Goal Setting For The Rest Of The Year
While this year has felt incredibly unpredictable and completely chaotic, it’s also coming to a close soon. Can you believe we have less than three whole months left before we ring in the new year?! I’m finding it increasingly hard to believe but that’s been the case for most things this year. And yes, there are so many things still out of our control at this point but routine has proven to be a good shoulder to lean on for me. So today I thought I’d stick with my routine of setting some 4th quarter goals for the rest of the year. Here’s how you can set some small but manageable goals to end this year feeling a bit more in control.
Re-Evaluate Your Year
Did you set some goals at the beginning of the year? How about the beginning of quarantine? Perhaps you’ve scrapped it all and are ready to end the year with a bit more direction that you started. Well the first thing I like to do when setting quarterly goals for myself is to see how far I’ve come on my overarching yearly goals. If you don’t have any written down that’s completely fine too! Just take a moment to think about some of the big picture things you’ve been working towards this year. Now think about the small tasks involved in staying on track to complete it by the end of the year. It may also help to think about how close you are to completing that goal as a percentage. This can just be an estimate but it may give you the boost of confidence you need for the next three months.
Break It Down
Those big yearly to-dos can seem oh so daunting and I think that’s why so many of them are abandoned come February. The best way I’ve learned to trick my brain into tackling big projects is to break them down into bite-sized tasks. Let’s say your yearly goal was to eat healthier. Well that’s great but a bit vague when it comes to your day to day responsibilities. What’s more manageable is to break it down into daily or weekly tasks like “eat a vegetable with every meal” or “meal prep every week.” Once the tasks have been cut down you can integrate them into your daily or weekly schedule, blocking out time for each the same way you would a pre-scheduled appointment or meeting. And keeping track of your progress is easy with habit tracking apps like Habit.
Be Realistic & Make Changes
I don’t think there is any shame in changing your goals or making them more achievable later on into the year. Our goals are a self-improvement tool to help us stay on track and steer our lives in the direction we want. They should not turn into something we use to punish or shame ourselves when we don’t reach them. In fact, I’m a big advocate of positive reinforcement when it comes to goal-setting. Sometimes it’s better to change your goal so that it’s more realistic to complete in the desired time frame. Once you do get to the finish line it gives you the confidence to set and achieve even more goals. There is a similar concept with debt repayment called Debt Snowball, which is the strategy of repaying the smallest debts first and working your way up to the bigger debts. Why? It builds confidence and makes you a debt repaying machine. So try changing the way you think about your goals, as a motivator rather than an impediment and see how it changes your whole outlook.
Ditch The Calendar Year
Who says your goals have a hard deadline of 11:59pm, December 31st? Again, I think this is another reason why people abandon their New Years resolutions so early on in the year. I can barely remember what mindset I was in at the start of the year and how I imagined this current moment would look. And some goals will require more or less than a 12 month timeline to complete. Why not give yourself a 6-month timeframe, to be completed by March of next year? I think changing our mindset around goal setting in the calendar year will help us see them as an ongoing tool to utilize, rather than an arbitrary deadline we assign ourselves after the holiday haziness wears off. Yet another reason why I like to re-evaluate my goals quarterly. It’s a much more manageable chunk of time.
So there you have it, my tips for setting goals for the rest of the year. This year does not need to be a wash just because of our present circumstances. There’s literally no time like the present to set your future in motion. And your future self will thank you for starting today. Now it’s time for me to set pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and get clear on my quarterly goals. Do you have any goal-setting habits that you swear by? Let me know in the comments below. As always thanks for reading and as my Japanese Grandmother says, Gambate! xx Jessica
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