Octopus Productivity Solutions
Octopus Productivity Solutions
Goal setting starts with a yearly review
If you set goals last year and didn’t meet them, don’t let it get you down. My year definitely didn’t go as planned. But – don’t just set the same goals again.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – possibly Einstein
A brief, systematic review of the past year can make goal setting far more effective. Here are some ways you might want to approach this:
- Start, Stop, Continue: For each important area of your life – health, family, work and so on – ask yourself: What should I stop or start doing, and what should I do more of. These simple questions can unlock insights into your year.
- Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For: While Start, stop, continue generally is focused on your actions, this approach is a bit more holistic, asking you to dig a bit deeper into your feelings and emotions about your year.
- Use your data: We have so much data available to us now. For example, fitness and sleep data from your Fitbit, nutrition data from your calorie tracking app, calendars where you can see how you spent your time, journals, dashboards or reports for your job or company, message history and so on. Reviewing data takes away our natural biases and lets you really see what you did with your year.
If you’d like help reflecting on your year, clarifying your goals, or setting up simple systems to support them, I’m happy to help.
Here are a few prompts to get you thinking:
Reflection prompts
- What parts of my business gave me energy — and which drained it?
- Where did my time go without real payoff?
- What am I doing out of habit that could be delegated or automated?
- Which clients or work felt truly worth it?
- If my business supported my life better, what would change week to week?
Reflection prompts for small business owners
- What parts of my business gave me energy — and which drained it?
- Where did my time go without real payoff?
- What am I doing out of habit that could be delegated or automated?
- Which clients or work felt truly worth it?
- If my business supported my life better, what would change week to week?
Productivity is so much more than just checking things off a list. It’s having the right list that will build you the life that you want. Productivity is more than checking things off a list — it’s making sure you’re working toward the life you actually want.
