Monthly Goal Setting Planner

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Last week you learned how to start creating your future with monthly goals. Hopefully you took some time to get started with your lists or, even better, finished them. This week I wanted to give you a free tool to make creating your future even easier. The Monthly Goal Setting Planner will lay out everything you need to set your monthly goals, make a daily to-do list to achieve them, and evaluate what worked (or didn’t) each month. This planner is basic, straightforward, and pretty making it the perfect tool for you. Simply print out your worksheets each month and fill them out. All that’s left is to rock your goals!

This free Monthly Goal Setting Planner will lay out everything you need to set your monthly goals, achieve them, and evaluate what worked each month.

[bctt tweet=”Start creating your future today with this free Monthly Goal Setting Planner! #goals #planner” username=”diyadulation”]

This free Monthly Goal Setting Planner will lay out everything you need to set your monthly goals, achieve them, and evaluate what worked each month.

Setting Your Monthly Goals

This is the first sheet you need to start your month out right. You can see the details for effectively choosing goals each month with Creating Your Future. Use this worksheet each month to document your goals and reference it often. Ask yourself “How does this help me achieve my long-term goals?” when deciding on activities to do and even books to read. This determination now is the key to living the future of your dreams.

 

This free Monthly Goal Setting Planner will lay out everything you need to set your monthly goals, achieve them, and evaluate what worked each month.

Creating a Daily To-Do List

You’ve read my tips to Dominate Your To-Do List but now it’s time to take it a step further. Use the second worksheet in the Monthly Goal Setting Planner to create daily actions that work towards your goals. Choose one action per goal each day with the exception of goals that only require weekly or monthly actions. An example of this would be my goal of weekly family nights. This only needs to be slotted once a week.

Note:

  • Choose these from your broader goal categories and not the specific sub-goals. You will notice that there are only 5 numbered points for each day. This is the maximum that I recommend adding to your existing daily to-do list.
  • These to-do lists will not be the same for each day. Be sure that you are working towards each of your sub-goals weekly.

 

This free Monthly Goal Setting Planner will lay out everything you need to set your monthly goals, achieve them, and evaluate what worked each month.

Evaluation

The last step is an end of the month evaluation is the final step to take for ultimate success. The 3rd worksheet in the Monthly Goal Setting Planner will walk you through figuring out what was or wasn’t successful and why. Reference your monthly evaluation sheet when planning your goals for the next month. Make tweaks and changes based on your evaluation to accomplish your monthly goals with growing success.

This free Monthly Goal Setting Planner will lay out everything you need to set your monthly goals, achieve them, and evaluate what worked each month.

Now that you know how to use it are you ready to download your copy of the Monthly Goal Setting Planner? I feel so strongly about helping your create your future that I am offering it for free to everyone! No sign-ups, emails, or money needed, just click the link and download your copy today. Stop reacting to your life and start creating it! Don’t forget that I’m taking this journey with you and you are not alone. Check back at the beginning of each month for an unfiltered look at m CYE Monthly Goals successes and failures.

Creating Your Future: November 2016 Goals

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One of my biggest pet peeves is people who go through their existence acting as though life just happens to them. Your life is something you create. Your actions have consequences as does your inaction. That is why I’m taking the initiative to create my future and I want to help you with creating your future too. The key to creating your future is as easy as monthly goal planning. I’m going to show you how to create specific, actionable goals that will start building the life you desire.

Affiliate links may be used in this post. Ordering a product through these links may result in a commission. Read the full disclosure here.

The key to creating your future is easy. I’m going to show you how to create specific, actionable goals that will start building the life you desire.

Divide Into Categories

When listing out your goals divide them into categories. Don’t just create a long list and hope you get through it. Organizing your goals makes them easy to stick to and easy to reference throughout the month. You also want to limit the categories you choose. If you choose too many then you will be too unfocused to accomplish any of them. Here are some category ideas to help you out, but remember not to try to do all of these in one month:

  • Family
  • Business
  • Finance
  • Fitness
  • Professional
  • Travel
  • Self-Improvement
  • Educational
  • Homemaking
  • Religious
  • Creative
  • Journaling
  • Holiday
  • Savings
  • Weight Loss
  • Organizational
  • Home Improvement
  • Cleaning
  • Long-Term* (See section below about long-term goals)

 

The key to creating your future is easy. I’m going to show you how to create specific, actionable goals that will start building the life you desire.

Long-Term Goals

This is the one exception to choosing extra goal categories. Everyone should choose 3 long-term goals. This step should also be done first. Identifying your long-term goals first allows you to ensure that supporting goal categories work towards achieving your ultimate goals. For example, if you want the freedom to travel when and where you want in 3-5 years then your professional, business, and/or finance goals are needed to achieve this.

 

The key to creating your future is easy. I’m going to show you how to create specific, actionable goals that will start building the life you desire.

How to Choose Your Goals

Step 1

As I said above, choose your long-term goals first. Here are my current long-term goals:

  1. Pay off student loans.
  2. Earn 10k a month from my site and side hustles.
  3. Spend summers travelling with my family.

Step 2

Next, number a post-it note (or scrap piece of paper) 1 through 3.

Step 3

Use the list at the beginning of this post as a reference and write down the categories that you feel correspond with each long-term goal. Overlap is perfectly fine as you can see in my example:

  1. Finances, Business
  2. Business, Organizational
  3. Finances, Business, Family

Step 4

Choose 4-5 categories to set monthly goals for. Be sure to include the ones you listed in step 3 then fill in the empty spots left. Here are my categories:

  1. Business
  2. Finances
  3. Organizational
  4. Family
  5. Self-Improvement

Step 5

Create specific monthly goals under each category. Again, be sure not to overload yourself with more items than you can reasonably accomplish in one month. You can see my November goals below.

[bctt tweet=”The key to creating your future is easy and I’m going to show you how! #createyourfuture” username=”diyadulation”]

My November Goals

Business Goals

Finance Goals

Organizational Goals

Family

Self-Improvement

There you have it. These are my goals for the month of November. I look forward to sharing this adventure with you. Are you ready to start creating your future along with me? Don’t wait to see what happens, be the catalyst behind it.

See where I’m linking up!

Vision Boards Are Not Intuitive

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Sometimes you take on a project that seems simple but turns out to be fairly difficult for you.  This can be a recipe you are making for the first time or a DIY project that isn’t cooperating.  For me last week, it was creating a vision board.  I saw all of these beautiful vision boards on Facebook that, frankly, could have been considered works of art (they were that gorgeous).  I had never made a vision board before but I believe in the concept behind them and thought, “How hard could it be?”  It turns out, very!  Apparently vision boards are not intuitive, at least, not for me.  If you are struggling, too, take heart that you are not alone.

 

Apparently vision boards are not intuitive, at least, not for me. Here is the best list I could discern from my research about how to make a vision board.

 

[bctt tweet=”Apparently vision boards are not intuitive, at least, not for me. Here is the best list I could discern for making one! #visionboard”]

 

Apparently vision boards are not intuitive, at least, not for me. Here is the best list I could discern from my research about how to make a vision board.

Getting Started

I sat down on my living room floor after the kids went to bed armed with:

I had New Girl on Netflix to try to channel my inner Jessica Day and began flipping through magazines.  If you read How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions then you know I already had my goals for the years.  To provide continuity of vision I was looking for quotes and images in the magazine that represented those existing goals.  About thirty magazines in I only had 3-4 pictures pulled out.  It was then that I realized I had no idea what I was doing!

 

Apparently vision boards are not intuitive, at least, not for me. Here is the best list I could discern from my research about how to make a vision board.

Researching Vision Boards

What’s the first thing you do when you want to learn how to do something immediately?  You Google it.  So that’s what I did.  Want to know what I learned?

There is no hard and fast way to create a vision board.

I love lists and specific, defined steps when doing anything new.  Those lists don’t seem to exist for vision boards.  To help you out, here is the best list I could discern from my research:

Wait… Huh?  So a vision board can be anything made out of anything to focus on anything.  Oh… Now I get it.  Not!  In the end, I decided to go with this Huffington Post article by Elizabeth Rider to use as a guide.

Finishing the Vision Board

My vision board has 4 focal points (one in each corner):

Apparently vision boards are not intuitive, at least, not for me. Here is the best list I could discern from my research about how to make a vision board.

Publish

Apparently vision boards are not intuitive, at least, not for me. Here is the best list I could discern from my research about how to make a vision board.

Business

Apparently vision boards are not intuitive, at least, not for me. Here is the best list I could discern from my research about how to make a vision board.

Travel

Apparently vision boards are not intuitive, at least, not for me. Here is the best list I could discern from my research about how to make a vision board.

Personal Growth

Apparently vision boards are not intuitive, at least, not for me. Here is the best list I could discern from my research about how to make a vision board.

Once I got all of the pictures and quotes on the board, it still wasn’t inspiring.  I had to figure out a way to make it something I would want to look at.  How did I do that?  I added Hello Kitty of course!  Once she was on there, the rest of the vision started falling into place.  I added flowers for a 3-dimensional pop and glitter because no project is complete without glitter.

 

Apparently vision boards are not intuitive, at least, not for me. Here is the best list I could discern from my research about how to make a vision board.

 

Apparently vision boards are not intuitive, at least, not for me. Here is the best list I could discern from my research about how to make a vision board.

Apparently vision boards are not intuitive, at least, not for me. Here is the best list I could discern from my research about how to make a vision board.

The process of making vision boards can be challenging but chances are, you will learn something about yourself whether it is what your goals look like to you or what truly inspires you.  I, for instance, learned I cannot be inspired by anything that isn’t pretty.  This experience also cemented my belief that Hello Kitty really does make everything better.  Have you made a vision board yet?  What did you learn about yourself in the process?

See where I’m linking up!