Goal-Setting: It's Not Just for New Year's Anymore

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Do you make New Year's resolutions? Set monthly, weekly or daily goals?

Yeah, me too. I actually enjoy my January goal-setting session, especially now that I think of it more as a way of planning the future than a self-improvement session.

I think that shift in thinking occurred when I retired. Faced with lots of blank pages, I set monthly goals for myself, and found that I enjoyed thinking about what I wanted to accomplish. Now, back on an academic year schedule, I tend to follow up my January session with at least one summer session. I even have a leather-bound planner I've dubbed my "Brainstorming Book" that I use just for this purpose.

A few weeks ago, I paved the way for my midyear review by spending part of a Saturday morning clearing my head of my to dos by writing them all down in a quasi-organized fashion. You'd think that would have been satisfying -- and it was.

But it wasn't enough.

A new planning session arose from that one, one where I corralled all of my to-dos and wanna dos into one notebook. It's a small, summer-themed journal that will fit perfectly into almost any bag so I can continue to add to it as I go. As such, it's a work-in-progress.

Much like my goals.

Tim Arterbury via Unsplash.com

So, it was only natural that creating the summer notebook led me back to reviewing my goals and revising them for the second half of the year.

I happy to report that I've made progress on many of them and, since it's a midyear review, I still have lots of time to make more progress. Writing things down really does set me up for success. Even when I don't realize it, those plans and goals are in the back of my mind, and, because of that, I keep taking baby steps toward them.

What goals do you have for the remainder of the year? How will you progress toward them?