“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
When December rolls around, people start thinking about WHAT their New Year’s Resolutions are going to be…
And while on January 2nd the gym is full of motivated people burning off those holiday calories…
Come back a month later and most of those people are back to their old habits.
And if you’re an entrepreneur, maybe you’re busy setting strategic goals for your business this year.
So the question is…
How many of your goals will you actually achieve?
How do you avoid “repeating history” and making the same mistakes?
How do you set the RIGHT goals that you’ll actually follow through on?
And the answer is by making a shift in the way you plan and set strategic goals.
There are a few steps to the way that I do this in my business.
The first step is reflection.
This is where you take a look back at the past 12 months to analyze what went well, what fell short, and what your biggest takeaways are.
I do this every year, and I present my “Top 10 Lessons Of The Year” to my Next Level Mastermind.
Here are some things you want to focus on:
- • The 10 biggest wins in your business in the last year
- • 3 top lessons you’ve learned
- • The greatest influences that have had an effect on your business in the last year
- • The smartest decision you made last year
- • The biggest risk you took
- • One word that best sums up and describes last year’s experience
- • Three things you need to do less of in the next year
- • Three things you need to do more of in the next year
- • Three things you need to stop doing altogether in the next year
For example, in my business, one of my top lessons last year was do LESS, but BETTER.
And we shifted our focus in the business to reflect that, doing fewer promotions and emails but making them better value.
And this is just one example.
Once you’ve taken an honest look at the past year, it’s time to take those lessons to plan for next year.
And the BEST way to plan your year is in CHUNKS.
Yes, you want to have a 3 year plan, and a 1 year plan.
But when it comes to getting things done and achieving big goals, I’ve learned a lot from my friend Todd Herman, creator of the 90 Day Year program.
Todd is a big advocate of planning in 90 Day chunks, and here’s why.
The great thing about 12-week planning is that it’s short enough of a timeframe to stay focused and not lose sight of your goals, and a long enough time to execute and get a lot of work done…
Because you’re aware that the deadline is around the corner, you’re almost always on high gear focused on executing your most important activities.
3 Reasons Why 90 Day Planning Is Better Than Annual Planning
- 1) It’s more predictable – Can you honestly see what’s going to happen 6 months down the road? You only have assumptions. Annual planning is objective-based, while 12 week planning is action-based. For the next 12 weeks, you can specify with high certainty the actions you need to take to achieve your goals.
- 2) It’s more focused – You don’t to have a dozen of objectives to achieve, you’ll only focus on few goals (3 or less).
- 3) It’s more structured – You’ll actually IMPLEMENT the stuff you plan for, instead of just saving it in some document and forget all about it.
So here’s my challenge for you:
What are your top 3 goals for the next 90 Days?
And what will it take for you to make those goals a reality?
Todd has a very specific system to making these 90 Day sprints work…
And he lays them out in his new free workshop (including WHY so many people never reach their goals, despite their best intentions).
If you want to have a more productive year, you NEED to watch this video series.
It will change your perspective on productivity and achieving goals in your business FOREVER.
Set aside the time right now to watch. You won’t regret it.
Ryan :-)