Setting Life Goals — A JOYFUL NOISE

Goal setting and planning is a subject that I am passionate about and have studied a lot and thought deeply about. I believe that it is essential to use our time well and maximize our personal resources - time, talent, money, skills etc. If we don’t know where we are going then it is easy to gradually be swept to nowhere at all.

We live in an incredible age with so much at our fingertips. It is exciting to be apart of a rapidly advancing world BUT I believe that we also live in an age of time wasting. The fact that “binge watching” is an accepted term provides evidence of that. There is so much more that we can be doing with our time - so much to learn, so many productive ways to relax, so much air to breath. The trickiest part is identifying the how and why and in what ways we can best maximize our resources. That is where planning and goal setting comes in.

I have seen planning work in my life as I’ve implemented it and work to do it better. I haven’t always been a planner but once I learned how to do it and found the spark for it, I have been astonished at how much more I can accomplish. It is something that I believe takes time to master and a skill that I am constantly working to perfect. My purpose in writing this is fueled by a hope that there is something here that you can apply to your life that can help you as much as these concepts have helped me.

#1 Learn How To Daily Plan

There are a ton of resources to help you learn how to daily plan. Planning is the ONLY way that large things are accomplished. Big things are made up of small things. If you don’t already daily plan, I highly encourage it. This is something I learned to do on my mission using Preach My Gospel and it was a life changer. If I had gained nothing else from my mission other than the skill to plan in the morning and before bed, my mission would’ve still been worth it.

If you’ve never really done consistent daily planning then I recommend starting by doing some research online for methods that will be realistic for you. There are a lot of planning resources and ways to daily plan that fit a myriad of situations and brain types. Find one that’s going to actually happen. I am really liking a new method of planning explained in a book called The Bullet Journal Method. There is also a blog about it, if that’s more your cup of tea. The book has a lot of extras that are kinda nonsense but the method itself that he explains is amazing and has been really helpful.

There are lots of planners out there but one that I really like and that I have been using for 3 years now is the Rifle Paper Co. 12 month planner. There are millions to choose from though that can fit your needs.

#2 Always Have Goals

Achieving goals takes careful thought, self-discipline and some level of skill depending on the goal. The better you get at making goals the more you will be able to achieve. A basic guide for goals is making S.M.A.R.T goals. It is an acronym that I think is explained well here and here. If you’re not historically much of a goal setter then that is a good place to start.

#3 Make the Right Goals

Last summer, after talking with Mitchell about our goals, I was thinking deeply as I fell asleep about what we, as a couple, were truly driving toward and what we want to accomplish together. I couldn’t sleep because all of all the thought swirling around and so I woke up and put it all on paper - what I’ve learned thus far about setting life goals and advice I have for setting proper goals. I later edited it and turned it into a usable PDF.

If you want a copy of it I have set it up so that you can put your email here and it will be emailed to you. You will automatically be put on my email list but you can unsubscribe in the email that contains the PDF. I wanted it to be on a PDF cause the graphic designer in me wanted it to be better designed and more accessible to read rather than just a plain layout. Hopefully there’s something there that can be helpful to you as you work to accomplish your goals.

Please share with ME any concepts that you’ve found to be helpful as you make your resolutions, or plan for the New Year etc. in the comments below. I’m always looking to improve.