Episode 208 - Setting Your Goals for the Year Ahead
How do you choose your goals for the year ahead? In this episode we'll explore:
Considering where your goals are coming from
3 things you need to do before you commit to a goal
Goals you should set first
3 main types of goals
The Get-Out-of-Goal-Free card
Your Goal SOB Story
Links mentioned during the show:
Transcript:
You are listening to episode 208 of the Mindful Productivity podcast, and I'm your host, Sarah Steckler. Today, we're going to be diving into what goals should you be setting for the year ahead? It doesn't matter if it's the new year or any time of year, goal setting can happen at any time. And today, I want to talk about some different things regarding goal setting that you might not have thought of before, including three things that you need to do before you commit to a goal, goals that you should set first, And also the Get Out of Goal free card, which is super important. So stick around because I think you're going to have a lot of fun listening to this episode. And I got to tell you, it feels so good to be back. Welcome to the Mindful Productivity podcast. I'm your host, Sara Steckler, and this is the place to be to live a more mindful and productive life. If you're ready to turn daily chaos into calm and start your days with intention, then get ready to join me as we dive deep into mindful living and personal productivity. It's time to connect with your true self so you can live the life you want to live.
And it all starts now. Welcome back to the podcast, friends. I'm really excited to talk about our topic today, and also really excited for the year ahead of podcasting. I have so many fun ideas and topics to talk about, and I can't wait to share them with all of you. I think goal setting puts us into two camps. There's those of us that get really excited about it and can't wait to do it. And then there's times when maybe you don't feel like setting any goals. And just as a sidebar, I want to let you know that in order for the next year of your life to feel good, to bring you joy, you don't actually have to set goals. You can live your life and be intentional and do things on a regular basis without setting huge lofty goals. Goals also don't have to be massive. They don't have to be things that take a lot of time. Goals can be smaller, they can be more micro, all those things. So I'll post a link to one of my other episodes where I talk about monthly mini goals that can be really helpful if you're just starting out.
But today, I thought I talk about goal setting and bring in a few other nuanced ideas to maybe help you brainstorm about what you even want for the year ahead and to think about goals a little bit differently. So first of all, I think it's important to talk about how goals are really the umbrella of our actions, right? They are the representation of something that you want to accomplish that helps you determine the actions, routines, and decisions that you must make to obtain them. But before you even get into goal setting, I really think it's important to talk about where are your goals even coming from? There are so many times when I feel like I want to do a certain thing. I've guilty of saying, I want to read 100 books this year when I didn't even read 10 books last year. And I know that's because I see a lot of people on Bookstagram posting about their reads. And I know that I love reading and that it would be really fun if I set this lofty goal of reading more often. But the truth is, is that I haven't even successfully made a habit of reading every day.
And so until I get that into my wheelhouse, maybe reading 100 books in a year is not actually a goal for me that makes sense. In fact, reading 10 books a year would be an improvement, right? So thinking about where your goals are coming from, not only from what you're seeing on social media or your friends or your family, but also that internal part of us that maybe feels like it'd be nice to do something for the sake of it versus how it's actually going to make us feel and how it's actually going to benefit us in our daily lives. Your goals get to come from a place where you're not just thinking, who do I want to be and who's my ideal self? But more so, who am I now? How can I meet myself where I am? Start from where I'm from from the beginning of my current moment. How can I do that? And how can I implement a goal that allows me to take that first step? I'm not trying to jump up five stairs at once. I want to start from where I am. And so your goal and that goal post might look different depending on where you're starting.
There's also three things that I think are really important to think about before you commit to a goal. It's really easy to write down goals and be like, I'm going to start tomorrow and I'm going to do all these things. But I think there's a couple of things that are going to help you in terms of actually feeling like you can sustainably move towards your goals in the new year. So the first one, and this is similar to what we've already discussed, but that is removing the should goals. Any of the things that come to mind, like I should do this or thinking, I'd be a better person if I did this, while you probably have a good intention in there, sometimes the should goals are actually goals that won't actually help us get to where we actually want to be. There's usually another goal behind those that are actually more fitting to our current circumstances, especially if there's goals that you feel outside or external pressure from in your business, from your family. Really take a minute to think about where the origin of any one desire is coming from. Secondly, and this is something I'm doing differently because I've been notorious for not doing this, but that is to set your personal goals before your business or work goals.
That even just makes me uncomfortable talking about it. But it's really true that you have to put yourself first. And in doing so, that doesn't mean that you won't be able to accomplish your business or work goals. It actually means that you'll be more likely to do those things because you'll be happy, you'll be healthy, and you'll be doing all these different things that you can to make sure that you're a better version of yourself that feels more capable of doing those things. So in today's podcast, I encourage or nudge you to, instead of thinking about how much money you want to make in your business or how many new blog posts you want to write or any of those things, to instead take a minute to really think about yourself and how you want to feel and what are some of those fun goals that you want to achieve in your personal life this year. The third thing, and I'll talk about this more in an upcoming episode, but is to start at your infinity list. So for the sake of today's activity, this is really just a list of, like a brain dump, of all the things that you'd love to achieve.
So before you even try to choose or prioritize which goals you're going to work on, give your brain the opportunity to delight in the satisfaction of dreaming and scheming up everything that it wants to do. So make a list of all the goals, all the things that you want to do. Just go ham, because those will also be things that you can pluck from later because there's also going to be goals that just make more sense to start now or start later. And that's another important caveat. Goals are going to start throughout your life at different times. Not all of your goals have to start at the start line at the same time. You can stagger your goals. You can work on one goal, take a break from it, and then work on another one. There's going to be limits and variables to all the things that you're doing. So just keep in mind that you don't have to set these hard hard and fast rules about it starts on the first and it ends at the end of the year. There's going to be things that happen and things that come up. So just keep that in mind.
So what are the goals that you should set first? Well, one of the things I'm really thinking about, and I was actually thinking about this a lot because I was rebuilding the 2024 Energy Driver Habit Tracker, which I will link to. And I was thinking about the daily things that build our energy and build our happiness, right? So when you're thinking of your goals, I think it can be helpful to think of three goals first before you do anything else. And these goals are goals that perpetuate and fulfill different daily needs that you have as a human. So thinking of a goal that fulfills your daily joy, a goal that fulfills your daily energy, and a goal that fulfills ongoing rest. And I don't just mean sleep. So to dive a little bit deeper into this, when I talk about a goal that fulfills daily joy, I want you to think about something that you already do or want to do that brings you more joy. So make that one of your goals. If you're already doing something and you love it, it may feel like it's silly to make that a goal because you're already doing it.
But trust me, it's going to build your self-efficacy. It's going to make you happier and it's going to be that much better. It's like, let's say that you love making homemade chili and you make it every week. What if all of a sudden you started kicking it up a notch by adding another spice or adding in a different bean All of a sudden, you could take that chili recipe to the next level and you would enjoy it that much more. The same goes for things you already enjoy. So for me, that's planning time, specifically more like memory keeping in all of my Hobonichi planners. Using the stickers, the washy tape. I love doing that, but I don't always do it as often as I want. And now for me this coming year, it's going to be a goal. So my goal is to fill at least half of my planners throughout the year, which means spending at least two to four hours a week making time for that. And when I know that that's the goal and I know that that's the time frame, that's going to help me divide up what my time looks like daily and throughout the week.
When it comes to a goal that fulfills your daily energy, you can take a minute to think about what gives you energy. So eating more vegetables or more fiber, minimizing your doomscrolling, following a routine. Think about the things that promote energy in your life, and then think about what your your goal could be. So when it comes to goal setting, you can start big, but you can also start small with the actions that you want to take. And then you can think of a more bigger umbrella, over-encompassing goal that might match that later. And then when it comes to a goal that fulfills your ongoing rest. And again, when I say rest, I don't just mean sleep. Sleep is so important. And also rest is really time that you're taking away from work, right? More specifically, it's time that you're taking away from doing. And I know that can be hard. And I know that the availability and the opportunity for that is going to look different for everybody. But when you can step away from doing and step into more time of observing, right? Sometimes I have a couple hours off on a weekend or something to do whatever I want.
And I'll think, oh, I would love to go in my office and tidy up and I'll free write or do something like that. But then I find that my energy is not there. And so I'm actually like, well, even though that would be a fun activity for me, I think it would actually be more enjoyable if I was doing something where I was just receiving information, right? I was just reading for fun, where I didn't feel like I needed to remember much, or I was just watching a new docuseries, something like that. So thinking about all the things that actually give you rest. And some of these things may be things that self-help books or the podcast Those aren't going to necessarily recommend, right? I know for me, and I talk to my best friend about this all the time, one of the things both of us enjoy is just having that time where you just lay down in your bed and you watch reality TV shows because it takes you out of Whatever is going on in the world. It takes you away from your own stuff that you're dealing with, and it lets you submerse yourself in an alternate reality.
And it's nice. And your brain needs that. You need time to step away from things so that you can sustainably take action where you need to. So when you think about a goal that fulfills ongoing rest, think about something that might help that. Another goal idea, and this is something that I was talking to my mom about, is we've been sharing different movies because I live out of the state that I grew up in right now. So my mom, unfortunately, is not close to me, but we talk all the time. And I was telling her that I have a goal in the new year to watch 100 movies. And I came up with that goal because I was like, I want to watch more movies, but I never seem to do it because I never seem to have two hours where I want to commit my time to doing that. And my mom watches a lot more movies than I do because she watches them in chunks. So she's given herself full permission to watch five minutes of a movie, 10 minutes of a movie. And granted, some movies, you're not as able to submerse yourself in the story if you do that.
But giving yourself permission to finish something however you need to is really fun. And so she watches movies in chunks It's like TV shows. And so I started doing that. And I was like, okay, if I want to watch 100 movies in a year, then I need to watch about two movies a week. But also watching movies is really a restful activity for me, specifically if it's a movie I really, really end up enjoying. But it's that time where I'm not thinking about so many different areas of my life. I'm just relaxed. I'm in the moment. It helps me shift my perspective. I love it. So actually in the back of my Hobonichi cousin, which is a Japanese planner, if you're not aware, there's actually a list back here called My100, and that is where I am mapping out my movies for the year. So I will actually share with you I've watched five movies so far this year, and the movies I have watched, I'm not going to go into detail about what I think about them, but I guess I can... I think I have enjoyed all of these movies, but the first one I watched this year was Saltburn, the bathtub scene.
If you know, you know. I enjoyed that movie. It was definitely out there. Then I watched Ever After with Drew Barrymore. That is one of my classic favorite movies. Such a feel-good movie. I love Angelika Houston, and I hadn't watched it in so, so long. And I really enjoyed it, too, because it's predictable and you know what's going to happen. But there's just all these little things that you catch when you're older watching it, too. But I think it really reminded me of how it's so important to have comfort movies and comfort shows and things that I come back to that I know exactly what's going to happen. I know the predictability of it. And that's what makes it comforting, right? Something like, that's why I love rewatching The Office. It's why another one of my favorite movies is Sweet Home, Alabama. I don't know how many times I've watched it, but I just feel it's a comfort movie because I know exactly what's going to happen. I also finally watched the Barbie movie. Really enjoyed that a lot. I watched Somewhere in Time. This is a movie that came out, I think it was 1971, with Christopher Reeve and And I cannot remember the actress's name.
She's so pretty. I can't remember her name. She was Quinn, the Medicine Woman, though. But anyway, Somewhere in Time. Great movie. I watched it frequently, a little on and off when I was little. I remember my mom having it on. And I remember the infamous scene at the end, but I hadn't watched it again as an adult. And I really enjoyed it. And I also really loved how slow paced it was and how much white noise and how much there was these pauses in between. And I couldn't stop thinking about how if this movie was remade, how different I think it would be and how differently movies were made back then. That wasn't even that long ago. Just the pace of it, the cadence, the static noise in the background between the dialog and how it just lended all this space to take in what was happening and what the characters were thinking and the whole situation. And then the most recent movie that I watched just a couple of days ago was The Wife. This had Glenn Close in it, who was one of my favorite actors. And she plays the wife of a man that ends up winning the Nobel Prize for literature.
It's a great movie. It's only like 90 minutes. There was so much to take in. It was slower paced, but there was really so much to think about. And it was one of those movies that really left me thinking afterwards. And I thought it did such a good job of representing so many different issues that women face, specifically in the publishing industry, but in other realms, too, across the board. And I really, really enjoyed it. Those are the five movies I've watched so far. And again, I want to try and watch 100 movies this year. So if you have movie recommendations, I I'd love to hear them. I know that's a weird request because it's such a vague... It's like when someone you don't know is like, hey, recommend a book. You're like, well, what are you into? But if there is a movie that you really enjoy from any decade, please feel free to shoot me a DM on Instagram @sarastek. Com. I'd love to hear what your favorite movies of the past year were even. But anyway, so we went on a little movie tangent. But jumping back into goals. So we were just talking about how important it is to think about goals for daily joy, energy, and rest.
But goals are also... It's also important to think about goals and how they can work in three main ways. So this is actually a concept that I wrote about in another planner I have. It's called the Simple Standard, and it's a project productivity book. You can find it on my website on Amazon. I can link it in the show notes. But basically goals can be similar to projects, right? And that you're breaking down something that you want to obtain or achieve. And then you're breaking it down into steps and a timeline and sprints and all those things, right? But in this book, I break down how projects can be broken into three simple main categories. And this really cascades over into goal setting as well. So I thought I'd bring it in for today's episode. But when I think about goals or projects, I think about them in three different stages or three different categories. And that is ongoing, one time, and variable. So with an ongoing goal or project, this is something that you're doing ongoing, right? So it's a goal that never ends. So it's something that you're working on. But the milestone and the goalpost of your goal, it's not that you necessarily get to and then stop.
Where, for example, one of my goals this year is to visit the Sequoia National Forest and see the General Sherman tree. It's one of the biggest trees in the US, and if not the biggest one in the US Define big because there's trees that are big in terms of how they grow wide. But anyway, I want to see this tree. It's amazing. I feel like I'm going to cry when I see it. But that's one of my goals. But once I do that, I've done it. I've reached the goal, right? I'm not going to go home and then be like, we got to go back tomorrow tomorrow, I've done it. So versus an ongoing goal where that's something that is going to require ongoing effort from you. So you get the point. Then there's the one time goals. So I just explained that. So going to do something or reaching a milestone in your life, or maybe there's a home project that you want to work on, or there's something you need to fix in the house or with yourself. I don't know, right? Any of those things. And then variable goals. And these are things that can be more ritual or routine goals that you want to pursue, but they're not necessarily on a regular basis.
They're more interval or they may happen different times. An idea of a variable goal, maybe something that you do once a quarter or once a season or once every few years, there's different things that you may want to pursue. And helping yourself identify your goals, it can be helpful to think about these three categories stories because then you're like, okay, if you set a bunch of one time goals, then you're going to know, you can actually cross those off, right? Versus the ones that are going to continue on on the continuum of what you're doing on a regular basis. And then there's the what I call the get out of goal free card. I was just thinking about how often I've set goals or I've had ideas in my personal life or my business. You try new things and you're like, oh, this isn't really working how I thought it would be. And I don't want it anymore. I don't like it. Or you know what? This goal is not actually something for me anymore. An example is one goal I wanted to work on, gosh, over a decade now was I wanted to actually...
Well, I quit. I started and quit two different master's programs and then finally committed to the third one I actually followed through on. But I started a... My first master's program I started was a master's in business and did not like that at all, which is ironic because here I am. But anyway, it was more... No, not for me. And then the other one I started was project management, which I think I really would have loved. It just wasn't... It's just funny how it all worked out. But anyway, it didn't work on it. But I gave myself permission to quit those two things. And I think it's really important to allow yourself the ability to quit. We We want these linear lines in our lives. We want to be able to say we wanted something, we did it, and we achieved it. And that's great when that happens. But that's not always realistic. So give yourself the gift of a goal Get out of goal free card. And you can use that however you want. I think it's also important to when you feel like not doing something anymore, to ask yourself why. Sometimes you just need to shift things or replace things with new things.
So So you don't necessarily have to quit a goal to change how you feel about it. You may end up just needing to shift things. But the moral of the story here is give yourself permission to quit a goal if it's not working for you anymore. Are you just like, I'm not really doing this for me. Okay, no. And then the other thing, too, and this is the last little key component here, is identifying your goal sob story with a goal check-in. And this is It's not like a, oh, no, thing. It's just a silly little acronym I came up with. So is your goal succeeding in its sob story? And that is, is it sustainable? Is it obtainable? And is it still beneficial to your current stage of your life? So you identify this by checking in with your goals. Setting your goals at the beginning of the year, the beginning of the month, whatever time you do it is great. But if you don't establish goal check-in times for yourself, then you're not going to be actually doing it, right? It's like you got to have the check in. Am I still doing the thing?
How's it going? It's like that annoying thing if you work for a boss and they're like, are you doing the thing? And you're like, yeah, you have to do it. You have to check in with yourself. So asking yourself Is this goal still sustainable the way that I'm doing it? Does it make sense? Am I sprinting towards this goal? Have I been sprinting? Is that affecting my mental health? Is that affecting my productivity for other things in my business? Whatever it may be, is your goal still sustainable? And if it's not, then you get to shift things, right? Or you could quit. But you get to check in there. Is it obtainable? So is your goal the way you've set it and the pace that you've set it at, is it still obtainable or do you need to shift the finish line? Another great example, coming back to the book thing. I want to read 100 books this year. Okay, you get a couple of months in and you read two, maybe. And then you only have so many months left. And I do this thing. I'm like, well, I could still meet the goal.
If I just read 700 pages a day, it's like, but is that really obtainable? So it's okay to move the goal post. Move the goal post if you need to. Obtainable. Ask yourself that question. And remember, too, that forward motion is still motion, regardless of how far you're going. If you're still moving towards your goal, that means you're still moving towards your goal. So it's okay to adjust things. And then is it still beneficial to your current state stage of life? Is it still beneficial to the current stage of business that you're in or your current situation with your life at home? If you just got a puppy, for example, maybe this particular goal that you have I don't know, I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but maybe this particular goal that you have is not necessarily beneficial to you because there's so much of your time and energy that's being taken up by taking care of this new puppy, right? Maybe it would make more sense to table this goal until like six weeks later, right? When your puppy can pee every 2 hours instead of every 45 minutes.
Shout out to Bella. I remember those times. She was so cute. We take her out of her little crate. She weighed like nine pounds. And I remember me and my husband had different alarms. And we would take her out, walk downstairs, set her on the grass, she'd pee, and we put her back in the crate. Both of us so many times fell asleep on the floor next to her crate. She's in the other room right now being a potato dumpling per usual. But again, it's the sob story of your goal. Is it sustainable? Is it obtainable? Is it beneficial? So I know we covered a lot in today's episode. I hope it was more inspiring versus overwhelming. But I have been told that sometimes I go a little too deep in my podcast episodes and there's a lot of information. Hey, guess what? You can listen to it again if you want to. You can take notes, any of those things. But also, I just want to remind you that goal setting, like anything else, is something that that the goal setting itself, the implementation of it, and the action takes practice. It's going to take practice.
Even if you've been setting goals for years, as you set new goals, as you stretch your limits and your capacity and your capabilities, you're going to run into challenges and obstacles. And it's so important to remember that, too, with goal setting. One of the most important questions to ask yourself when you're setting a goal is, what are the possible roadblocks or challenges that I might come up against? And knowing what you might do when you reach those things is really helpful, especially when it comes to the mental and emotional stuff. I have things I'm like, if I don't do this or if this doesn't happen or if it doesn't end up the way I want, what am I going to do? How am I going to react? So anyway, those are all things to think about. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Mindful Productivity podcast. If you enjoyed it, if you've been enjoying this podcast in general, it would mean a lot to me if you went and left a review on iTunes. I do not, and I have never gotten people to leave reviews by providing any incentives.
So I know there's a lot of podcasts that have thousands of reviews the first day they launch. These all reviews are organic. And you're going to know because there's bad ones, too. But it would mean a lot to me for the growth of my podcast if you would take a few minutes out of your time to leave a review. Otherwise, you can find more resources and all of the history of this podcast over at sarahsteckler.com. And I would love to see you there. So we'll be back here next week. Every Monday, a new episode is going to drop. And I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.
