Setting My Goals and Intentions for 2024: Looking Ahead with Hope
Happy New Year! Yes, 2024 is finally here and I am so excited to see what the year has in store.
At this time of the year I set goals and intentions to propel me forward into the future. They’re not the aspirational “new years resolutions” though…these are well-thought-out goals with actual plans. Sometimes I don’t even set new goals; I’ll just refresh an old one.
And the best part? Each goal lasts for 90 days at a time. It’s about 12 weeks, or what I call a “season”.
Neuroscience has my back on this, too. Psychologically speaking, your brain can only imagine yourself about 90 days in the future. After that time the brain starts to view the future version of yourself as a completely different person. That’s why 90 days is the perfect time horizon to set a goal and get it done. It’s the most realistic timeframe for making progress and achieving a goal.
Using the 7 Life Areas To Assess and Create My Goals
I have been using the same strategic planning framework for assessing and creating my goals for the last 5 years. The process is summarized in the picture below: Review, Reflect, Visualize and Plan.
The Visualize step is one of my favorites because it contains a self-assessment of the 7 Life Areas. In this step, you consider how things in your life are going currently in that area and then ask why. Just like when you’re using GPS you first need to know where you are so you can figure out how to get where you’re going. You will rank your current status on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 = unsatisfied and 5 = satisfied).
The 7 Life Areas are:
Faith
Fitness
Family
Finances
Fun
Friends
Field / Career
Once these Life Areas all have a ranking with them you can average them together to get an “overall” life score. Don’t be surprised if some of the areas rank higher than others - that’s perfectly normal! (I’ve had some seasons with a life area score of 1 and another life area score of 4… it all depends on what’s happening in your life!)
From there, you can use the life area score to plan out where you want to go. Is there a Life Area that ranked really low that you’d like to put more effort into? Or perhaps there’s a Life Area that scored a 4 that you’d like to bump up to a 5?
I recommend creating a Mind Map (like this free download) to sketch out what you’d like to do in this next 90 day season. As you add branches to the map, allow these questions to guide you:
What do I want to do with my life?
What do I want to have?
What kind of person do I want to become?
Over the next week I’ll review each Life Area in more detail, including examples of goals from my own life, resources that helped me achieve them, and encouragement for you.
Cheers to the new year!