Plan To Succeed This Year

It’s the time of year again, where we say goodbye to the year that has passed and welcome a whole new year.

There is something magical about a new year, it gives us the chance to reflect, to renew our goals and most importantly it gives us the ability to reach new heights in our growth as an individual.

2016 is the year we do something great, no more putting off starting that novel or putting off starting a project that you feel will be the next million dollar idea because you think that there will come a time in your life where you will be less busy.

There will never be a time where we will ever be less busy so why not then maximize the time that we have now to plan out our year because as Benjamin Franklin to put it quite aptly; if we fail to plan we plan to fail.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when planning for the New Year:

1. Give Ourselves Our Time First

Many a time we tend to neglect to develop ourselves and reflect on things that will be crucial to our development.

Therefore in the New Year while we start off the year on a new, it would be great if we could first book an appointment with ourselves.

It is advisable for us to set aside half an hour to 45 minutes of our time to really reflect and think about areas of improvement or areas in which we wish to pursue.

If we want this year to be better from the last we need to start with having a date with ourselves.

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2. Start with the End in Mind

Other than spending a little more time to ourselves, another element that we could incorporate into our New Year’s routine would be to never lose sight of the bigger picture.

In the book ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ by Stephen Covey, he says that one of the best ways to be effective is to picture the end or the results in your head and then work backwards from that point.

This method helps us plan better and to stay focused on the goal by avoiding unnecessary or unimportant steps that leads us away from our ultimate goal.

Don't repeat the same mistakes year in and year out.

​We have found that it's not just enough to 'picture the end', rather a more effective approach would be to write down your end goal and then work backwards using an Action List.

I would recommend you to write your end goal in the Thriving Goals Journal.

It helps you to keep on track each day taking you one step closer to achieving your #1 goal​.

Get the Thriving Goals Journal for FREE here when you get a copy of our bestseller, Potential Matrix book.

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3. Expect the Peak Periods

While planning our year, we need to be honest with ourselves and understand that we will have peak periods.

These peak periods are periods in which we will have to attend to commitments in our daily lives to a point that we will not be able to make time to grow and work towards maximizing our full potential.

When planning to succeed we would have to factor in these periods in our lives to be able to come up with a realistic goal to work towards.

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4. Maximize the Low Periods

As with peak periods, there will also be times in the year where we will have low periods where we have ample of time to explore and catch up on courses and readings that will add to our growth.

Many a time when we are being given the opportunity of low periods, we would unknowingly procrastinate and fill our time with other ‘distractions’.

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In order to avoid these distractions, we should also plan to value-adding activities such as catching up on reading or taking a course that would help you up-skill.

5. Take Time Off

Sometimes when life gets too hectic, we would have to take a break which is why when we are planning for the year we would also have to factor in vacation time.

It’s best to pick places that we wish to see or things we’d like to do to relax as part of a personal reward to ourselves with a specific date and time planned out.

Taking time off is a great way to not only give us more reasons to work towards our goal but it also gives us time the much needed rest we need to recharge and to come up with great new ideas and ways of doing things.