One of the most helpful parts of bullet journaling for me has been using it to set goals for myself and being about to track my progress and re-asses my goals as time progresses. I used to think that goal-setting was intimidating and that I was just setting myself up to fail or be disappointed. And to a certain extent I was, but only because I would write down my goals for the year and then set them aside and not look at them again until the next year. I wasn’t keeping them present in my mind throughout the year so of course I wasn’t prioritizing them! When I started bullet journaling I tried a few different strategies for setting and tracking goals for myself before I settled on a way that seems to work for me. Bullet journaling alone has been so helpful for setting and fulfilling goals because I sit down and reflect for a few minutes whenever I set up a new time period in my journal.
Yearly Goals
At the beginning of the year when I’m setting up my journal I take some time to start a list of goals for myself. I try to make some that are a bit ambitious and some that are more attainable. This helps me not get discouraged throughout the year (when I’m kicking ass on the attainable ones) while also challenging myself (with the harder-to-achieve goals). To give you an idea of how that looks, here are a few of my goals for 2019:
- Read 100 books
- Learn to make pasta
- Find an exercise plan I love and stick to it
- Weekly date nights
- Monthly wine club
- Weekly face masks
- Keep paying student loans, more than the minimum if possible
- Organize and de-clutter my apartment
I track these goals in different ways. I keep a list of all the book titles I’ve finished in my bullet journal. I fill in a box in my journal for every workout class I finish. And I track my weekly and monthly goals by making little notes of what I do each day.
Monthly Goals
As a way to help myself stick to my yearly goals, I also set monthly goals when I set up my month in my journal. These are both more small-scale goals and reminders of the yearly goals, meaning they’re sometimes just repeating the yearly goals and sometimes they’re more mundane things that need to be accomplished during the month. For example, some of my February goals:
- Weekly date night
- Go to at least 16 spin classes
- Clean the top of the dresser (I keep all my jewelry there, I promise I’m not just avoiding dusting)
- File taxes
Finally, the last thing that helps me with goal-setting is to re-asses my goals. If I realize that I don’t actually want to be doing one of the things I originally set as a goal–as in I suddenly have a personality change and don’t want to do face masks anymore, not as in the goal is hard because getting up early to work out is hard–I stop. If it’s not working for me or making me happier or helping me in some way then I’m not going to keep doing it. Realizing something is no longer working for you and changing course is not the same as quitting or giving up. This is something I have to remind myself frequently, so hopefully this reminder helps!
Do you set yearly or monthly goals? How do you track them or help yourself meet them? Let me know, maybe it’ll help!
Oh that’s helpful to have monthly goals reflect your yearly in smaller ways! I tend to do monthly/weekly goals and break it down to what chunks I can do per day to meet them!