My social media feed is stuffed with reels and posts from people setting big, hairy goals for 2024.
Earn a million dollars working five hours a week. Get jacked. Climb Kilimanjaro—that type of virtue-signalling.
New Year’s resolutions and goals strike me as a form of procrastination. Why wait until January 1st to start a personal or business project you’re excited about?
But I get why people love goals, fresh starts, and blank pages.
I did, too.
In my early thirties, after a career came to a juddering halt, I spent a year unemployed and also as a stay-at-home Dad.
(I wrote about that year in my book I Can’t Believe I’m a Dad!)
Then, I got a fresh start working in the corporate world.
I wanted to survive corporate life, earn a bonus, and get promoted.
So, I happily set goals.
Good luck navigating a corporate company without setting annual goals. Anyone who survives corporate life (and gets paid annual bonuses) finds out other people’s goals before setting theirs.
That way, they can work together… in theory. So, I spent most of December setting goals for the year ahead with the rest of the team.
Corporate life was rewarding… until it wasn’t.
All those meetings, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations wore me down.
I started a side business and found myself working 60,70 and 80-hour weeks trying to manage two jobs, family life, and my receding hairline.
I needed help managing two jobs, three kids, a dog, and a picket fence. So, I took a popular online course all about personal goals:
Five Days to Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt. Hyatt ticked the right boxes for a good online course.
Easy to get through. Actionable. Specific.
Hyatt’s goal-setting process breaks down as follows. Over five days, review the past year. Ask yourself what were the highlights and low-lights. Journal or write about them.
Then, forget about the past, i.e., the low lights. (One year, I even wrote some low lights on paper from a bad experience in college and burnt them in the fire).
Then, figure out what you want to accomplish for the year ahead at work and home.
Finally, identify the next steps for each goal.
I took Hyatt’s course two years in a row., but then, I stopped setting goals altogether.
I stopped setting goals because they induce anxiety about achieving or not achieving them.
I read study after study, like this one, which said only 8% of people stick to their goals for the entire year.
Even if 8% is wildly off the mark, I hate the odd moment achieving a goal where I wonder, What next? Or worse, when I miss a goal and ask myself at three A.M., “What now?
I stopped setting annual goals for other reasons, too. Firstly, I interviewed a best-selling author. She broke her year into seasons. A season is long enough to get something done but not so far away (like December 31st, 2024) that you can put off taking action for weeks.
What could I get done in a season? Train for a big race. Start a newsletter. Write the first draft of a book.
Focus on one or two projects for up to 90 days, and I can acquire new skills and gain a sense of accomplishment and progress without burning out. 90 days also means I can course correct if the project isn’t working out… without feeling like the entire year was a failure.
Instead of setting annual goals, I think in terms of seasons.
I worked with a business coach for one year. He loved the idea of seasons. But, he suggested breaking the year into only three seasons or blocks of about fifteen weeks.
Three seasons? Did this business coach forget about Winter?
Season 1, the first 15 weeks, runs till early April.
Season 2 runs to mid-August.
Season 3 runs to the start of December.
He inserts several days between each season to review and reset. And he takes a longer break in December. These breaks allow for holidays, time off, and, you know, life.
This approach worked well, with three mini New Year’s… every 12 months.
I pick one project per season and track my progress.
One work project.
One personal project.
Perhaps a writing goal like finishing a book draft.
Or a personal one like training for a race.
Or a business one like creating a new online course.
I track my progress using lead and lag measures.
A lead measure is the one thing I can do or influence each week.
A lag measure is outside of my control.
For example, I wanted to hit a big traffic target, or lag measure, for my site last year. Unfortunately, as much as I’d like too, I can’t log into Google Analytics and hit a juicy red More Traffic button.
So, I set a lead measure of publishing several SEO-optimised articles each month.
I could influence how many articles I write or publish each week or month by either rolling my sleeves up and writing them or commissioning work from writers. Or I could learn to write with AI.
Lead and lag measure work for personal projects, too.
I turned 40 a while ago and decided I wanted to complete an Ironman in Barcelona For my project mid-life crisis, it was either the Ironman or buy a Porsche.
I couldn’t influence completing the race on the day, but I could control the number of training sessions I turned up for each week.
So, set goals.
Or don’t.
Tackle 2024 is like a 12-course meal.
Or break it up into snacks.
Track your progress.
Or let things slide.
Whatever your approach for 2024, this question helped me a lot:
What would I do more of if money wasn’t an issue?
The answer reveals what to focus on or work towards.
Happy New Year!
If you want to learn more about planing a season, hit reply and ask.