2014 – A Simple Plan for Success!

Reflect

Take a good amount of time to really sit down and think about how you found 2013. Try simplifying your life into 3 areas – You, Your Social Life and Your Career. How would it look if you split your time spent in the year into a pie chart of these 3 things? Which of these 3 did you make progress in and which of these need improvement. Do you need to dedicate more time to one and less time to another? Should you make more time for catching up with friends or spending time with your family? Should you have spent more time developing yourself? Or maybe 2013 was a stagnant year for your career. Whatever the result, make sure you have a bit of a yearly review for your 2013 so you can learn from it.

Possible Questions to ask yourself right now to reflect on 2013 and help make 2014 an excellent year:

What did I do well this year?

What didn’t I do well this year?

Knowing what I know now, what would I do differently?

What have I learnt from 2013?

What are my strengths?

What are my weaknesses?

Objectives

Now it’s time to take what you have learnt from this reflection of 2013 and help it shape your 2014. Make a number of objectives for your next year based on all areas of your life. Goals give you focus and drive you onto succeed. Are you aiming for a promotion? What exact job do you want? Maybe it’s time for a new car? Get a picture of the exact one you want and post it somewhere – the same can be done for an ideal holiday or travelling destination. Learning to play an instrument or learn a new language, getting fitter or something simple such as reducing the time you spend watching television are all fantastic examples. Try to be specific though – don’t let it be a cloudy distant utopia, make it something tangible that you can almost taste if you work hard enough.

Objectives should always be SMART:

Specific –Make sure you know exactly what you want. It will make it that more real to you.

Measurable – Can you plot how close you are to your target? It’s useful to chart your progression.

Actionable – Logistically and logically is your objective possible? If not, then it will only de-motivate you.

Realistic – Similarly your target needs to be ambitious but not too ambitious. Again, unrealistic targets will only demotivate you.

Timed – Make sure you set yourself a time limit, or you will always be tackling it ‘tomorrow’. Today is when it needs to happen!

Strategy

How are you going to achieve these objectives though? Think of clear things that you can do in order to achieve these goals so that you don’t procrastinate and lose focus later on when you lose this early motivation. In order to get a promotion you may plan to network better, be more sociable or work an extra half hour every day. To learn a new instrument the plan can be simple as buying the instrument, hiring an instructor and then working out achievable levels throughout the year. Cutting down your television time can easily be done by finding something else to do which is more productive in that time. Make sure you write this down as it may be something you need to refer back to regularly in order to keep yourself on track.

Below is the sort of table you can use to chart your plans for 2014.