New Year 2023 - Making It Your Best Year
A new year is here and with that many new opportunities, experiences and memories to be made. In order to make the best use of this year, it is crucial to take some time to plan it out, consider our wishes and wants and take the opportunity to make it a year based on our design.
Each year, made up of months and weeks represents an opportunity for growth and change, to step into the shoes of who we want to become - To start living in a direction that feels more aligned with our true selves.
I hope you are excited for this year as much as I am where prosperity, progress and good health will be abundant for all. If you are interested in your own development, join me on this journey of growth to set foot into the new year with good energy and intention.
Wishing you a Happy New Year and that you keep finding my posts useful and interesting to read.
ADVICE ON GOAL SETTING
At the start of the year is when most people set their annual goals or at least in some form make a plan for the upcoming year. Regarding this goal setting, I wanted to provide you with some general goal setting advice which you can use for mapping out and following through on your own goals which you set yourself for 2023. I hope you find them useful 😊
Focus on achieving one goal at a time, instead of juggling 10 different ones
Be realistic with the goals you set yourself in terms of the time frame you expect to achieve them in
Additionally its beneficial if your are passionate and invested in the goals you set yourself, as you will be much happier and motivated during the execution process, ultimately helping you follow through until the end
Consider how will you measure the progress you make towards your goal (This will be different depending on the type of goal you have)
Split the goals you set based on different categories to make it a more balanced approach (Examples: Health, Career, Personal, School, Relationships etc.)
Avoid setting too many goals per category per year as that may make it seem over whelming to follow through and keep track of everything
When starting out with your goal, always keep in mind why you wanted to reach this goal in the first place
In order to visualize your goals more, its might be helpful to construct a physical mood/ picture board which visually represents the goals you want to reach and can also be displayed in your room for your own reference
Consider how you will keep yourself accountable for reaching your goals (Examples: Tracking your progress on a physical tracker, partnering up with a friend, using an app etc.)
It is also really important to be specific with the type of goal you want to reach so that you exactly know at what point you have reached your goal
Set a time frame in which you want to reach your goal
If you are planning on working through a larger more difficult goal, break it down into smaller sub goals which are more manageable
To keep yourself additionally motivated, consider setting yourself a reward for reaching a goal of yours
In order to keep track of your goals, it also helps to write them down somewhere, either on a piece of paper which is then displayed or on your phone - Somewhere where you can clearly see them
23 QUESTIONS TO PLAN YOUR 2023
Which 3-5 new habits do you want to establish this year and how will you implement them into your lifestyle?
Which habits and routines will you carry through into 2023 from 2022?
Which habits do you want to quit in the new year?
Which 5 main goals do you want to set for your professional/ work life?
Which 5 main goals do you want to set for your personal life?
How will you keep motivated and accountable for seeing your goals through until the end?
How will you manage and deal with potential setbacks throughout the upcoming year?
Which relationships do you want to strengthen this year and which ones do you want to cut off?
How can you implement more of the activities which energize you and less of the ones which drain you of energy?
Which new skills or knowledge do you want to acquire?
Which books do you want to read?
Which places do you want to visit or travel to?
How will you take care of yourself in the following year?
How will you minimize your main time wasters?
How will you optimize your work and make your use of time more efficient and effective?
How will you make sure to have fun throughout the year?
Which mindsets do you want to adopt for 2023 and which ones do you want to leave behind?
In what ways do you wish to grow as an individual, in terms of what do you want to improve about your current self?
Where do you see yourself at the end of the year (What are you doing, what have you achieved, which people are a part of your life?, where are you on your personal journey, what struggles have your overcome)
How do you want to feel by the end of 2023?
What are you looking forward to or excited about in 2023?
If you had to describe your ideal 2023 in 3 words, what would they be?
What do I want to remember the year 2023 for?
CONCLUDING WORDS
This blog post represents the first post of 2023, where we discussed all things regarding making 2023 your best year yet and how to effectively plan it as well as set goals. I hope that you have found this topic valuable and interesting, because I certainly did find it useful and will be using these questions for myself. If you have not yet made a review of 2022, here you can learn about how to do just that.
In this new year, I wish you all so much success, prosperity, good health and so much laughter and new memories to be shared.
As always, thank you so much for reading and stay curious!
How To Make The Best Of 2021
With 2020 now behind us, it is time to start looking ahead into the new year, 2021. In order to make the best of the year ahead, we have to make sure to set our goals, our intentions, and establish a vision in terms of what we want to achieve for this year.
Creating the "best year of our life" is not something we are just given, so we have to input effort and work into making it the "best" we can.
With this blog post, I hope to share some advice on how to make this year great and full of amazing opportunities, how to set goals for the new year, and how to get what we want from this year.
If you want to join me in the journey of making 2021 an amazing year, I encourage you to read on and I hope to fill you with inspiration, motivation, and ideas to power you up for the upcoming year.
You got this :)
SETTING GOALS - THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFOREHAND
Consider the 5 W's:
What resources will I need to achieve my goal?
How long will I need to get to my goal?
Why do I want to achieve this?
How will I achieve this?
When will I make time to work towards my goal?
Have a source of feedback throughout the process of getting to your goal
Identify some potential problems, setbacks, and distractions before starting
Breakdown long complex goals into simpler and shorter ones
Frame the goal as a learning task and not just a performance task
In order to make sure that you get to the end, consider potential outcomes and rewards you will give yourself to motivate your progress further
THE PROCESS OF SETTING GOALS
START WITH SOMETHING GENERAL
I am pretty sure that the majority of you who will be reading this will have already been familiar with the SMART format of setting goals, where the S stands for Specific and requires us to set a goal that is primarily specific and requires us to know exactly what we want to achieve.
However, whenever I try to use this template, I find that trying to be too specific in the beginning is not the right approach because a) I’m either not sure how specific to get about a goal and b) because it actually hinders my process of getting to the goal because it encourages the mentality of having to have everything figured out before you can start moving towards your goal. I am not however saying that this is a problem for everyone, however, if you do find this issue familiar, then I suggest first set a general direction in which you want to go.
For example in the case that you want to be more of a physically active person, say that you want to start running more. This is your general direction. If you instead straightway force yourself to be super specific about what you want to achieve, you are more likely to get stuck before you even start.
GET SPECIFIC
Once you have a general goal in mind, start thinking about the specific of it and begin to narrow down what exactly in that field you want to achieve. This stage is also where you implement all the other aspects of the SMART goal format which are also essential to consider when setting goals.
Other areas to consider:
Measurable: How can I measure my goal? When will I have known that I have achieved my goal?
Attainable: Is this goal realistic with my current circumstances and will I be able to properly manage my time and energy to achieve it?
Relevant: Is the goal that I am heading towards relevant to me and meaningful enough for me? If it is not relevant enough to your personal interests, you are likely to lose motivation in the initial stages
Time-bound: In what time period do I want to achieve my goal? How frequently will I be working towards achieving my goal? On a daily, weekly, monthly basis?
IMPLEMENT
Now that you have made your goal much more specific and you are much more precise in terms of what you want to achieve, start to implement the necessary actions that will take you towards your goal.
Put aside one week to test out and see how you do with sticking with your goal and how realistic it is for you. This is the time where you are able to see all of the faults in your goal and all the other things you did not take into account during your goal-setting process.
For example, if your goal was to read 50 pages of a book each day for 7 days a week, and you found out that realistically you were only able to read that 4 days in a week, then that is a sign that you need to adjust your goal.
The point of this step is not to make you guilty that your goal was set inadequately, but instead to allow you to see the ways in which you have to alter your goal in order to actually achieve it. The theory is often very different than when we practically apply something in our life.
ADJUST AND IMPLEMENT AGAIN
After you have tried to implement the necessary actives on a daily basis you would have likely noticed that more adjustments have to be made to your goal. Maybe you were expecting too much from yourself, maybe too little. Perhaps you did not have enough disposable time in your day, or you simply did not find the goal enough interesting or meaningful by the end of the week.
This is all okay and all should be treated as valuable feedback towards creating more realistic and relevant goals.
Now take these adjustments and changes and input them into your initial goal. Change things around based on your previous experiences, and give things another shot. Set aside once again another couple of days of experimenting and see whether this time you do better with sticking to the goal.
If you find yourself still slipping back and not sticking to what you set out to do, look towards making changes once again or perhaps considering other areas that may be preventing progress, such as maybe not having enough personal discipline to stick with it. This simply means that you have to improve on some other areas before starting out on achieving your goal since you will need some other skills r knowledge in order to get to the finish line.
For example, if your goal is to make 3 drawings per week in order to make you fit for an art competition and you are a beginner at drawing, maybe the issue is not that you don’t have enough time or motivation, but perhaps you would need a little more work on your art technique in order to enhance your drawing ability. This will later then greatly help you out with coming closer to your goal.
GO AND ACHIEVE IT
Once you have made your goal specific, have tried it out in practice, and had made sure to make any necessary alterations to it, now is the time to go out, commit to your goal, and also achieve it.
You will with no doubt encounter setbacks and delays in between the progress, but just keep pushing, adapting, and pursuing your goal. Let your goal be flexible because life around us is constantly changing so make sure to take that into account when moving towards the finish line.
I recommend that you do this exercise with a maximum of 3-5 goals per time because otherwise it just becomes too much to handle and think about, especially if we have already got plenty of other work on our back.
QUESTIONS TO REFLECT ON
What are my top 5 intentions for this year?
What am I going to continue doing?
What do I want to change completely?
What will I do to step out of my comfort zone?
How will I make sure to learn from my future mistakes?
What are the top 3 things I want to accomplish this year in my academic life/ career?
What are the top 3 things I want to accomplish this year for my health and personal wellbeing?
What are the top 3 things I want to accomplish this year in terms of my health and personal interests?
What will be my purpose this year?
Which existing relationships do I want to focus on and strengthen?
What kind of new people do I want to attract into my life?
In what ways will make this year matter to me when I look back?
How will I help and provide value to others?
What personal qualities do I want to strengthen?
What skills do I want to learn?
How will I take care of myself?
What places do I want to visit?
What occasions and opportunities will I say “no” to?
Who will I ask for help and support from?
What kind of person do I want to become next year?
Top 10 Productivity Tips
Everyone likes the idea of being productive, however many of us fall into the traps of procrastination and distractions, that hinder us from becoming the best version of ourselves. Here are my personal top ten tips that will boost your productivity, work output and efficiency.
TIP 1: Time Tracking
Tracking your time is more than just a productivity tip; It enables you to identify how long it actually takes you to finish a task and it also encourages you to fully focus on the task at hand without any distractions, ultimately leading to a higher quality piece of work.
The Pomodoro time tracking technique is very popular, where you work for 25minutes, have a break for 5 minutes and repeat. However, if you feel that you can maintain focus for more than 25 minutes, go ahead, just do not neglect to have breaks in between.
Tracking the time you spend on tasks can be done by simply setting a timer on one of your devices or installing time tracking software which can automatically start and stop timing when taking a break.
Some of my favourite time tracking software:
Toggl (Individual and group tracking)
Focus keeper (Pomodoro style)
Emphasis (Pomodoro style)
Forest (Paid application)
TIP 2: Eliminate Distractions
A crucial aspect of keeping focused is putting aside all potential distractions, which prevent you from entering a "flow state", which is defined as a “optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best" by the author of the book Flow, Mihály Csíkszentmihályiwhich.
Methods of avoiding distractions include:
Muting notifications
Placing your devices in less convenient places
Setting time for focus and time for taking a break
Use website/ internet blockers (Eg: Freedom and Cold Turkey Blocker)
TIP 3: Stay Energized
For us to be able to execute a task well, we must be physically and mentally in shape first before we can fully commit to doing it. If we neglect any of the daily biological necessities that keep our minds sharp and our bodies in shape, we firstly see a decline in our focus, motivation and clarity of thinking, which inevitably leads to lower productivity - something that we do not want.
It is also important to mention that the neglect of one of these essential caretakers (such as sleep) will lead to us having even less energy and motivation to complete other important habits (such as exercising), clearly resulting in a vicious cycle that is hard to stop.
Ways of energizing ourselves:
Sleep minimum 7-8 hours each night
Eat a varied, balanced and whole-foods based diet
Try and get in at least 30 minutes of exercise per day
Being out in fresh air
Taking a nap in the middle of the day
Replacing sugary drinks with water
Meditation
TIP 4: Plan out Your Day In Advance
By planning the following day the night before, you instantly know exactly all the things you have to get done that days so you waste less time deciding what to fit and not to fit onto your to-do list.
When planning your day ahead I would plan for:
Small and large tasks and projects I have to start or complete (in order of priority)
How you will avoid and deal with potential distractions and issues
How long you will spend on those tasks and then using a timer to track the time spent
What resources will I need to get those tasks done in time
TIP 5: Task Prioritization
It is not only important to consider what you add onto your to-do list but also which tasks are most important to get done for that day. This way you at least know that if you completed your highest priority tasks, you did the most important work.
Often times we like to start with the tasks that are shortest and require last effort, making them lowest priority tasks, but if we take time to consider how we will tackle and complete larger, higher priority tasks, we will get much more satisfaction and reassurance that the hardest work has been done already.
Prioritize tasks based on:
Importance and effort needed (proximity to a deadline)
Amount of time needed
In the case that we feel overwhelmed by the number of tasks we have on hand, it is an important skill to learn when to say "no" to opportunities. We should say "no" to opportunities when we know we have too much on our plate for another task, when the task will not bring much value or opportunity to our life or when we do not find the opportunity interesting because we have other more interesting occupations already.
TIP 6: Avoid Multitasking
This is again something that links to the idea of a "flow state", whereby multi-tasking we are not applying an equal amount of focus to the tasks we are doing simultaneously, but we are instead only diverting our attention when ever we switch to a new task. This way all of the tasks that we are multitasking on will be of lower quality and it will even take us longer to complete those tasks as our attention is continuously distracted.
In creative fields specifically, where a lot of idea generation and periods of extended focus are needed, I would try and limit the amount of multitasking, but instead, try and complete tasks one after another in their order of priority.
The only times when I would require multitasking:
When doing a repetitive task
When doing a task that does not require creative thinking
When doing a task that we are highly familiar with and not much thinking is required
TIP 7: Break Up Large Tasks
Often when starting a large project-based task, we feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work that lies ahead of us so we don't even feel like starting because we don’t even know where to start with the task.
To overcome this issue, I recommend dividing you larger task into smaller more tangible tasks that will still make progress towards your larger task but will not overwhelm you.
When splitting up a task, I would consider the following:
What is the end goal/ result of me doing this smaller task?
How long will it realistically take me to finish each small task?
When is the deadline for the whole task to be completed?
How much effort and resources will each small task cost me?
TIP 8: Identify Your “Why”:
You should always have a reason for doing something, a larger intention that stands behind your actions, otherwise, what’s the point of doing anything?
Identifying the reason behind doing something is not always the easiest thing, so before starting, ask yourself:
Why am I doing this task?
What will I get out of it by completing it?
Who am I doing the task for? (Myself or someone else)
By clarifying your intention behind each task, you also create the underlying factor of motivation that powers you through the task and allows you to keep the end goal in sight, increases the chances of you finishing the task and at the end, also makes you more proud of what you have completed thus far.
TIP 9: Set Realistic And Achievable Goals
Unlike the last tip, this point focuses on the output value of the tasks you do in the form of setting goals that guide and allow you to complete the task in the first place.
Purpose of setting goals:
Guide us in the general right direction
Motivate us to work towards something
Defining what is "enough" for us and when to stop with something
However I do want to clarify, that while goals are important, it is important to not keep them in our foresight all the time, but instead, we should be using them as an every so often reference point to check that we are headed in the right direction.
Because goals should be specific and well defined, there are different types of goals for this purpose:
Progress goal: I want to improve my piano playing skills
Numerical goal: Focus on reaching a certain number/ figure (Eg: I want to save up X amount of money by the end of the year)
System goal: A output shcedule that you follow on a regular basis (Eg: I will go to the gym 3x per week)
I believe that focusing on numerical goals is not a good long term solution, as they are often unrealistic which leads us to be disappointed if we don't achieve them. On the other hand, a progress or system goal allows you to stay more committed to your goal as a long term solution and makes sure that you are headed in the right direction.
When setting goals, it is important to consider:
How will I achieve my goal: What steps will I take towards completing it?
How long will it take me to complete it: When is the deadline?
How will I measure my goal: How will I know that I have completed my goal?
What resources will I need: Physical resources, time, money, energy, social connections
How will I stay commited to my goal: Being accountable to someone or reminding myself?
TIP 10: Just Start and Don’t Complicate
As simple as it sounds, it can’t be overstated that the only way to get something done, is just by starting it. We often procrastinate from starting a task by doing excessive planning and thinking about starting, but then we never actually end up starting.
Its always easier to dream about, plan and think about starting than putting in the actual effort of starting
By just starting and acknowledging that no one is perfect when they initially start out, it frees your mind from judgement and self-doubt that is often faced when starting something new, which allows you to develop your ideas organically as you grow. Starting is the first proactive step to take and only once you start you will be able to figure out all of the other smaller details in your journey because it takes starting and building real experience to direct yourself in the correct direction.
Don't overthink, just start. You will figure things out as you go and that should never be a prerequisite for starting out in the first place because no one has everything figured out when they first start out.
Enjoy the process.
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