“You need to start smoking again.”
That was the most sincere, heartfelt advice I could give my co-worker.
Lorenzo had quit smoking 30 days before, and the whole office had been hearing daily how miserable he was.
My remark wasn’t unsympathetic—I had won the war against smoking the year before, after 15 years and 10 lost battles. But I could see that Lorenzo was suffering more as a nonsmoker.
He had decided on Jan. 1 that he would will himself off tobacco, but I could see that his heart wasn’t in it.
His fatal flaw?
New Year’s resolutions are for amateurs.
If you want meaningful, lasting change in your life, you need a system, a template—a guide to New Year goals.
What’s in this guide to New Year goals?
This is a comprehensive guide to installing systems that will help you get the maximum achievement and joy out of your year—not just in 2024, but for the rest of your life.
It’s a roadmap for:
- Creating a compelling vision for your life that excites you
- Determining what your inner self wants to accomplish this year
- How to set motivating and achievable new year goals
- Executing on action items by using reliable systems that will help you make consistent, noticeable progress
- Methods for staying on track, not just until most resolutions fail, but right until the end of the year
I’ve updated it to include the powerful tools and information that I learned and applied over the last 365 days.
One warning: This guide is not for the dabbler. Adopting the systems below requires a shift in lifestyle and mindset.
But I can promise, if you put this guide into practice, you’ll see results at a level you’ve never seen before.
What makes this New Year’s goals template different?
I know this system works because I started using it in 2012. In that time, I launched three successful businesses on two continents, a writing career and a coaching practice, while carrying a full-time job during much of that period.
I’ve built a fun, loving relationship with a woman who is now my wife, welcomed our first baby girl and achieved a fitness level that is the best of my life.
Don’t misunderstand me: I am deeply flawed and my life is far from perfect. I face both the garden variety existential problems and daily failures.
But when it comes to getting stuff done, I’ve met few equals. In order to squeeze more productivity and growth out of myself, I have gone to lengths that can only be described, in clinical terms, as “insane.”
Fear not, this guide is not a boot camp. As long as you apply it consistently throughout the year, you will see results—no matter how “insane” you want to get with it.
You’re in good hands. Let’s go.
Why New Year’s resolutions fail
“When you feel like you’re not productive, it’s not necessarily because you’re lazy or because you have bad habits, it’s because you’re not working on the right projects and you haven’t found the ones that are intrinsically motivating and meaningful to you.” —Adam Grant
“I’m going to lose some weight this year!”
“I’m going to live life to the fullest in 2024!”
Ugh. You might as well say, “I have no idea what I want out of life, but let’s set a vague goal while I’m hungover and back it up with absolutely zero planning!”
The statistics on resolutions speak volumes. According to some studies, only between 12% and 39% of resolution-makers succeed. And the success rates plummet as we age.
How can this be? Most of us only make one life-altering resolution. You had one job! And all year to accomplish it. But most people quit before January’s even over.
Resolutions fail for four main reasons:
1. New Year’s goals fail because they’re too big
Why is it that the Monday crossword puzzle taped to the coffee shop counter is enjoyable but the New York Times Saturday version makes you cry like a baby?
It’s because humans have a challenge sweet spot. Too easy, and we lose interest. Too tough, and we throw our hands in the air.
When we say that in 2024 we’ll go to the gym five days a week, but we went 10 times in all of 2023, the challenge is too big not to fail.
Good goals for the new year live in the Goldilocks zone: not too easy, not too tough, just right.
2. Resolutions fail because they’re too vague
One popular resolution is to “save money.” That’s a laudable goal most people can support. But it’s not specific. How much money do you want to save?
It’s not measurable. How will you know when you achieve it? We need the promise of a pot full of gold to bother chasing the rainbow.
Nor is it scheduled. How much time do I have? Vague goals don’t inspire. If I put a dollar in the bank, technically I’ve succeeded.
Good goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. Hmm, we need a shorthand for all that. How about, SMART?
3. Goals fail because they’re other people’s New Year’s resolutions
If you want six-pack abs, a smaller/bigger behind, a fairy-tale wedding, a bigger truck, cleaner gutters or whiter teeth… then you may just be a victim of effective advertising.
Or perhaps you want to make more money than your brother, win the baseball tournament or graduate at the top of your class. Those may seem like healthy pursuits, but any time your goal is measured against someone else, you’re motivated not by your own true wants but by what society wants you to want.
Don’t make the mistake of getting to the end of your life only to realize you were running someone else’s race. The best goals come directly from the highest authority: your inner core.
4. New Year’s goals fail because we expect change NOW
“I tried meditation once. It didn’t work for me.”
I hear that often, always from people who are running in five directions at once, doing everything, but nothing well, burning out at least once a season. I tell them to replace the word “meditation” with “showering” to help them see their folly.
For most of human history, we couldn’t just flick a switch and get light or tap an app for dinner. I’m thankful for these conveniences but see how they’ve stolen our patience.
A baby doesn’t try to walk a few times then say, “I guess I’m not cut out for this.” Great change doesn’t happen after a handful of tries, but that’s how we tackle our resolutions.
Lasting change happens when we make an irreversible decision to lose weight or quit smoking—no matter how much time or effort is required. Burn the boats!
How habits work
The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg, describes how the habit loop works:
- The Cue: tells your brain to start a routine
- The Routine: a behavior or thought pattern you carry out
- The Reward: some shiny nugget that makes us feel good and tells our brain to repeat this pattern
Most New Year’s goals fail to become habits because
- The cue (Jan. 1) only comes around once a year.
- We don’t create a routine; we sign up for the gym but have no plan or system to cue us to go sweat.
- We don’t experience rewards along the way. The reward is one huge and/or vague goal post that seems impossibly distant.
This guide works because it gives you daily cues to take action (which you’ve carefully chosen), provides a pre-baked routine (do this at this time of day on this day of the week) and delivers constant rewards by listing your accomplishments yearly, quarterly and daily. But there’s more.
Atomic Habits author James Clear builds on Duhigg’s three-step model, arguing the model “lacks a good explanation of how our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs impact our behavior.” I agree.
Good or bad, habits work. But without a compelling reason—an inner why—to stick to these behaviors, we won’t stick with them.
Let’s start with why, then.
Part I: Your life vision
“I am a big believer that if you have a very clear vision of where you want to go, then the rest of it is much easier.” —Timothy Ferriss
I’m embarrassed by all the years I walked through life without any picture at all for my future. Like most people, I moved from day to day and year to year without any purpose. I had hopes for a promotion, wealth and love, but hope is not a strategy. I never took time to think about what my ideal life looked like.
Eventually I discovered goal setting and worked to become a writer, build a business and travel. But with vague goals, I got vague results. If my ideal life had hit me in the face, I doubt I’d have recognized it.
You can’t hit a target you can’t see. The antidote to vagueness is to set a clear vision for your life.
For years my mentors preached vision, but frankly, it sounded stupid—an exercise that a corporation would do once for their shareholders, then forget. And vision boards? They seemed more appropriate for teenage art students.
But the more I studied personal development, the more the experts agreed: Vision is the most important determinant of success.
What the heck is vision?
Most literally, a vision is a mental picture of what you want. Why bother? Because when you can see your outcome clearly, your brain becomes far more effective at manifesting it. It’s a strange phenomenon, but it works.
Your end goal is to see this vision in your mind’s eye, but you create it first on paper. How clear is your vision?
- If your goal is to build a business:
- What is your product? What are your margins?
- What does your ideal customer look like? Male/female? Young/old? Do they drive a Prius or a Lexus?
- Do you see a clear picture of where you’re working? In an office or at home?
- If your goal is to find your soulmate:
- What are his or her qualities and values? Respect? Trust? Honesty?
- What are your deal breakers? Lying? Drugs? Bad breath?
- Where do you live with this person? Will you have children?
- If your goal is chiseled abs
- Does that mean the body of a runner? Weightlifter? Yoga mom?
- How big are your pecs? Biceps? Legs? How fast can you run a mile?
- Where do you train? Do you run? Lift? Rock climb? Play tennis?
Goals are critical to your success, but the sharper you can make that picture, the more likely you’ll get exactly what you see.
Step 1: Create a vision for your life
No biggie, just set the direction for your life here, mmm-kay? Yes, right now. Don’t let this overwhelm you—a life vision is a living, growing entity, a perennial rough draft that will never feel perfect for long because we evolve.
Take just 10 minutes now to write a statement of what you think you might want your life to be about (see how vague we’re allowed to be for now?).
Answer these questions in point form to help get you started:
- What do I love? What do I hate?
- What do I want to do with my life?
- What am I good at? What, when I do it, makes time melt away?
- How can I serve the world?
Turn your answers into a short one-paragraph statement of your life’s vision. Here’s mine:
“I use my entrepreneurial and writing talents to design and build enterprises that create a better world, helping others realize their highest potential, generating fantastic wealth and abundance in the process.”
Great, now you have a North Star for your whole life (which can change!). Later, we’ll create your one-year and three-month visions.
Part II: Yearly planning
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did.” —H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Experiencing the best year of your life won’t happen accidentally.
Successful companies take the time to create business plans, and top performers take the time to set a course for their lives.
This section will show you how to decide on what you truly want to accomplish this year, how to set goals and action items to support those goals and how to install systems and measure your progress in order to stay motivated and on track the whole time.
Step 0: Create space
I block Jan. 1-3 in my calendar for this yearly planning exercise.
Three days may seem like a lavish expenditure of time, but protecting 0.8% of my year makes the other 99.2% of my days exponentially more productive and fulfilling than if I’d started my year watching movies on the couch.
If you just can’t find three days, that’s fine, but you’ll need one full uninterrupted day at minimum.
On the morning of Jan. 1: Take an ibuprofen, find a quiet space and close the door. Disconnect from the internet, and leave your phone in another room.
Step 1: Review the previous year
On a sheet of paper or blank Word document (I use Evernote), list these headings and write your answers:
1. What were my goals? Did I achieve them or make progress?
Maybe you didn’t set explicit new year goals for yourself last year. Maybe you only made a casual resolution. That’s OK—do this exercise and next year you’ll have new benchmarks to build on. Even if you didn’t write down any goals, you were surely working on some things. What were they?
My goals for the new year included creating financial and time freedom, building a thriving business, signing two coaching clients per month, increasing my maximum lifts at the gym and publishing a certain number of articles.
On Jan. 1, I list every goal and subgoal from last year and make a yes/no determination. Did I hit my targets? If not, why? Did I make progress? I make no value judgments yet, only observations. The answers help with the next question.
2. What worked well?
Here we pat ourselves on the back, shelling out well-earned credit for our positive outcomes. This is not a list of detailed accomplishments (that comes later); we’re looking for themes and trends.
For example, a few years ago, at the start of 2020, I gave myself credit for writing at least one hour each morning because it allowed me to publish 19 articles in 2019, and for cutting alcohol to near zero for six months because I saved more than a few pennies and had much more time and energy on the weekends.
When we identify what worked well, we can double down on these actions.
3. What could improve?
This exercise is less fun because it shines a light on all the broken, rust-covered parts of our year strewn across the front yard of our life.
Don’t fear this! Facing reality, even the uncomfortable parts, is the first step in creating a better one. I have two caveats:
- Many things that are missing or messed up in our lives are outside our control. Sometimes you make all the right moves and fate still lands you in Monopoly jail. Make peace with that.
- Even when the failure is clearly yours, beating yourself up will not help. Guilt should be used like a spare tire—only when you’re forced to and for as little time as possible.
Despite amazing progress overall, I listed many areas to improve: I did not manage money as well as I could have, took on far too many projects in January and had to admit that my business model was not producing results.
But hey! Once I admitted these things, I was able to prioritize fixes for the next year.
4. How do I feel about last year?
The danger in listing goals and making yes/no appraisals about them is that it’s almost a purely head-centered exercise.
Sure, you’ll get a factual report of how effective and productive you were, but this can’t tell you whether all this frenetic activity is having the desired effect. In other words, are you happy?
For an answer, you need to go to the heart, which is why I recently added this question to my yearly planning review.
This activity combats Resolution Fail #3: the risk of running someone else’s race.
The best way to answer this question is by writing in a stream of consciousness—no bullets, no overthinking, no censoring—have the courage to be brutally honest with yourself in answering the question: Am I fulfilled?
After all, that’s the whole reason we set goals and chase accomplishment: to feel good! If the answer is anything but “heck yes,” take it as a blessing, a signal that you need to work on different priorities.
Your heart will respond by the end of this exercise. Don’t be afraid to write pages and pages here.
5. What are all the things I accomplished?
This part’s my favorite! It’s an excuse to spend a few moments in pure celebration, something none of us do often enough. Here you can list all the notable, amazing things you did and that happened to you between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31.
Include whatever is meaningful to you, no matter how big or small. My list for 2019 included moving to Mexico but also finding a great new coffee shop. I ended up with over 90 things to be thankful for. When you see it all in one place, you’ll feel proud and grateful.
Where can you find items for your list? Go back through your calendar week by week, look at your journal or ask your partner or family members to remind you about the good times.
This is not just some indulgence: Listing the positive experiences helps us relive them, which releases happy hormones in our bodies, like dopamine and serotonin. Associating our accomplishments with feeling good helps drive us to more accomplishment. It creates a healthy addiction in us, something resolutions don’t do.
6. The financial snapshot
No annual reflection would be complete without a clear understanding of the state of your financial affairs.
Start by listing the value of your current assets: cash, stocks, bonds, real estate/equity, pension, insurance policy, the wad of hundreds under your mattress. Then, tally your liabilities: credit card debt, mortgage, car lease, student loans, what you owe to the Latvian mafia.
Subtract liabilities from assets to calculate your net worth. The first time you do this might be a shock—good or bad. At least now you know. Plus, next January you’ll be able to see whether this figure is moving in the right direction or not and calculate how much money you’ve squirreled away.
This part of your Yearly Plan is also a good opportunity to see where you can cut the fat on your budget. I use Mint.com, which gathers account data into a single dashboard and helps me understand where every dollar is going.
For example, recently I noticed that my insurance premiums have been getting out of hand. I switched providers and will save $1,200 this year.
I can also see where I’m over- or under-spending (OK, the latter never happens), and adjust my habits.
Step 2: Create your 1-year vision
In Part I, we took responsibility for painting a vivid picture of the course of our whole life. Grand visions can be extremely compelling. This “ultimate purpose” gives us a reason to spring out of bed and work to become the person we know we can become, especially when the challenges pile on top of each other.
But a huge vision, without a map for how to get there, can become overwhelming and even discouraging. If you’re currently working at Walmart and your ultimate purpose is to teach the world’s top CEOs judo, then you can be forgiven for feeling daunted.
On the road to your highest calling, the 1-year vision is the bridge across the chasm from here to there. A year is long enough to accomplish a great deal, especially if you stick to this system. And it’s short enough that you can make some predictions about what the world, and your life, might look like.
To create your 1-year vision, simply picture your life 365 days from today. Where are you living and who are you with? What are you doing for work and how much money are you making and keeping? What have you learned and who have you become?
When I do my own exercise on Jan. 1, it will probably look like this:
“We have bought our dream home in the country on the Thames River, on 20 acres of forest, with four bedrooms, large windows, a chef’s kitchen, a quiet office for me, an outbuilding studio for my wife and lots of space for our daughter to adventure. My business revenue has increased 50%, and I’m running twice as many training programs. My coaching rates have doubled, and I’m serving three new clients per month both privately and in group settings.”
I will no doubt add more, but you get the idea. Notice that I wrote my vision as if it had already happened because when you frame your vision this way, your subconscious works tirelessly to bridge the gap between reality and the vision.
Step 3: Set goals for the new year
Now that we have the lay of the land that is our life through an extensive review of our previous year, and we have a clear roadmap of where we’re going at the end of 12 months, it’s time to mark off some specific milestones on the way into our best year ever.
1. Write your New Year’s goals “long list”
As you complete Step 1, ideas will flow about what you’d like to accomplish over the next 12 months, like starting a business, and situations you’d like to improve, like having more fun. Call this your capture list or your “kitchen sink” list—everything goes into it.
If you’re like me, there will be far too many shiny objects to chase, more than you could handle in a year. To be effective, you’ll need to make tough decisions about priorities.
But ignore reality for a minute and list out all the goals you’d like to pursue this year if you had an unlimited number of clones.
To spark some ideas, use these categories to guide you:
- Financial: How much money do I want to make and save? How will I invest? What toys do I want?
- Personal development: What new skills do I want to learn? Which skills do I want to improve? What habits do I want to install?
- Relationships: What do I want for my romantic partnership, family and friendships? What does my home life look like?
- Work/career/business: What projects do I want to work on? With whom? What targets will I set?
- Health and fitness: What do I want for my body? How do I want to eat and exercise?
- Emotional: How do I want to feel most of the time? What makes me smile?
- Time: What does my ideal day look like? Where am I spending my most precious resource?
- Contribution: How will I give back? How much money goes to worthy causes? Where can I serve others?
These might be goals that you didn’t fully cross off your list last year. Or you may decide to focus on the activities that are working well. For me, that was email marketing and creating 10x quality content.
In other cases, you may see that you need to focus on the areas that need improvement, like your social life.
Write it all down in a single list of bullets. Now that you’ve left no stone unturned, you can start prioritizing.
2. Select your primary goals for the new year
The 80/20 rule is something we observe in most of nature, including human affairs. It’s also known as the Pareto principle and states that 20% of our efforts lead to 80% of our results.
The rule is a valuable tool we can use as we comb through our long list of priorities.
Ask, What are the 20% of activities on my list that, if accomplished, would bring me the greatest results?
I listed some of my goals earlier, but yours might be: “Earn X dollars per month,” “Write and publish my book,” “Sign 30 new coaching clients,” or “Learn to play 10 new songs on the guitar.”
In practice, I choose four to six major goals for the new year. I suspect fewer would be even better, but I have a habit of taking on too much (sound familiar?)
Any more than this and you’ll spread yourself too thin. Write them out as headings on a document (see below for a template).
3. Set benchmarks and action items
Major goals are never accomplished in great leaps, but in a series of small steps. Under each of your goals headings, list a few measurable benchmarks that, if you achieved them, would help you step closer to each goal.
For example, let’s say your goal is to launch a business and earn $100,000 in revenue. Beneath this heading you can list, “Grow my email list to 5,000 subscribers” and “Book 10 sessions a month at $850 per session.”
In addition to benchmarks, here you can also list non-measurable action items that will support your goals, like, “Write a business plan” and “Work with a business coach.”
You can start a single-page document that looks like this:
4. Choose your secondary goals for the new year
There will be items on your long list that will never become primary New Year’s goals but that you still want to take care of in the coming year. Examples include, “Read 20 books this year,” “Plant a garden” or “Buy a new couch.”
In this section you can also include habits that you want to practice—activities that don’t have a specific endpoint, but that when repeated over time, help support your main goals or just a happy life in general.
When selecting daily habits, you might choose “Meditation,” “Journaling” and “Get up at 6 a.m. on weekdays.” Weekly habits could include “Call my brother,” “Go for a hike” and “Screen-free Saturdays.”
Write out your secondary goals for the new year list under your primary goals on the same page. That might look like this:
5. Print and post your Goals Master List
There’s intrinsic value in this exercise—in getting clear about what’s important to you and where you want to focus your energy over the next 365 days.
But this should not be a one-and-done activity. Seeing a daily reminder of your plan will help you to stay on track. Print and post your (one-page maximum) Goals Master List for 2024 in a place you’ll see them every day.
A great spot is in the bathroom, so that for two minutes while you brush your teeth first thing every morning, you can reread them.
Step 4: Install systems
We’ve set clear, specific goals, so now we can watch reruns of The Office, right? Wrong. Goals are helpful for setting our direction, but Atomic Habits author James Clear points out that, “Results have little to do with the goals we set and nearly everything to do with the systems we follow.”
The sports team that loses had a goal to win. The failed startup had a goal to make millions. Goals are a necessary but not sufficient step in the success process. Like bathing, we need consistent helpful habits to avoid results that stink.
Look at your Goals Master List in all its clear, specific, measurable glory (it’s a work of art, no?). What existing habits might you need to recommit to—what new habits might you need to adopt—in order to reach the majority of your goals?
The classic business book Good to Great advises that you find your “Hedgehog Concept” (what your company could be singularly great at), which is exactly what we’ve done in the goal-setting steps above. Then, when you know what that is, you start “pushing on the flywheel” to get it spinning. And that’s synonymous with installing great systems, aka practicing helpful habits.
If your Hedgehog Concept is to produce the world’s finest hypoallergenic vegan and sustainable hand sanitizer, then your systems might include:
- Reinvesting 20% of your profits into continuous R&D
- Handing out free samples every Friday at farmers markets
- Publishing one guest blog per week on health and wellness websites
With goals, you know when you’ve achieved them. But systems involve continuous and open-ended action, habits repeated as frequently as hand washing in 2020.
Choose the new habits that will coalesce like puzzle pieces into your new system and write these on a separate document that you can print and post beside your Goals Master List. Later, in the Weekly Plan, we’ll start scheduling time for these activities in our calendars.
Part III: Quarterly planning
“To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.” —George Santayana
You’ve reviewed the state of affairs that is your life and chosen your highest priorities for the coming year. But it would be a mistake to set a course and fail to adjust your sails for 365 days. If the Yearly Plan is the view of your life from 40,000 feet, then the Quarterly Plan brings us down to smooth sailing at 10k.
Your yearly planning exercise is not complete until you set some medium-term goals. Three months, or a quarter of your year, is ideal as a workable unit of time. Why?
Three months is in line with the natural change of seasons. It’s long enough to give you time to make serious progress toward your New Year’s goals, but not long enough that you’re barreling ahead without pausing to reflect.
And it’s a short enough time span that you should feel a bit of pressure—positive stress—that will help prevent procrastination. The last thing we want is to wake up on Dec. 31 and realize we’ve accomplished nothing from our Yearly Plan.
The quarterly planning exercise mirrors the yearly, but you’ll do this one every three months throughout the year: on Jan. 1, April 1, July 1 and Oct. 1.
Step 1: Review
Start by reviewing the previous three months (you’ve already done this on Jan. 1 through your Yearly Plan). Ask what worked, what could be improved and how you feel, list your accomplishments and update your financial snapshot.
Step 2: Create your 3-month vision
In the Yearly Plan, we set a vision for the whole year: a fairly ambitious, but completely doable ideal for your life. Now, we’ll get more granular and paint a picture for your next three months, a period of time that will fly by. Let’s not let it slip our grasp.
Write about what your life looks like at the end of the next 90 days. Have you started a new exercise routine? Created the website for your new business? Built that shed in the backyard?
See it. Feel it. Live it before it becomes reality. More than anything else you can do, this exercise will create some powerful motivation to go after this dream life you’re chasing.
Step 3: Set goals
Now, select some concrete goals for the next three months. This won’t require a huge amount of time or thought because you will use your Yearly Plan to guide your efforts.
Print and post your Quarterly Plan on the wall beside your Yearly Plan. You can reuse the Yearly Template; just change the document heading to something like “1st quarter 2024.”
Step 4: Choose your systems
By now you see that the Quarterly Plan is a micro-version of the Yearly Plan that follows the pattern: Review, Vision, Goals, Systems. You’ll pick fewer goals to knock off during your quarterly review, but that may not be the case with your systems. Your habits might not vary much as quarters pass, but if your goals change drastically, so should your systems.
The rule of thumb is this: Your systems (habits) should be helpful little minions that support your quest toward your New Year’s goals. Each quarter, pursue only those practices that move you toward your quarterly goals. It can be a challenge to limit or discard systems, especially if you’re on a roll with your current habits. But you only have so much time in a day. Apply the essentialist mantra, and do less but better.
A sample Quarterly Plan
First quarter
Was your No. 1 goal for the year to build your business? Then you might set, for your first Quarterly Plan, goals to incorporate: Build a website, collect 1,000 email subscribers and earn 1/10 of your revenue goal for the year.
Second quarter
Your website is built and actually hosting some visitors. With unexpected luck, you hit 20% of your revenue goal by the end of March. Congrats!
When you do your quarterly review on April 1, and ask, “What went well?” You can see from your website analytics that one certain product—sunglasses—are selling better than expected. You set a goal to find new suppliers for different brands and models of shades and to invest in some paid ads.
You also notice that you’re miles from hitting your goal for email subscribers, so you host a giveaway contest for your best selling products in exchange for an email address.
Print and post your Quarterly Plan, replacing the old one with this one.
Third quarter
Ahh, July 1 already. Where does the time go? In your quarterly review you see that these giveaways are popular. You flew past 1,000 email subscribers, well on your way to 5,000. You set a goal to double this number by the end of the quarter.
Unfortunately, most of the new products you chose to promote were duds—nobody wanted those 500 novelty googly-eye glasses you bought for a great deal. Halfway through the year, you’re only 30% toward your yearly revenue goal.
You set a new three-month goal to double-down on your promotion for products where sales are growing steadily. Again, print and post your Quarterly Plan, using your Yearly Plan as your North Star.
Fourth quarter
It’s Oct. 1, and you can see both Black Friday and Boxing Day on the horizon. You set a goal to take advantage of that. But you’ve learned a lot about your customers this year and they are not bargain shoppers.
You plan a “buy nothing” sale for those traditional shopping days, and instead run a fundraiser for a cause they care about, with the goal of growing your email list 10x and creating media attention. Your gamble pays off, and you bring in so much traffic that your website crashes. You end the year with 150% of your revenue goal.
This brings you full circle to Jan. 1, where you’ll repeat the yearly planning process. You will experience varying degrees of success with this system, but by sticking to it, you’ll be far more effective than setting a loose New Year’s resolution.
However, checking in on your progress every three months is not enough to maximize your productivity. How do you keep yourself motivated and on track in the midst of those 13-week blocks?
Part IV: Weekly planning
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” ―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
What does Sunday night look like for most people? For me, it’s a combination of sweatpants, music, TV and books. Despite being in full relax mode, I still take an hour after dinner to review the week ahead and plan. You can too.
You might feel like this violates your day of rest. To that I say: You’ll have a much more enjoyable, less chaotic Monday through Friday if you invest just one hour into planning. And you won’t feel like each one of those days slipped through your fingers.
Skip weekly planning often enough, and you arrive at the end of your life feeling like you didn’t accomplish half of what you wanted.
Sidebar: Sure, you can do this exercise on Monday morning, but that’s prime getting-stuff-done time. Better to utilize the lazy downtime of Sunday night, and start strong on Monday morning while your co-workers are still rubbing their eyes.
From 10,000 feet, let’s swoop down to the rooftops.
The weekly to-do list template
Over the last decade, I’ve tested, discarded, refined, amalgamated and welded together various to-do list templates to find one that works for me. I’m happy to share it with you now, but please don’t be afraid to alter it to your needs. It looks like this:
Seem complicated? It’s not, really. Let’s go through it piece by piece.
1. Essentialism Top 3
Essentialism is a concept, and the title of a book, made popular by author Greg McKeown. Simply put, “The Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage.”
That’s why the top of my weekly list starts by asking, “What are the top three essential things I’d like to get done?” These items don’t have to be ones that can be done in a week; they may stick around for a while.
2. Ongoing learning
“If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” This is a philosophy adopted by Silicon Valley, presidents and self-help coaches. It may sound extreme, but I bet you can’t find an exception in nature.
You have no obligation to constantly improve. I know people who are happy living simple lives, and maybe they’re the wise ones.
But I’d prefer to live my life always learning, always growing, and that’s why my weekly list shines a spotlight on a new skill I want to learn or improve. The item stays on my list until I feel I’ve learned enough about it.
3. Monthly experiment
Growth hackers, researchers and those who want breakthrough results practice a simple mantra: Always be testing. Each month I choose a new experiment to conduct on myself. The practices that work, I keep; the rest are discarded.
In this case, the experiment was drinking Bulletproof Coffee each morning, a mixture of coffee, grass-fed butter and MCT oil from coconuts, which supposedly improves brain function and lets me skip breakfast, giving me the health benefits of intermittent fasting. It seems to work, because I feel sharp every morning. The experiment was a success.
4. The unschedule
The unschedule is a concept created by habits expert Neil Fiore, Ph.D., which simply states that, to avoid procrastination, you should schedule fun playtime in your calendar before you schedule work. This will let your subconscious know that life this week won’t be a chore, so it can stop sabotaging you.
We all know the adage, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Avoid dulling yourself; plan some fun time before you fill up your hours with work.
5. Great Tasks (G)
The next four quadrants are distant relatives of the Eisenhower Matrix, which I used for years but updated to suit my own purposes. Again, you should feel free to alter anything I share here to your needs.
In the top right quadrant, I list the Great Tasks I want to accomplish this week. These are the tasks of the essentialist. I want to spend as much of my time as possible working in this quadrant. They are the activities that, if I accomplish them week after week, will bring me closer to hitting the new year goals in my Yearly Plan.
These items do not all need to have specific outcomes. Remember the systems (i.e., habits) we chose to install in Part I and II? This would be a good time to start scheduling some of those in your weekly calendar.
6. Urgent Tasks (A)
We all need to feed the cat, do the laundry, hit the bank and make unpleasant phone calls. In the top left quadrant go the tasks that you need to do, but that will not, if you focus the majority of your time here, bring you toward your highest goals for the new year.
This is unfortunately where most people spend 70% to 90% of their lives.
Some of these things may be valuable activities, but the essentialist makes a crucial distinction between important and IMPORTANT. Knock these tasks out of the way quickly, but don’t spend more time in this box than you have to. You may want to schedule these items later in the day, when the best of your energy has been invested in Great Tasks.
7. Not Urgent Tasks (B)
Into this quadrant, put the things that do not need to be done this week but that may become urgent or Great Tasks next week. If you finish all your G and A tasks, or you come across an opportunity to knock one of these off the list quickly, then, and only then, should you work on a B task.
8. The Parking Lot (C)
The parking lot is the place for unusual items that don’t fit elsewhere, where I put things that are certainly important, that might become Great Tasks one day, maybe even years from now.
I don’t want to take my eye off these actions and projects, and so they live on my weekly list, telling my subconscious, “Hey, can you figure out what to do with this?”
If a task doesn’t fit into quadrants G, A, B or C, then delegate it or forget about it entirely.
9. Gym Goals
I’ve created a separate box for my fitness activities because they are a high priority for me. If that’s not true for you, you can drop this one.
At the top of this box I’ve listed my weightlifting goals for the year. Underneath that, I create my training plan for the week.
I do this because I wasted more than 10 years simply throwing around dumbbells, never seeing any progress. You can’t hit a target you can’t see.
10. Stop Doing List
Last year I added this box to my weekly list because I noticed that I kept repeating mistakes that hurt my business and productivity.
For example, I tend to push, push and push more on work projects until I burn myself out and my body forces me to take a break. Now I make sure that my Unschedule each week includes a large block of “nothing” time to unplug. In other words, a de-load phase.
For example, I’ve left myself a reminder to stop scheduling promotions for my writing workshops only at the last minute; people need advance notice to commit to events like these.
11. Observe the Last Week
This isn’t listed explicitly on the template, but taking a minute to pause and reflect on the previous seven days is a crucial part of the process.
On Sunday nights, before I create my plan for the coming week, I ask three questions:
What went well? As in the Yearly and Quarterly plans, it’s important to note the activities that created the most value and what is flowing in our lives. That way, we can do more of it.
What could improve? On the other side of the coin, you faced setbacks, mistakes and annoyances in the previous week. These should be eliminated or fixed as soon as possible. Spend as little time playing defense (reacting) as possible, so that you can focus on offense (being proactive).
How do I feel? This is overlooked in many productivity strategies, but taking the time to check in on a gut level provides essential feedback. Are you exhausted? Then you may need to rest or work on something else. Feeling frustrated with someone? Have that awkward conversation or cut them out of your life if possible. If you’re happy, carry on!
Repeat steps 1 through 11 each week of the year, and you’ll make strides toward your quarterly and yearly goals.
Don’t fret if you miss a Weekly Plan—in a 52-week year, I’ll skip five to 10 weeks.
Part V: Daily planning
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” —Annie Dillard
Our moments stack up to hours, hours build into days, days turn to weeks and weeks to years. What we do with our moments becomes our life.
I’m fascinated by how many people wake up and fail to purposefully decide what to do with their day. Maybe you believe that life is to be lived spontaneously, and sure, that worked for masters of mindfulness like Rumi or the Buddha.
But the average person’s spontaneity is often mindless routine in disguise or Pavlovian conditioning. We can break out of a day—and a life—of routine by simply taking time each morning to decide what we want.
In the same way that we get more out of our year by creating a plan for what we want to accomplish, it’s just as important to decide what we will do with each 24 hours.
The daily planning template looks like this:
The difference between normal to-do lists and this one is that it programs your brain and provides built-in motivation.
Take five to 10 minutes first thing each morning to complete this template, and you’re bound to have a productive day that moves you closer to your yearly goals.
1. Intentions
Intentions are short statements we say (in our head or out loud) or write in order to program our brains. They are a type of visioning exercise.
Goals are specific, concrete, measurable and have a deadline—the domain of our logical, conscious brains. But intentions come from the gut and the heart, statements of how we intend to live, moment to moment, the language of our subconscious.
Intentions are stated positively—that is, “I eat healthy,” rather than, “I stop eating garbage”—because our brain doesn’t know the difference between positive and negative images; all it knows is we’re telling it to focus on “that.”
Intentions are also stated as if they have already come true. “I run a wildly successful business” is better than, “Someday I’ll try to start a business.” Why? Because both philosophers and scientists know that our thoughts can create our reality. When we believe something, our subconscious mind works to prove us right.
Writing five powerful intentions each morning is enough. Don’t copy mine—decide what code you want to live by, then start programming it into your mind.
I have written the same intentions almost every day for years. Why? Because repetition is one of the best ways to program your reticular activating system (RAS), the part of the brain that acts as a filter between your conscious and subconscious.
Ideas that you put into your conscious mind over and over again will settle into your subconscious, and those ideas will reappear in the future, influencing your actions. For maximum effect, get emotional about your intentions while you write because this will imprint these ideas deeper in your brain.
2. The to-do column
After writing my intentions, I’ll fill in my to-do list items. Each line, or activity, has a letter and number associated with it.
Remember the weekly to-do list? It organized our actions for the week into quadrants: A for urgent items, G for great tasks, B for non-urgent, and C for the parking lot.
Filling in the to-do column is easy because you’re simply pulling items from your weekly list, which you completed on Sunday night. You’ll want to prioritize great tasks.
Your urgent (A) tasks follow. Only after that can you add some non-urgent (B) tasks, which you can tackle when you finish everything else on your list. You probably won’t see any C tasks here—those will become A or G tasks someday, but not today.
And why are the items in this column numbered? This is to help you arrange these in the order you’ll tackle them. Add the numbers only after you’ve written down all the items you plan to tackle for the day.
It will probably take you a few weeks to know how many activities are too much or too little. Never feel that you have to cross every item off your to-do list; it’s a servant, not a master.
3. The “ta-da” column
The to-do list contains those things you will do. The “ta-da” list shows all the things you have done. When you finish a to-do item, cross it off and move it to the ta-da list.
Why bother?
Because creating a collection of all our accomplishments—celebrating our wins—is highly motivating. Seeing all our accomplishments in one place throughout the day, we flood ourselves with the neurotransmitter of accomplishment, dopamine, which in turn makes us want to do more.
Achievement becomes addictive.
Part VI: Final words
“A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.” ―Greg Reid
Mere mortals make New Year’s resolutions; achievers use a system to make plans and set goals.
To be effective, our goals must be what resolutions are not:
- Big enough to stretch us, but still within our grasp
- Concrete, with solid deadlines, benchmarks and action items
- Aligned with our core purpose, not someone else’s expectations
- And, in chasing these goals, we must realize that anything worth doing will require patience
A final word: We need to constantly monitor our progress so we can adjust our course on the way to our targets. That’s why the quarterly, weekly and daily check-ins are important supporting characters to our yearly planning.
Just don’t change course too drastically too often. Be patient, and give your efforts time to produce results. Have fun with the process.
If you follow the system laid out here, your success is virtually assured.
This might seem like a lot of work, and it is. But there’s far more work, stress and missed opportunities involved in having no plan or a bad plan and then working for much of your year to undo the mess.
Me? I’ve found this system highly addictive and fun. I look forward to Jan. 1, when I’ll make myself a pot of coffee, close the door and take a few days to do my most important task of the year: get clear on what I really want out of life.
Careful preparation leads to extraordinary results.
This article was updated December 2023. Photo by JLco Julia Amaral/Shutterstock.com
