account for what you learned in March, or July, or any other time of the year.
When you really think about it, that makes sense. Large companies aren’t nimble. If they have been doing something for 50 or 100 years or more, they are so entrenched and established that they can’t make the effort to do business planning every few months.
But as an online entrepreneur, you are flexible and you can do business planning whenever you want! Really, there are no rules besides the ones you choose to create—and the freedom when it comes to seasonal business planning is incredibly rewarding.
Every few months (I use the change of seasons as my markers for remembering to prioritize this work), I walk through a two-part process:
1. Reflect on the past few months.
Every quarter, I like to look back on the last few months to take stock of everything from my business to my personal life.
By remembering to do this every few months, I’m able to celebrate accomplishments, notice patterns and remind myself of past intentions. This way, I stay motivated and reminded of the plans and goals I set for myself. The questions I revisit each season include:
What wins did you experience during the past few months?
What projects did you intend to work on but didn't get to?
What key lessons, insights and takeaways have you received this past season?
2. Set intentions for the coming year.
At the same time that I reflect on my past few months, I like to reflect on the upcoming few months.
There’s something powerful about setting intentions with an end date in mind, and reflecting on the future is a great way for me to keep myself on track. These are the questions I make sure to ask as I set new intentions:
What would you like to do in the next few months? (Go wild here… list everything you would love to work on, no matter how big.)
What would you like to achieve, experience and do by the end of 2021?
Once I have a really solid list of everything I can think of, I start to prioritize them by identifying when I will work on them within the next year, and then every item gets a label..
I learned a while ago that trying to set too many priorities for one season isn’t an effective way to actually prioritize things, so I limit each season to three priorities.
Winter 2021 (Jan, Feb, March)
Spring 2021 (April, May, June)
Summer 2021 (July, Aug, Sept)
Fall 2021 (Oct, Nov, Dec)
2022
2023
Not a priority
You’ve heard it since elementary school, because it’s true: breaking goals up into smaller pieces is the best way to get things done. By planning out my year seasonally and then making sure that I reflect on my year accordingly, I’ve been much better at actually accomplishing what I intended.
How I Keep Up With Intentions and Goals Every Month, Week and Day(ish)
While planning out my year in more long-term fashion is important to me, I’m also really intentional about the way I approach my months, weeks and days.
You see, in my corporate days, I felt depleted, exhausted and burned out.
When I left the corporate world to focus solely on my online business in 2015, I had a deep sense that if I wanted my life to be different as an entrepreneur, I needed to build my business differently.
If I wanted to feel creative, fulfilled and free, I needed to feel that way in the day-to-day. I wasn’t spending 9-to-5 in a desk chair anymore, and I knew that I had the opportunity to finally create the daily, weekly and monthly freedom I’d been looking for.
That’s why when it comes to the every day/week/month, there’s one resource I turn to: Danielle LaPorte’s Desire Map planner. Honestly, I’m basically obsessed with it at this point (five years with the same planner does that to a person).
What I love so much about the Desire Map planner is the monthly, weekly and daily support it provides. Each month, there are two pages for journaling, which encourage me to reflect on the previous month and setting intentions for the month to come.
Every week also contains two pages of journaling prompts, which reminds me that I should do it more often.
Once I reflect on how I want to feel for the week, I’ll then select three goals for the week. They are often small projects or parts of larger projects, and sometimes they’re their own individual goals. By looking at my weekly goals, , I can look at my priorities for the week and determine what tasks to focus on.
Personally, I’m all for the weekly planner, but I’ve heard great things about the daily version for those who are more detail-oriented. There’s also an updated version for those who only need planners during busier months or don’t want to be restricted to a certain year or date. It’s really just personal preference, and they’re all great.
Goal-Setting is All About What Works for You
If you’ve made it this far, you might be thinking… Whew! This is a lot. I get it, I really do.
I developed this process over the last two years, and it took all that time to figure out and lean into what worked for me. It took a ton of experimenting, but I’ve found that this process really works (and I’m always excited to come back to it again and again).
My tip? Just pick one of my methods to start out, and see what changes in your daily mindset and in your business.
The key is really just to find a goal and intention setting process that works for you, for your style, and for your life. When you find it, you’ll know. I promise.
***Note: I am an affiliate for Danielle La Porte’s planner and collect a small percentage of the sale if you buy one (at no cost to you!). However, they are seriously an amazing addition to my life and business, and I wouldn’t be recommending it if I didn’t truly love using it.
