2017 Goals and Milestones
I’ve had a note with this title in my Simplenote for a few months now. The note has the months listed and bullets for important events like birthdays, anniversary, school, vacations. Also goals for Work or Education or Personal development. A compact high-level view of the year compared to, say, monthly Google Calendar that you can revisit every month or so.

With your notebook or smartphone or laptop, just take yourself out on a date at say, a coffee shop or restaurant. Have a Planning session, in the same way most corporations have their annual planning and budgeting meetings.

What are the major aspects in your life you’d like to put energy into? 

Examples may be being a good student, a good wife, a good sister, a good friend, an industry influencer, a high-potential employee, an Instagram celebrity. List them and try to do something that will contribute to each aspect every month (or every quarter, whatever will be realistic with the time and resources you have). 

Example

JAN

FEB  

MAR

• Health: Bike shopping (?)

…

JUN

• 16 – Professional development: enroll in x course 
• Look for therapist

…

JUL

• Daughter: confirm before or after school care/pickup/dropoff

…

SEPT

• 1 – Daughter: School starts
• 20 – Sister: birthday greeting 

Ongoing review 

Every start or end of month, revisit your Year note. Did you do everything for January? If not, ask yourself why, maybe it was too much and you can move your item to a later month. Or you may need to reallocate time and/or money for you to be able to include it the following month. As you do this regularly, you start to have a feel for what your pace is and what you value. You may decide to add or remove some items as the months go by, and that’s okay. 

Happy Planning for 2017!