Setting Goals for The Year ahead
Hello and Happy New Year! I am Danielle King the founder of Kiht Collective. I wanted to write a personal blog post to start the year, like everyone in January I have been thinking about the year ahead and the things I want to achieve both professionally and personally. How I want to make a success of the next 12 months.
I wanted to write this article on goal setting to hopefully inspire you to do the same, and to also make me more accountable to the goals that I am setting!!!
Firstly, goal setting is not the same as a New Years resolution, as most resolutions don't make it past January! This is about setting yourself realistic goals that are achievable and you can work towards over the course of the year.
They are termed SMART goals - Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time Bound.
This may sound abit 'business jargon', but bear with us!! It does make sense!!
To get you started, think about the things (dreams) that you would like to do, be or achieve - these can be both personal, professional, family.....anything! Think about what would make you happier, where you would like to be this time next year.
For the year ahead, I have set goals that are both business-related and personal, I think most people struggle to balance work/life and thinking about your life as a whole rather than in separate compartments really helps marry these together. (if all your goals for the year were business related, you may find that you start to neglect other parts of your life, self or family.) I am a big preacher of balance, something I have learnt the hard way! So my focuses for the year are both!
To get started and properly thinking about it, I firstly blocked out a few hours of the day, in a quiet environment. You need some headspace and thinking time!! I used the free downloadable goal setting guide that Kat Horrocks put together, I personally found this more useful than others out there as it is more personal and reflective, I found other tools a little cold and business-like. As mentioned before, for me, goals are all about work and life as they come as a package.
Kat's guide gets you to have a think about what you have done so far and where you have come from, so you can then start to visualise the future 'think big' - but still in a realistic sense using the SMART principle.
From here I started to think about my 5 goals - in Kat's words, she advises no more, as that can be too many and become unrealistic! The last thing you want is to become overwhelmed by the goals you have set, you just won't do it.
5 goals for the 12 months - so our goals are:
1. Personal Growth - Get back to exercising 4 times a week to get leaner and stronger. By the end of the year, I would like to be able to do a pistol squat and a pull-up
2. Expand my knowledge - I have learnt so much on my journey so far from my transition from full-time employment to becoming my own boss, and I want to continue this journey and keep learning through research, reading and networking.
3. Establish a good work/life balance - this is a big one for me! I am still adjusting to working for myself and don't feel I have found a good balance yet, the last few weeks have been much more about life than work, but then from this, I get a terrible guilt complex!! I don't know where this comes from, as one of the reasons I want to work for myself is to be flexible, and have time off when I want! So when I am not busy I can enjoy myself, but honestly, I am struggling with this a bit.
4. Launch KIHT collective activewear - this is one of my biggest goals for the year! I am super excited/nervous and can't wait!
5. Establish KIHT as a brand and build a following - this goal sort of overlaps with the one above, but I see the brand as more than just a range, I want the blog and events to be a big part of what we do, so people know is for more than just great activewear. I want KIHT to be a space that inspires and empowers women with what we are doing and encourages women to come together and support and encourage each other.
So these are my goals and dreams for the next 12 months. I wanted to put them up on the blog for everyone to see and to make them and me more accountable over the next 12 months.
These goals seem big and quite intimidating and to start with and 12 months to do them seems such a long time!! Where do I even start in hitting any of these???
So the next things Kat advises is to break these down into some 90-day goals - basically, so you are working towards them in shorter more bitesize chunks!
So our 90-day goals look like this :
1. Personal Growth - for the next few months I am focusing on getting back up to 4 days a week and changing my training program slightly. I am going to focus heavily on leg strengthening as I am off on a skiing holiday in Feb and want to make sure my legs can handle it! The 90-day goal is to be able to do a pistol squat.
2. Knowledge - I have started my first book in a long time - Zappo's (about the company that sold to Amazon for over a billion pounds) - so my goal is to finish this in 90 days and to research and sign up to some podcasts that I can listen to in the car or on the way into the office.
3. Establish a good work / life balance - Plan out my month / week / day - I have been looking into bullet journalling - Kat Horrocks has got a great video on this - so am going to give this a go to see if it works for me - but the most important thing is planning a week that is both business and life together.
4. Launch KIHT collective activewear - this is still a long way off ATM but my aim for the next 90 days is to make a list of all the things I need to do to before I launch and start working through some of the tasks ahead of time
5. Establish KIHT as a brand and build a following - my goals on this are to fully establish my Value Proposition and complete my Business Model Canvas. Map out my content for the next 90 days to make sure it is focused and on brand and to start networking and connecting with more like-minded businesses and people.
So there you have it! Thanks for reading and helping to make me accountable to my goals and dreams for the next 12 months. I will keep updating these throughout the year and recording my progress.
What goals have you set yourself for 2018? I would love to hear about them x
