Your Time, Your Way

Hello and welcome to episode 162 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

Back in October, I shared with you a simple template you could use to brainstorm ideas for what you want to accomplish in 2021. Now the idea behind that is you give yourself a few weeks to think about this and there are a few areas where you can give some thought. Your lifestyle, your career, your relationships as well as your bucket list and how you can challenge yourself.

So, this week’s question centres around what happens next with this list.

Before we get to this week’s question though, I would like to thank everyone who took part in my holiday sale this year. Without your support none of what I do to help people would be possible. So thank you so much.

Okay, on with the show and that means it’s time for me now to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Richard. Richard asks; Hi Carl, I downloaded your annual planning sheet and have filled it out. You mentioned that when we get to December we need to filter this list into a few actionable goals. Could you tell me how you would go about doing that?

Hi Richard, thank you for your question and thank you for downloading the planning template.

Now, before we start, if you would like a copy of this template, you can still get it from my download page on my website. What it is is a series of six questions about what you would like to change in the new year. These range from your personal life—your relationships, your health and fitness to your professional life—how you do your work, whether you would like to change your career etc.

The purpose of these questions is to provoke you into thinking about what you want from your life and once you have a set of ideas written down, you can move on to the next stage—which is where Richard is asking for some tips.

So, once you have your ideas written down, what do you do next?

Well, the first step is to go through your list of ideas. Many of the ideas you collected will likely be unrealistic at this stage. For instance, you may have written down on the list to sell your house and buy a yacht and live in the South of France. A wonderful idea, but perhaps realistically, this is not going to happen in 2021, but could be something for 2025. However, while you may not sell up and buy a yacht next year, you may find there are a few things you could do next year. You may decide you would like to visit a harbour in the South of France as part of your holiday next year and get some ideas on the types of Yachts available. You may want to do some research on how to buy a yacht, what second-hand ones cost etc.

Working on these areas keeps the idea alive and also builds excitement towards the ultimate goal.

You may have a few ideas on your list that you could work on next year. Health and fitness, of course, is a common one. With the restrictions on our movements this year, you may have accidentally gained a few pounds in weight and you want to get yourself back into shape. So, you can bring that forward to a goal or project to work on.

With something like that, all you need decide is when will you start and how will you do it. Let’s say you want to lose fifteen kilograms (around 30 pounds or 2 ½ stone). So by when would you like to lose that weight? For something like this, you would probably best do it over a six-month period. So, giving yourself six-months, how much weight do you need to lose per month? That would be 2.5 KGs - that’s a realistic—and more importantly healthy—figure to aim for.

Next up would be how? How will you do it? Will you diet only—a tough way to do it—or with you combine a little dieting with exercise? If so, what kind of exercise will you choose?

Let’s say you decide to do cycling, then perhaps you need to get your bike serviced, or even buy a new bike ready to get started.

So, from that one idea, you are likely to find you have a number of tasks to perform to put yourself in a position to be able to start from the 1st January.

Or you may have to change your career on your list. With something like this what skills will you need to be able to switch careers? Do you need to go back to school and get some formal qualifications? If so, there’s your starting point. Research possible universities that do courses that will give you your qualifications. Will you need to save money or could you get a grant? There’s a lot of research there. So, you may decide January will be your research month

Other items on your list could be to create a purpose-built home office so you can move towards working from home career. One thing this year has done is to accelerate the changes to the way we work. So what would a project like this involve? Would you turn your basement into a home office or your spare bedroom? What will you need to purchase?

So, as you can see, from the ideas you have collected over the last month or two, you will have quite a few ideas that you can now expand and turn into projects and goals for 2021.

So, where do you plan all these out?

For me, I take the projects and goals I have decided to work on and create individual notebooks or folders for them in my notes app. I have a master note for each project or goal where I can transfer the original idea and I will then brainstorm the next steps to making this happen.

Let’s take the Yacht example, I may decide this is not going to happen until 2025, but next year I need to investigate the costs involved. How much would a boat cost to buy? Can I get a finance package? How much will harbour fees cost? What are the maintenance costs etc? While I may not actually buy the yacht in 2021, there could still be a lot of preparation work I could do.

You can then keep your collected information in your created notebook. Things like quotations, website links and meeting notes.

For your fitness goals, you can collect inspiring pictures and articles and keep them in your project notebook. You can also create a training log in there to track your progress.

The way I see it is, October and November are my idea generation months and December is where I plan out the projects and goals I want to accomplish next year.

Now, a few tips here.

Remember you are limited by time. You only have twelve months and so try not to do too much. The idea with the annual planning sheet is you keep it in your notes app so you can refer back to it next October when you restart the process. You don’t have to do everything next year.

I break things down into quarters. So, one of the ideas on my list is to write a book next year. I love writing books but find I am limited by time. But, next year, I have planned out to write the first draft of the book in the first quarter. I want to find an hour a day to write the book. That’s not too difficult as I already know I spend an hour a day on various social media channels and YouTube. So I can cut that time down and write my book instead.

Another project I have is to re-record all my courses that are not in HD. That’s five online courses. So, I will do one course every two months. The content is already there, so I do not need to plan out the courses again—I still have the outline. All I need do is review the outline, update where necessary and then set aside two or three days for recording. So it is a realistic project for next year.

I am using Todoist’s new boards feature to plan out when I will do these projects and that means I can see what I have planned for each quarter and make sure I am not overloading myself.

Overall, you will find this process exciting. It also acts as a real motivator as well because it gives you a goal for the year and these goals and projects are goals and projects that will improve your life and push you forward towards a life you love living.

You can also add in places you want to visit for when the world opens up again—don’t worry it will. We humans are natural adventurers—so I am planning a trip to the UK and Ireland in the second quarter next year. Really excited about that.

But remember, you don’t have to do everything you wrote down next year. You can hold some back for 2022. I do. One the beauties of this is you start to see a trend. If you keep writing down something like move to the countryside—something that has been on my list fir the last four years—that could be an indicator that there’s something deep inside that you really want to change about your lifestyle.

You may not be in a position to move next year, or even in 2022, but it might be a realistic plan for 2025. With things like this, you can ask yourself what can I do next year that will make that move closer?

So there you go, Richard. There’s quite a lot you can do in December to really start to make some of these goals and projects a reality. Enjoy this planning time. It’s a lot of fun, it’s inspiring and motivating and it leaves you very excited about the start of 2021.

Good luck and thank you for your question.

Don’t forget, if you have a question you would like answering on this show, then all you need do is email me—carl@carlpullein.com or DM me on Facebook or Twitter. All the links are in the show notes.

It just remains for me now to wish you all very very productive week.