How to set work/life goals that are both exciting and doable
A guide from special guest Annie Ridout
Annie Ridout is a writer and life coach whose book, Raise Your SQ, is all about using spiritual intelligence to transform everything from your career to your health and relationships. Her Substack can help you work out what you want in life, and how to get it - through practical business tips and self-development tools.
To celebrate the start of a new year, she has written this guest post for Well Well Well, all about setting goals that are not only exciting but also achievable…
There are two obvious junctures in the year for setting goals: September, with that back-to-school energy - and January, as we step into a new year.
However, it seems the resolutions we set in January often don’t come to fruition and so, at the end of 2023, only 19% of people bothered to create a New Year’s resolution at all.
I’d argue that we often set the bar too high, and don’t think about the logistics and timings in the way that we need to in order to keep focused on - and believing in - our goals.
For instance, deciding you will ask for a pay rise in January or earn a certain amount from self-employment might feel necessary and exciting. But is it practical?
Is January the best month to ask for a promotion? Maybe in your industry, it is. In which case: go ahead, put forward your case.
Likewise, if you run your own business and would like to earn £10,000 in January, is this likely to happen? You’ll need to think about how your customers are feeling and spending at the beginning of the year.
When we set longer-term goals, a certain amount of pressure is alleviated. It means we don’t spend January feeling as if we’re in a rush to make all our dreams come true.
So to start, I would like you to think about your main goal or dream for the year.
What is the most exciting thing you would like to achieve this year?
It might be a financial goal, it might be around your health and well-being, love and relationships, family, life, relocating, or something else.
Does it feel like you could achieve this goal by the end of December 2024?
If it does, what steps do you need to put in place throughout the year to work towards it?
Put them in your calendar to hold yourself accountable and stay on-track.
Now, do you have a goal for something that feels as if it’s slightly more in reach; something that could happen within a six-month period?
Note down the six-month goal.
It might be connected to the one-year goal but it could also be something completely separate.
Again, get clear on the steps you will need to take in order to make this happen by the end of June 2024.
With the one-year goal and a six-month goal set up, can you think of one thing you would like to achieve in the next three months?
Remember, you don’t want to be rushing to get it finished.
You want to be giving yourself the time and space that is required - alongside everything else you have going on - to make it happen.
Does this three-month goal feel easeful and buzzy or make you feel panicked? If it’s the latter, think about replacing it with something else and shift that one to do alongside your other six-month or one-year goal.
And finally, what could you feasibly do/be/feel/achieve by the end of January?
You’ve set your longer-term goals. You’ve considered which dreams need a little longer to work towards. Now, has this opened your mind to a shorter project or challenge you could enjoy working on, and completing, before January is out?
Maybe there’s a health goal, like giving up alcohol and doing Dry January. If you fancy doing that, who can you team up with so that you can keep each other motivated?
Or perhaps there’s a work goal, such as writing a book proposal that you will then start to send out to agents or editors.
For something like a book proposal, remember that every seemingly big project can be broken down into smaller sections.
Start with a header for each of the sections. And then carve out time to fill in each of them.
Perhaps you could do the first quarter of your proposal in the first week of January, the second quarter in the second week of January and so on.
Something else to consider
We all work at a different pace and have varying home/work responsibilities, so it’s worth having a think about how you like to work.
Do you tend to hyper-focus on a project and get it done fast?
Or do you prefer to spread it out over longer period?
Getting clear on your own productivity levels, including the times in the day that you are most likely to be able to focus, will help you when setting your goals.
Going back to the idea of writing a book proposal in January, as an example…
If you’d like to complete a quarter of the proposal by the end of the first week in January, get clear on how many hours a day you will need to commit in order to make this happen, and which hours they should be.
You want to be making such a foolproof plan that it’s hard to not make it happen.
What’s most important though, when thinking about your dreams and wishes and goals and plans, is that it feels really exciting.
So to end, I’d like you to return to each of the four goals you have come up with: the year-long goal, six-month goal, three-month and the goal for January.
Now write out the goal as if you are at that point in the future when you’d like it to have happened by, and write it as if it has happened.
For example:
It’s the end of January 2024 and I have completed my book proposal.
It’s the end of June and I’ve planned an amazing autumn event for my clients.
It’s the end of December and I’ve handed in the manuscript for my first novel.
Once you have written out all four statements, think about how it will feel to have achieved those dreams/goals.
Close your eyes and let yourself sink into a deep visualisation. Your dream has come to fruition: how does that feel? How is life, now? Who is around you? What feels so good about it? What has changed?
Enjoy the process. And keep dreaming and goal-setting.
Annie x
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Nice post! It's so important for a goal to excite you. I feel like nowadays it's easy to get wrapped up in what everyone else is doing and set inauthentic goals.
thank you for having me x