I strongly believe the main reason that 2013 was the most productive, fun, and interesting year of my life was due to the goal setting exercise I performed below…
A few days ago, I published the framework I used to create holistically ambitious goals last year.
Below is a transparent view of my thought process to craft my goals for 2014 culminating in a list that displays all of them.
The Goal Setting Process
The first step was to revaluate and confirm the areas of my life that are most important to me. In no particular order they are:
- Family / Personal / Social Well-Being
- Personal Development
- Professional Development / Business Growth
- Finances
- Health
- Faith
- Fun / Leisure / Recreation
After establishing these steps I completed the following statements:
I want to develop more…
- Freedom from email and minutiae
- Mental resilience to unhappy people a.k.a haters
- Control of my mental states (high energy, happy, etc)
- Connections in the publishing, blogging, and online marketing industry
- Brazilian friends
- Freedom from the imposter syndrome I feel at times when I create content or give advice
- Deeper conviction around my belief system (What I believe success to be, What I believe about myself etc)
- Marketing skill
- A greater abundance mindset
- Awareness of my personal and business financial health
- Paid speaking gigs
- Reach online (increase my audience size)
I want to become more…
- Present and attentive in the moment
- Persistent in all areas of my life
- Strategic and big picture focused on my business and life
- Conversationally skilled
- Less prone to indulgence
I want to get better at…
- Planning social activities vs. relying on other people to plan my social life
- Asking for things from my friends and network
- Portuguese
- Working smart
- Leading in all contexts, not just in places it comes naturally
- Being conversationally playful at all times (with friends, girls, family, business)
- Creating processes and documenting workflows to outsource all tasks that don’t require my expertise
- Boldly pursuing my desires regardless of what the external world tells me or expects
- Establishing conditional “quitting times” for personal and business pursuits
- Salsa dancing
- Thinking big picture before executing
- Surfing
- Limiting my availability for things that aren’t important
I’d like to spend more time…
- Keeping in touch and being attentive to all members of my family
- Reading books
- Performing isolated thinking and reflecting
- Pursuing non-career or personal progress oriented interests and activities
- Off social media
- Engaging with my faith and practicing gratitude
- Pursing and indulging in the delights of romance
- Focusing on “fun” business activities
I then plotted these aspirations against each life interest to make sure that there was balance I was okay with. To avoid repetition in this post, I’ll simply confirm that I was comfortable with the balance.
Next I tried to craft completable goals or habits from my aspirations. You can view the process of condensing aspirations into completeable goals here.
Below are my 2014 goals segmented by the important areas of my life from this exercise.
At the end of many goals you’ll notice [daily], [weekly], or [monthly] tags. These are so that I can easily organize and schedule them into the proper routines and rituals from this list.
My 2014 Goals:
Family / Social Well-Being
- Plan 2 trips with friends that YOU initiate. Ideally there’d be people on the trip who’d never met prior.
- Send an email update every 2 weeks to my grandparents, sister, and other interested family members. [bi-weekly]
- Maintain skype schedule with Mom and Pops 2x a week [weekly]
- Hang out with at least 4 new Brazilians 1 v 1 each month in a non-dating context [monthly]
- Maintain my current practice of performing social post mortems after going out and to events – What did I do well? What do I need to improve or where did the conversational energy atrophy? What did I learn about conversation and human behavior? [daily]
- Double down on the people that are most important in my life by limiting availability to people that aren’t my family, best friends, customers or thought partners. Cut non-essential calls and meetings that I don’t initiate from 8 hrs a month to 2 hours scheduled one day a month.
Personal Development
- Create rule sets and anchor questions for the following encounters: encountering haters, social media absence, onset of imposter syndrome, overindulgence. Publish these once completed.
- Read more about mental state control and do the 10 day state challenge from “Awaken the Giant“
- Start each day establishing 1-2 big rocks that I want to accomplish and learn to welcome contentment once those are completed…this means stop working! [daily]
- Establish 1-2 pursuits that will take priority over everything else each month to guide daily prioritization [monthly]
- Revise current code of conduct using the Tony Robbins framework and review it regularly. The new code of conduct should include elements of leadership, having an abundance mindset, working smart, true confidence, persistence, ethical purity, and present-mindedness [weekly]
- Continue practice of writing affirmations [daily]
- Journal at least 4 days a week about current anxieties and limiting beliefs with a thought partner. Credit to Andy Drish via Zach Obront for this idea! [daily]
- Maintain schedule of responding to all emails 1-2 times a week and scanning email for critical things 1-2 a day [review adherence weekly]
- Perform 1 hr hour analysis each week of personal well-being. This should include a review of life balance, limiting beliefs, unresourceful nuero-assoications that need to be rewired, and scheduling experiences that combat limiting beliefs. The goal is to get as close to internalizing my ideal mindset as possible so that my actions manifest my deepest desires at all times instead of my desire to protect myself or ego. [weekly]
- For further cultivating an abundance mindset: Give a gift worth at least $500 cash to someone I don’t know out of compassion or empowerment. Give a gift worth at least $500 cash to a friend or family member out of compassion or empowerment
- Read 1 book a month, review current priorities before selecting. [monthly]
Professional Development / Business Growth
- Ramp up my virtual assistant work by offloading at least 1-2 routine processes per month to an assistant [monthly]
- Figure out what my next project is that isn’t an info product. Ideas I’m juggling/engaging with include: book, podcast, conference, software, and one I can’t talk about it ; )
- Reach out to one person a week that I admire over email [weekly]
- Set aside at least 1 hour every monday to perform an 80/20 of my business as well as perform isolated big picture thinking using directive question set [weekly]
- Attend two conferences or retreats where I can connect with people involved in online marketing and publishing
- Ask at least one friend or person from my network for help with something specific every week; ask to be establish during weekly 80/20 analysis [weekly]
- Attend a personal development focused conference or event….like Tony Robbins!
- Find a marketing mentor and establish a regular review of my projects and growth
- Grow my mailing list for life-longlearner to at least 15k by year’s end
- Complete all tasks necessary to get all my premiums courses in perpetual launch mode
- Establish conditional quitting times for: putting premium courses on 3rd party sites, my focus on digital products.
- Take on 1-2 paid coaching clients to see if I enjoy life/business coaching. Interested? Let me know here
Finances
- Review my personal and business’s financial health every monday. Make sure to incorporate 80/20 mindset into expenditure analysis [weekly]
- Get all of my business expenses in order and in one place
Health
- Maintain headspace meditation practice for 5 days a week [daily]
- Make it through Futebol Americano season healthy without any injuries
Faith and Gratefulness
- Read scripture 5 days a week [daily]
- Re-incorporate gratitude exercise into my morning routine [daily]
- Find a church in Rio that speaks English and begin attending regularly
Fun, Leisure, and Recreations
- Win a Brazilian National Championship with Flamengo Futebol Americano
- Spend a week learning Kitesurfing
- Organize 2 trips this year with friends. Ideally, the trips would include people who don’t already know each other
- Try flyboarding
- Attain fluency in Brazilian Portuguese (self-proclaimed!)
- Travel to 3 new countries
- Travel to 3 new American cities
- Take a getaway with a romantic interest…aaaribba!
- Spend 1 month where I salsa dance at least 5 days a week
- Spend 1 month where I attempt to surf 5 days a week (weather conditions might inhibit this)
Notes*
You’ll notice that many of these goal are more related to maintaining or developing a habits instead of specific achievements. This is because I’ve concluded that my personal happiness is more about consistently being the person I want to be instead of filling up my achievement trophy rack.
You can view the goals according to frequency [daily], [weekly], [monthly] to get ideas for building routines and systems here.
Like I did last year, I will maintain the schedule of reviewing and planning progress every two weeks. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep my progress public like last year because it takes some time to continually re-publish. A gente vai ver
During my regular review process, I’ll eliminate goals if I believe that they are no longer in alignment with my current interests or if I find particular practice is ineffective. I will not eliminate a goal because it’s hard or because I’m not making progress at the pace I want to. The right to do this comes down to intent.
If I’m on vacation, I’m not going to be as crazy about adhering to the daily and weekly routines. Beyond increasing output, my desire to be productive is for creating more time to do the things I enjoy…so when its playtime, play!
I hope that in some way or form that I can help you achieve your goals for this upcoming year.
What are some new goals that you have set for yourself this year that you hope to receive help from others with?
Are there any particular goals above that you’d like to add to your list? Let me know in the comments and maybe we can run after it together
Quick thanks to some cool people. You’ve inspired many of these ambitions whether you know it or not:
Mom + Pops, Charlie Houpert, Ben Altman, Dilan “Danger” Dane, Benji Wilson, Henry Houpert, Kenny Herman, Wiley Cerilli, Karin Roest, Dan Putt, Justin Mares, Ryan Denehy, Josh Isaak, Zach Obront, Andy Drish, Peter Yorck, Jackie Knecthel, Kristin Morrison, Amberly Miller, Alberto De Lucca Rademaker, Ed Termyna, and many others…
Inspiration at large: Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins, Mark Manson, Carl Lentz