Top Tips to Plan Your “New Year”
Happy New Financial Year! We won’t be giving you financial advice. It’s time for some classic New Year tips and tricks to help you plan and manage goals & changes for your “New Year” to come.
While many of us wait until January to prepare our goals and investigate new ventures, we’d like to encourage you to reflect on your processes and the “year” gone by. Some important questions and follow-up questions to ask yourself during reflection include…
1. What went well?
Why did it go well? How can this be replicated or expanded?
2. What didn’t work?
Why did it not work? What changes can you make to improve this result?
3. What new goals do you have?
What actions can you take to achieve this? How will you measure your progress?
These are just some examples of basic questions that can help kickstart your review and help you plan. Remember, it is important to provide considered and honest answers. Acknowledging potential faults to yourself is crucial to making improvements.
After any review, it comes time for ACTION! We understand that many people can get caught up in the regular routine and it can make it tricky to stick with new changes. To help you persist with your changes and goals, we’ve listed a couple of handy tips below to make things easier on yourself.
1. Break up your tasks
When you set yourself a large project or goal, it can sometimes seem impossible to achieve when you place it alongside all of your other critical daily tasks. You may ask yourself “When am I going to find time to do all of this?” This is why it’s important to break things down into smaller, more manageable tasks that over time will help you reach your overall goal. If you’re looking at implementing a new system or process, it can be beneficial to incrementally investigate it in your own time.
2. Create a timeline/ schedule
Set deadlines and keep to them! If you can plan and space out your tasks then you find things can be far easier than you expected. If you also break up your tasks as discussed above, then you can find it extremely manageable to work through your tasks frequently and regularly while maintaining your regular schedule.
3. Keep Things Visible
If you prepare a great plan or strategy but leave it on a messy desk, in a drawer, or hidden away in a computer folder, it can become very easy to lose track or forget about your upcoming tasks. Print out your timeline and stick it somewhere extra visible, or input your individual tasks into your digital calendar. Keeping these tasks visible and top-of-mind goes a long way to ensure you keep on target. These tips above may seem pretty common or straightforward but that just goes to show how simple it can be to set up an efficient way to manage your time and achieve your goals.
