by One Playground
Fitness Playground Co-Founder and CEO Justin Ashley took the title of Australian Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Here, Justin takes you through his steps on how to set goals for 2024 and start the year as you mean to go on. It’s a process that will work for you too, no matter what you do or where you want to go.
At the start of each year, I spend anywhere from 4 to 8 hours following a process that helps me reflect on the last 12 months of my life (the wins, challenges and lessons) and set goals and habits that will improve my future.
You could do this on a yearly basis, or you could do it quarterly – to reflect on the last 3 months and plan for the next 3. The process I take ultimately leads to me creating a 1-page roadmap for the next 12 months. This process improves my gratitude and clarity while giving a guiding light to level up for the year ahead. This is the process I undertake. It will work for you too, no matter what field you operate in, what life stage you’re in, or where you want to go.
Step 1: Reflect on the Past Year (or Quarter)
Write down everything (yes, everything) that you achieved, in no particular order.
Some questions to help you get started:
- What are you most proud of?
- Who did you help and what impact have you had on their lives?
- What were your 3 highlights?
- What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?
- What were your 3 biggest lessons?
- What 3 small changes in your habits can you make ongoing that will have the biggest impact?
Step 2: Understand Your Personal Big Picture
If money and time were no object, what would life look like?
- Map out your ideal life (the more detail the better, and set when you want this to happen by).
- Map out your ideal day. If today was the perfect day, what would happen hour by hour (the more detail the better)?
- By reviewing your ideal life and ideal day, analyse and establish the 5-10 things that are really important to you.
- Define your 3-5 most important core values for 2022 (for inspiration to define your core values, see here).
Step 3: Set Goals for 2022
After defining your 3-5 core values for 2022, create categories for your goals, using your values and ideal life as a guiding light.
Some example categories are:
-
- Growth & Education
- Helping Others / Connection
- Career & Business
- Financial Goals / “Things”
- Health & Fitness
- Life Experience
Then establish 1-2 big goals you want to achieve in each category. Set your action plan for the upcoming quarter, to work towards achieving each of these goals
Step 4: Create Successful Habits
- What is stopping you from achieving your goals?
- What do you need to do more of?
- What do you need to do less of?
- What skills or education do you need?
- What does your week need to look like?
- What personal management tool will you use?
- Who can you share this with who can hold you accountable?
Step 5: FINALLY: Create a Roadmap
Take all of the information you have just written and use it to create a 1-page document. It can be written and/or visual. Place it somewhere you can read it every day.
Here is an example Roadmap that would fit on 1 page:
- Reflection: Top 3 Reflections from the past year/quarter
- Values: Top 3-5 Values
- Goals: Top Goal for each category (ranked in priority)
- Habits: 3 Habits to “axe” + 3 Habits to “add”
I hope this process is as helpful for you as it is to me. You can do it at the beginning of a new year/quarter, whenever you’re starting out with a new venture, or just when you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, off-track or lacking clarity.
