2018 Goals + 10-Year Plan + My Word for the Year
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Happy January!! It’s the most wonderful time of the year! A natural blank slate. A fresh start. An opportunity to put life on “pause,” reflect, and adjust our sails.
Some people begrudge January and “resolutions” because it seems to be an arbitrary time to change. But I think when the calendar gives us a good opportunity to designate a starting point, it’s great to take stock in our lives and our choices and adjust so we can have more alignment between our values and our reality.
This year I’m setting goals in a new way. I’ve been reading Tim Ferriss’ book Tools of Titans and in the book he asks a question: “What might you do to accomplish your 10-year goals in the next 6 months, if you had a gun against your head?”
While my 10-year goals are not possible to achieve in the next six months (due to the nature of them building on things over time), it did make me ask the question:
What do I want my life to look like in 10 years?
What do I want to have accomplished when I look back on this decade? Where do I want my career to be? Family to be? Finances to be? Health to be? Where do I want to have spent my time?
As a result I made a bulleted list of what I want to have achieved in 10 years. Then I decided to work backward.
What do I need to accomplish THIS year to get me to where I want to be in 10 years?
Then I worked backward again.
What do I need to accomplish in the next three months to get me to where I want to be in 1 year to get me to where I want to be in 10 years? (Get it?)
Then I worked backward again. What do I need to do in January that leads me to three-month goals > one-year goals > 10-year goals?
And thus I have a list of items to plug into my calendar this month that align with my values and will help move the needle toward where I want to be 10 years from now.
And let me make a seemingly obvious point: what I want to accomplish over the next 10 years WILL change. And some of it will change as a direct result of the growth I’m experiencing in pursuing my “10-year goals.” So it’s never all for naught. Pursuing something, even if it will change, is the way to find your new goals and to grow.
So as I was thinking through this 10>1>Q1>Jan process, a word hit me that truly encompasses what I want to do: steward.
I want to make choices that reflect being a good steward of what God has given me: my time, my talents, my health, my money, my relationships.
So that’s my word for the year and it helps inform every decision I make.
If I am being a good steward of this aspect of the life God has given me, what choice am I making? The answer is almost always clear.
I’d love to hear—what is YOUR word and why did you choose it? What does it mean to you?