Hi, Emm from @planwithemm here! You can find me on Instagram and YouTube.  Can you believe we’re halfway through the year? (Alright, mathematically speaking it might not be quite halfway, depending on when this blog gets posted but STILL) This is the time to reflect on 2024 thus far, set new goals, evaluate our systems, and make adjustments as needed. Today I’ll be walking you through my personal goal setting process for a midyear check-in.

Let’s dive in!

SUPPLIES

• Notebook:  I used an A5 size notebook to make sure I had tons of space, but pick whichever size is your favorite.
  
• Calliographs
• Your pen of choice

You could also jazz these spreads up with some stickers or washi tape ! Make sure to use my affiliate code PLANWITHEMM10 to save 10% at Archer and Olive.

WHERE DO I EVEN START?

For a lot of people, setting goals can feel so intimidating. How do I know what I want? What makes something a goal vs a task?

Here’s the secret... anything can be a goal! Whether it’s getting out of bed, creating a piece of art, or walking on the moon, they all count as “goals”. They’re just different categories of goals. Your maintenance goals are often smaller tasks that keep you at a given performance level. Think of this as your regular practice schedule, the tasks you need to complete to operate at your current “level”. This could be taking 5 minutes to sketch, move your body, or update your budget.

The next step up would be our growth goals! These are usually more laborious than our maintenance goals, but serve to help us GROW. This might be adding another run to your training schedule, tackling a new project, or trying out a different art medium. These deepen our skills in our goal areas or help create new skills!

Finally we have our stretch goals. These are the cherry on top to your growth goals and are meant to be challenging! (If they weren’t, we wouldn’t have to streeeeeetch to achieve them 🙂). This is running that marathon, renovating your house, starting a business, all of the things that deep down you’ve always wanted to do but have never felt quite ready to do. These goals can feel scary - and they are without the appropriate preparation!

Having a good mix of different types of goals allow us make progress, while not trying to do too many things at once. There are only 24 hours in a day - you physically cannot do EVERYTHING. From month to month, your goal focus areas may change to allow you to reach new highs in other areas while maintaining your progress. 

SETTING GOALS

There’s so much discourse on how to set good goals, but the SMART goal system is a great place to start. I’ll give an example for someone wanting to learn a new instrument.

Specific: The goal is concrete. Think “I want to learn how to play the guitar” vs “I want to be more musical”.
Measurable: The goal has a measure for success. When is it completed? Is it the first time you strum a guitar or when you can play a song?
Achievable: This is where we really set ourselves up for success. It may be hard, but it should be possible with the resources you currently possess. In order to learn how to play the guitar, I’ll first need to acquire a guitar.
Relevant: The goal should make sense for what you want to complete. If I want to learn how to play the guitar, picking out the perfect outfit for my open-mic night might not be the place to focus first. But finding an instructional course for beginners would be!
Timely: What’s my deadline? How often am I working towards this goal?

I also break my goals into categories, as it helps me better organize my thoughts. Often my goals in a category (financial, home, wellness, etc) will relate to each other and push me towards identifying any subconscious stretch goals I may be working towards. For example - if I find myself setting a lot of goals around reducing debt and spending, my ultimate goal may be to be financially secure. 

As you’re reviewing your goals from January, remember that you’re likely not the same person you were when you set those goals. If they no longer feel relevant or useful for you, there’s nothing wrong with omitting them from your new list! This is meant to help you achieve what you want, not what you think you “should” be doing.

MINDMAP

It’s worth noting that most of the “goals” I write down don’t actually fit into the SMART framework initially and that is NORMAL. When I go to break them down into actionable steps, that’s when it transforms into a goal that’s specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. Start with an idea or goal: This might be a feeling (“I want to be happier”) or a vision you have for yourself (“I want to be a runner”). I started with “be stronger” as my core thought and then created a mindmap for achieving it. 

From the initial thought of “be stronger”, I broke it into categories based on what I would need in order to reach it. In my case, I broke it into exercise, nutrition, mental, and rest. This could also be subgoals or subtasks that you can continue to drill down on. This is meant to be a brainstorming exercise, so there’s really no wrong way to do it. Just keep writing until you feel like you’ve summarized everything you’d need to be successful.

From here, pick a few items that jump out at you. What would have the most positive impact on your life right now? Circle or highlight those items in your mindmap. For me, it was a focus on protein, diaphragmatic breathing, and positive self-talk. These are items that we’ll then create SMART goals for!

So for diaphragmatic breathing, my goal might look something like “I will practice 3 diaphragmatic breaths when I wake up and before bed each night this week.”. This is something that I can track in my journal too! For each action area, write a goal, and then rewrite until it feels SMART!

If you want to try out some of mindmapping of your own, I’ve created a printable to get you started!

MONTHLY RESET

So we have our SMART goals, we’ve mapped out some actions to help us get there... now what?

I often find myself feeling overwhelmed with all of my to-do list items and my goals slip through the cracks. Other times, I get blocked by tasks that past me didn’t do (i.e. it’s hard to take a spin class when I never unpacked the bike, oops!). In this case, it’s the perfect time for a monthly reset! This helps us start off on the right foot and clear those “must-dos” or obstacles so that we have the time and motivation to get after our goals.

To no one’s surprise: it’s brain dump time again. What are all of the things that we need to do? What’s in my way? What would make me feel like my best self? This reset can occur with whatever frequency you’d like, and may have different tasks depending on the length of time (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc). I made a monthly reset, as I tend to repeat the same items to begin each month. Tasks I included on my monthly reset include

• Making my monthly budget
• Meal prepping food
• Decluttering
• Tidying the house
• Coordinating my friend dates
• Setting monthly goals
• Queueing workout classes

Then we DO them. Set a timer and knock out as many as you can in that time. Starting is often the hardest part, so getting over that hump is a huge accomplishment. And then we keep going until we’ve finished! This reset may take time, so you can account for that in your plans and start early. But all of the time spent resetting will be absolutely worth it when everything is handled, you can breathe easy, and now have the bandwidth to start working towards your goals.

And voila! We’ve now checked in with our progress during the year, set some new goals to help us reach our potential, and identified systems that can help us reset when we’re struggling. You can also check out the associated YouTube video for these spreads and check out this blog for more goal setting inspiration.