First grade, January. Construction paper, tape, and too many crayons. Dennis the Menace on the brain. A dream: be the funniest kid in class. “What’s your new year’s resolution, Peter?”

“To beat the elite four in Pokemon”

Even making a New Year’s Resolution funny was a challenge. Fast-forward 20 years and the baggage of self improvement and “success” weighs down most of the potential good such an exercise can bring. New Year’s Resolutions are often co-opted by corporations and leave us less motivated than before. Can introspection in the darkest time of year even yield anything?

Also, to explain the Festivus reference: the common refrain is “a Festivus for the rest of us” in Seinfeld. This is a New Years plan for the rest of us.

A few years ago, Nick Halper and I started sharing our New Year plans with each other. He shared a template I’ve found really helpful, which I’ve adapted and used as a basis for my yearly check-ins since.

The format is pretty straightforward:

1. Reflection: Values and Experiences

2. Vision: Statements and Vignettes

3. Action: Goals and Planning

Functionally, this structure embodies how we should always approach goal setting: our values should inform our long-term vision, which informs our more immediate goals and plans; reflecting on the resulting experiences helps us better identify our values, etc. in a nice, virtuous cycle.

In reality, it’s never "that" easy – and that’s okay. Any time we take to reflect on these things is time well spent (up to a point, of course; but who among us is spending too much time engaging with and delivering on New Year’s plans?). Consider the time you dedicate to it a net gain, rather than time you “should have” spent on it as a net loss: as my therapist says, “shoulds are for shorses”.

So, now that we’ve established that the New Years Exercise is optional, but likely beneficial, let’s walk through the flow of the process.

You can make a copy of the template and fill out for yourself here if that tickles your fancy, and we’ll walk through the broad arc of it below.

It’s also a big honker of a doc – I’ve done it a few times, and I still do it in pieces. You can absolutely put it down and pick it up as works for you.

Step 1 - Reflection: Values and Experiences

This includes reflection on a few personal topics:

• Values: what are my principles, what do I hold close to my heart?
• Passions: what topics give me energy?
• Traits: what character traits do I identify with?
• Roles: how have I related to work and others in the past, and how would I like to going forward?
• Rewarding Experiences: when have I felt the most fulfilled?

I have found this work to be the most difficult: boiling down the intuitive ways I relate to experiences into single words or phrases. Do I value security? Family? I’m not planning on kids, and I’m aware of the loaded social baggage a concept like “security” can bring, but I love my parents and sister, and I like to know my body will remain damage-free.

In juggling what terms to use and how to phrase things, know that the most useful approach will be an honest reflection of what surfaces for you. We’re assuming best intent here: this reflection is for you. It is work you are doing to understand yourself better; and since you know what you mean by “family” and “security”, that is what matters.

(That being said, if digging into and questioning those values is how you want to use this exercise, that’s also great!)

For each of these, it's important to grapple with this only as much as is helpful for you: you won't be graded on this, you won't be evaluated by a higher power. The goal is to help identify how you view yourself and to give you some face time with these ideas and experiences rolling around inside so that they help surface memories and inspiration for later exercises.

These reflections are inherently linked to a vision you might have or might form for yourself. Or at the very least, the exercise might just be helpful to unearth some interesting self-reflection. The harder it feels to come up with answers, the more impact it's likely to have!

Coming out of this step, we are aiming to have a foundation you identify with that we can compare your vision and goals against.

Step 2 - Vision: Statements and Vignettes

The primary goal in this section is to develop the "end goal" of where you're headed. This is not a life-long commitment, but rather what you could see being real a few decades out at this moment. This can and will and is expected to change year to year. Once we've identified that "end goal", we'll work our way back towards what it makes sense to do this year to move that needle.

To build out a vision, we want to start with your gut response (or the closest thing) to the question "what do you want your career to look like by the end?". Then we'll sift it through a few different lenses (your values, experiences, etc.) to make sure it aligns with what we've discovered as your foundation in the previous section.

In other words, we're answering the questions "If this is what I value, what are my goals?". Then, as we process those goals, "Do the goals I identified align with my values?".

With all that build up, here are the steps we'll take:

• End of career statement: This involves a first draft of how you see yourself wrapping up your “working years”, paired with the broad "steps" or "phases" to land at that career end. Then, we compare the draft and steps against your defined values from before. We adjust and shake it out so they align as best they can.
• Vignettes about you 10 years in the future: Here we're taking a different angle to make your goals come to life. By putting these into narrative form, we're adding detail to what the day-to-day we're building will look like. We're trying the projected reality on for size. How does it feel? Does it fit?
• Life's work statement: Okay, now that we have an eye at the end of your career and some short stories giving them life, what comes up for you that you want to have accomplished or experienced? Is there a "what I did" you’re seeking? A "how I did it"? Is the "where" important?

These are tough questions! This is not an easy exercise. It is intended to kick dust up and give you an opportunity to consider what you value and what you want or need. Grappling with these things will make it so you can always reference a North Star; and, even more importantly, that you feel like you've done the work to land you at that North Star. It's not arbitrary, it's intentional. And you can trust you can change the goal as you reflect each year.

Step 3 - Action: Goals and Planning

Here we go! Here's where we take that vision and work our way back toward a plan of sorts for the year. With the longer-term goals in mind, we want to work our way from biggest to smallest:

• Identify large priorities for the year: 4-6 big boys. I personally trend toward the 4 side of things; having a focused set of goals helps me keep them in mind more consistently.
• Explain how these move you toward your vision: This justification of sorts helps you check that the goals you're laying out fit with your larger aims. It also gives the goals more stickiness: you've worked out how the goal fits into your vision, and it's easy to reference.
• Brainstorm strategies to achieve each priority: This helps bridge the gap from something like "get 15 more coaching clients" to "reach out to a new lead every week". This is the glue between them that is "cold outreach to potential clients".
• List concrete steps for each strategy: As hinted in the prior bullet, these are the tasks, likely recurring, that underpin the strategies, which move you toward the goals for the year.

Now we're moving from the hypothetical to the real: what are we doing this year to get us where we want to go? Having done all the reflection work, we can feel that much more confident in the steps defined here, and in taking that action. There's no plan harder to follow than one you don't believe in!

Step 4 - ...Actually Doing It

And this is all just the beginning! Once the plan's ready to go, there's always the fun part of execution. This is hard. This is where the gym signups transform into unused monthly payments.

I want to be clear on one ingredient that is so critical here: self-compassion.

We will all fall off the wagon at some point this year – no one goes from 1/1 to 12/31 without a single cheat day. Except maybe Ryan Gosling (note: if at some point after publishing we find Ryan Gosling is, in fact, flawed, please note this was written in a state of blissful ignorance).

But when you do fall, nothing will guarantee you stay off the wagon more than shame, guilt, and self-flagellation. The Middle Ages had enough corporeal punishment for all of us! No need to add metaphorical corporeal punishment to the pile.

Last tip: make the goals realistic and the routine actions doable. Hairy, audacious goals are overrated. I like getting my gold star, and I'm not afraid to say it.

Last, last tip: having a regular reminder of your goals helps maintain inspiration. This can be a recurring review of progress, a printout of your vision statement, or magic marker on the shower tiles writing out your goals for the year. Anything to spark a bit of motivation when the weather's bad!

And as always, I'm here if you want to talk through this process, guidance on strategies, an accountability partner, or just a chum to chat with.

Let's make work suck less!