Goal Setting to End the Year Strong
It is tempting to coast at the end of the year. Taking the week off between Christmas and New Year’s is something many entrepreneurs do. In fact, many companies shutter the doors that week because they know employees won’t be as productive in the midst of holiday cheer.
I am all for kicking back and spending time with my pets and my human family, but I look at the end of the year as a way to end strong and ramp up for the coming year. That shiny, bright, untouched new calendar beckons, and I can’t wait to fill it with new ideas, blog topics and events to further my blogging and social media career.
Today, let’s look at goal setting to end the year strong!
Access 2016 goals
Did you have goals for 2016? Did they come to fruition? Celebrate the goals you met.
Revisit the goals you didn’t. Why didn’t you meet them? Perhaps they didn’t suit the direction your business took. Knowing why you didn’t meet them will help you plan for the upcoming year.
If you still have goals you NEED or WANT to meet before we say goodbye to 2016, get to work on them now. Either dedicate a block of time in your calendar to work on them or work on the unfinished goals in bite-sized chunks to get them done.
Are your goals S.M.A.R.T.
No matter how you work on goals, they should be S.M.A.R.T. (Specific. Measurable. Attainable. Relevant. Timely.)
When assessing whether your goals are S.M.A.R.T. use these metrics;
- Specific. Ask the “who, what, where, when and why” for each goal.
- Measurable. How will you determine if you’ve met the goal? Have a measurable outcome.
- Attainable. Don’t stack the deck against yourself. For example, if your goal for 2016 was “write a book,” chances are that is not attainable in the last two weeks of the year.
- Relevant. Do your goals fit your business plan, your niche and your dreams?
- Timely. If you’re looking to finish items before the end of the year, that is your deadline. If you have a goal of “write a book” but have no deadline attached, the project will have no momentum. Make it time sensitive, “write a book before March 2017.” (Naturally you will need to make the “write a book” goal S.M.A.R.T. as well)
Write it down
I cannot stress this enough. If you don’t write down your goals they are merely dreams or want-to-dos. Write down the goal, the metric for success, your timeline and get to work. Writing goals down may seem simplistic, but writing it down helps keep you focused and moving forward.
Believe in your success
Believe you can achieve the goals you’ve set. Don’t second guess yourself. Don’t look at other bloggers or influencers and think, “I’ll never be as great as they are…” Why can’t you be as great? There’s no reason. You just need to be willing to put in the work to make it happen.
Up next week: Look Back On 2016 To Make 2017 Even Better! With a free download to track your social media and blog numbers from the first of the year to where you are now, plus tips to take what worked and make it better in 2017. Look at what didn’t work, determine why and figure out whether you need to work on that again for 2017.
Robbi Hess is an award-winning author, full-time writer, newspaper columnist, writing coach and time-management guru. She works with bloggers and solopreneurs and blogs at All Words Matter.
