Will 2014 Be Your Best Year Yet?
In the book, Your Best Year Yet!: Ten Questions for Making the Next Twelve Months Your Most Successful Ever
, the author, Jinny Ditzler, offers 10 questions to make your yearly planning a lot easier. The thoughtful process takes about three hours to complete, and she asks the following questions:
- What did I accomplish over the past 12 months?
- What were my biggest disappointments?
- What did I learn?
- How do I limit myself, and how can I stop?
- What are my personal values?
- What roles do I play in my life? (Father, wife, teacher, student, writer, consultant and so on)
- Which role is my major focus for the next 12 months?
- What are my goals for the next year?
- What are my top 10 goals for the next year?
- How can I make sure that I achieve them?
Out of the questions your top 10 goals for the next twelve months will emerge, and Jinny Ditzler recommends that you have no more than 10 goals. I completed the process a couple of months ago, and as you can imagine, my top goals are completing my liberal arts education, creating a membership site, and starting an online book club. Your goals should encompass all aspects of your life, so I also have goals for health, leisure and wealth.
I have written previous posts on Your Best Year Yet!: Ten Questions for Making the Next Twelve Months Your Most Successful Ever by Jinny Ditzler, but I think the process is important enough that it’s worth repeating annually. I like this particular process because it looks at what went well, what didn’t go so well, the lessons you learned in the process and the kinds of barriers you faced, and which ones are self-imposed. When you honestly work through the 10 questions, you are setting yourself up for success because you know what to expect from yourself and you are also able to develop strategies to work around all the things that limit you.
When you think about it, an investment of three hours is more than reasonable, and anyone can take the time to create a plan for the next twelve months. An additional step is to take each goal, or at the very least, the most important ones, and break them down into the critical actions you have to take to accomplish them. This increases your likelihood of achieving your goals for the next year. I also recommend that you read Your Best Year Yet!: Ten Questions for Making the Next Twelve Months Your Most Successful Ever by Jinny Ditzler.
Author Bio: Avil Beckford, an expert interviewer, entrepreneur and published author is passionate about books and professional development, and that's why she founded The Invisible Mentor and the Virtual Literary World Tour to give you your ideal mentors virtually in the palm of your hands by offering book reviews and book summaries, biographies of wise people and interviews of successful people.
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