Our Simple New Year's Planning Process
Every year Brett and I sit down and take at least 2-3 hours to reflect on what has happened in our lives over the past year, and what we look forward to in the New Year. We do this because it's amazing to see what God has helped us through, accomplish, and or where we can improve.
No matter where you're at before New Year's Day, try to take the time to do this! Currently, we are in the middle of a kitchen and entryway revamp (not remodel). We're moving a couple walls to accommodate more people in our home, but it's tempting to keep going and not take the time to do the process below.
We thought it might be helpful to share with you our New Year's Resolution Process. It's simple, not overly complicated, and we haven't changed this process in the 11 years we've been married.
We always love hearing what other people do to take on life in inspiring ways, and we hope our process sparks some ideas for your household.
STEP 1: REFLECT ON A FAVORITE MEMORY TOGETHER
For the past 11 years this step only included Brett and myself. We would grab a good cup of tea or coffee after dinner and find a comfy place to sit alone and then together and talk about our year. This year we started by involving our five and two year old boys, and it was a kick to hear their favorite memory. We did this during dinner time so we had their full-attention.
We asked ourselves "What is your favorite memory from this past year?"
Daniel's was a celebrating the birth of Jesus and getting to open his gifts under the tree. Titus' was having his Lamb Lamb and Doggie by his side. For both Brett and myself it was taking the time to camp as a family in our camper (on our property because we didn't get time to go to the mountains). Even though we didn't get to the mountains in our camper we still had a blast! We ate dinner in the camper, watched a fun movie, ate lots of popcorn and made a mess.
It was a very simple question that brought a lot of fun conversation as a family. We also talked about what the boys look forward to next year, but that's another post. Ha!
STEP 2: REFLECT ON YOUR YEAR ALONE
After talking about our favorite memory together as a family, we put the boys down for bed, and then Brett and I...TOOK TIME ALONE TO REFLECT. This takes a little over an hour.
Site note: This can be a tough task if you don't have a great memory (like myself), a list of previous goals/aspirations, a journal, an active social media account or something that is written or visual in front of you. We use our previous set of goals from the year before, our Facebook accounts, my journal and Brett's amazing memory to reflect on our past year.
It really helps to have this time before you come back together again (the final step) because you're prepared. I personally enjoy taking a bath with last year's goals in front of me, my phone in hand and a glass of kombucha.
You can really do this anywhere, but I wouldn't recommend doing this in the same room as your partner because the physical separation helps! If I'm in the same room I have a tendency to ask Brett questions like, "what was that trip we took again back in May?" or "Didn't we finish the milking stall in June? or was it July?"
Just don't put yourself in a situation where you're going to distract the other person... if you're not doing this alone.
Once you've done this you can really be intentional about personal reflection and how you want to move forward.
It helps to have some guidelines as well, so we use the following categories to brainstorm and prioritize our top 2 goals for each category. That's right...we try to stick to only two goals each (sometimes we add an extra one or two, but we don't try to give ourselves a massive list or we just get overwhelmed.
We also try to be as detailed as possible. Don't just say, "I want to read more this year" but instead "I want to read 3 new books this year in the categories of religion, homesteading and or self-improvement." This is actually one of my goals for "personal" below so there you go.
Our five categories are:
PERSONAL - This category is for self-improvement. A good question to ask yourself is, "How do you want to grow this year?"
FINANCIAL - Our goals usually don't change for this category. For example, our first goal is "Meet monthly to review our budget and adjust as needed. Another goal is "Continue saving $20 per month to ensure we have at least $100 in our emergency fund, $50 in our savings account and $1000 in our spending account (yes, these are not our actual numbers because no matter what number we put here judgement will fall and what matters is what works for YOU). Just do you best to always grow this goal to ensure you can make a bigger impact on the world than the year before.
HEALTH - This is a difficult one for everyone. Your health is SO important yet we usually look back on our goals like, "Work out at least 3 x per week and drink 1/2 our body weight in water" and find we either knocked it out of the park or like us, totally failed at this last year. That doesn't mean you delete the goal completely, but change it up maybe say something like, "Always have a pair of gym clothes packed in the car or on the bathroom counter each night so you can spend at least 10 minutes doing something active every day of the work week." Another good one is "Sign up for something!" so you're held accountable...something you have to PAY for like a marathon, hiking group, horse back lessons, etc.
FAMILY - This is personally my favorite. This is what we can do together as a family. This year we have a goal of "Invite someone over for dinner into our home at least twice a month (24 meals total) with family, friends, or new acquaintances." Having people in our home is so important to us because we believe it's becoming a lost tradition (having a meal together at the table) where we can fellowship with others, share our lives and see what is going on in others lives. This is also a great place to plan a family vacay by a certain date, different activities for the kids to try or maybe the whole family!
HOME & PROPERTY - This is probably Brett's favorite (just kidding) category. We have learned to keep this list small because large projects sometime take YEARS. For example, we had a goal to build a live-in grain bin by 2022. It's fun to have large goals but if you don't have the funds, well...you have to wait, work hard and save (or start buying lottery tickets and win). This past year we finished laying all the electrical we needed for the grain bin. Our goal for this year is, "Finish the grain bin septic and possibly the foundation if the funds are there."
IT'S OKAY TO SAY THINGS LIKE "IF" in your goals! Yes, it's great to "speak it into existence" so you have a better chance at obtaining your goal, but if you don't accomplish that goal by a certain date that doesn't mean you've failed! It just means in our minds, "If this is in God's will" it will happen but if it doesn't we are okay with that too.
Remember your goals can change anytime during the year after you set them for yourself or together with your partner like we do. That leads us to our final step...
STEP 3: REFLECT AND PLAN TOGETHER
Once we come back together, Brett and I spend about 10 - 20 minutes going over last year's goals and talk about where we either knocked it out of the park, halfway completed the goal, or completely failed at meeting the goal (which it is totally okay to say fail and to fail!).
By the way, if you're someone who struggles with world "failure", one of my all time favorite Wyoming homesteaders has a great podcast on this topic here. But please embrace this word, failure only means you're learning and finding ways to improve.
After we reflect together, we then talk about what we both came up with for our new year's goals for each category above. I already went into detail for each of these, so you get the point, but we decide what our top four goals are, write them down on paper, high five and then nail them to the inside of our closet.
Do you have to put your goals in your closet? No, but at least put them somewhere where you will see them often and reflect on them at least once a month. Here's a picture of our closet and where they hang front and center.
A process like this helps us become better partners, parents, family members, friends and strangers.
Learning is one of the most beautiful things we as humans can partake in, and when we do it with others, this is where you see the magic in what He has in store for us all. If you don't have a spouse to do this with, or a willing spouse, find a friend and do it together. It's so much more fun to work on goals with someone you deeply trust, who won't judge you and will encourage you to shoot for the moon.
If you don't currently use a similar process like this, we highly encourage it. You know the saying, "How do you know where you're going if you don't know where you came from?" - Maya Angelou
Share what some of YOUR goals are for 2023 with us! We'd love to hear! Whether it's homesteading related or not. May God bless you in the new year, and may you live a simple and purpose driven life my friends.
