Imagine who you could be, and then aim single-mindedly at that.
Planning your year is a pretty straightforward process, but an important one. Going into a new year without a plan leaves you open to allowing the random nature of life to choose your fate. Planning for the accomplishments you want to see yourself at least gives you an idea of what personal success looks like. Setting your parameters for success puts you on the path to achievement.
This Year Planner breaks your upcoming year into three separate sections. Fill out your high level goals within these sections and use them as your base to fill out your Monthly Planner, Weekly Planner, and Daily Planner throughout the year.
To download the Year Planner, put your email in the form below and we’ll send the template, along with every other planner template on this site, straight to your inbox.
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Your Year In-Depth
When crafting your year, think of yourself at the end of it looking back at something you could be proud of. Think of where you would like to be, that if you wrote down all your accomplished goals you could see them and say to yourself “Yea, that was a great year.”
This is what you will be aiming for.
We’ve separated the Year Planner into 3 sections: Professional goals, health goals, and personal goals. Within each, put your high level goals you would like to have completed by the end of the year. Don’t be afraid to write something down if it’s still on the vague side (things like “be stronger”, “eat healthier”, “make more money”, etc.) anything is better than nothing, although getting specific here is certainly more helpful.
Things might not go exactly the way you expect them to, but you’re at least giving yourself a chance to achieve something. Even a 1% chance of success is better than the 0% of you not aiming for anything at all.
Let’s break down each section a bit for some examples:
Each Section of The Year Planner
This Year’s Theme
The years theme should be an all encompassing word or short set of words that will describe the type of year you want to have. The easiest way to come up with a year theme is to see what was lacking most in your previous year, and set that as your theme for this year.
If you’re having trouble there, you can set the #1 goal you want to accomplish above all else as your theme.
Work & Business
This is where you will write any professional goals that you have for the upcoming year. This can be related to your current job, a new job you’d like to have, your business you want to create or work on, anything that relates to your work-related success.
Some ideas:
- Learning a new professional skill people will pay you to perform
- Working or starting your own business
- Making a specific amount of money this year
- Changing the industry you work in
- Selling a certain number of your product (or your first product)
- Completely clear off your debt
- Become financially independent
As long as it relates to your work goals, it’s valid and fits here.
Health & Fitness
Taking care of your body is just as important as taking care of your career. What’s the point of being successful if you can’t do it in a capable, healthy body? Most people aren’t where they want to be physically, so lay out your parameters for how much you can improve this year.
Some ideas:
- Lose or gain X pounds by year’s end or hit a certain body fat %
- Enter or win a specific athletic competition (marathon, weight lifting meet, iron man, etc)
- Be able to do a certain exercise (bench 315, do 20 pullups in a row, run a sub-6 minute mile)
- Drastically change your diet (100% vegan? Keto? Paleo?)
- Cook my meals and don’t eat out as much
- Meditate
Anything that will make you healthier than last year belongs here.
Fun & Personal Development
You have to have fun this year too, right? Planning for fun will fuel the motivation for the above two sections of your year. These can either be motivation, or things to look forward to, or skills and aspects about yourself that you want to develop that may not specifically boost your career.
Some ideas:
- Learn a musical instrument
- Start producing your own music
- Learn a new language
- Where you’d like to visit this year
- Be more productive and manage time better (like using a planner!)
- Wake up earlier
What’s the best possible outcome if you fully commit to this plan?
This section helps you realize just what the impact of achieving these goals will have on your life. This part is important because it will really help create an image in your mind of what the impact of success looks like, and makes you visualize the person you will be when you have achieved everything you have laid out above.
Using the Year Planner
Don’t be discouraged from filling out this Planner if the year already started. It’s mainly used as a base of inspiration for your months, weeks, and even days.
Have a great year! You can put your filled year plan in your brand new planner that you can make yourself at home.