Make 2020 Your Most Productive Year Yet

Photo by Isaac Smith on Unsplash

It seems hard to believe that we are at the end of another year, and the end of a decade. This time of year always gets me thinking about the year past, what I accomplished, what I didn’t and how I’m going to make next year even better.

I think it will surprise no one to know that planning is one of my favorite activities. In fact, my 30 minute, end of week planning session is something I truly look forward to each week. During these sessions I reprioritize what I didn’t get to this week (usually not too much), I review my task list and my calendar for the week ahead, and I make sure that my plans are realistic. I don’t assign myself any tasks on days where I’m in back to back client coaching sessions (because, realistically and at best, the only thing I’ll be able to do other than those sessions is process email). If I’m working on a big project, I make sure to do it on a day where I have a few hours of uninterrupted time. In essence, I think about my goals for the following week, and I make concrete (and ruthlessly realistic) plans about how I’m going to achieve them. (I also do a mini-version of this every day, looking at tomorrow.)

Now that 2020 is right ahead of us, it’s time for some end of year planning. It can feel daunting because a year is a really big timeframe. So I’ve put together a resource for you that will help you get clarity on the year ahead, and then make concrete plans to make your goals happen. It’s a simple, 3 step process and you can download it HERE.

But here’s a quick snapshot of what you’ll get inside:

1. Define your top 3 goals for your personal life and your work life. Get clear on why these are important to you, what the actionable next step is to move forward, and when you’re going to take action.

2. Review last year through the lens of “keep, start, stop”. This isn’t about judgment, it’s about deciding what works, what doesn’t and what you’d like to try. I’m a firm believer that we don’t always know what’s right or what will work until we actually experiment in our own lives. We experiment, we gather data, then we iterate. This is how we make better decisions and keep our lives going in the direction we want.

3. Define your word of the year; what’s the word or phrase that will be your north star this year?

You know that saying “a dream without a plan is just a wish”? Well, download this resource HERE to add plans to your dreams, so you can make it happen in 2020, whatever “it” is.