Maximise the new year with a reflection and goal setting exercise
“Everyone stumbles, everyone is figuring it out, everyone can build more creativity into their lives, everyone can start somewhere.” – Madeleine Dore
It’s crazy to say that a decade is coming to an end. We’re wrapping up 2019 and getting ready for 2020 and you know what that means – New Year’s resolutions, and what way to plan for the next year than to spend the December drinking, celebrating, reflecting and creating an action plan! Whether you’re planning to manage your time better, having more team-building exercises or prepping a proper co-creation process for next year’s projects, here are some exercises to inspire your personal and professional growth for the year to come. So schedule an hour, grab a pen and some papers!
If you just want to get right into the exercises, we’ve created a reflection worksheet, which you can download using this link. Let’s get to it!
Mind-mapping your personal timeline
A year somehow goes by real fast, but if you sit down, grab a warm drink and really think about it, a lot happens in the course of one year. So how is it possible for you to set proper goals for the next year if you’re unaware of your highs and lows of this year? Just like the Spotify Wrapped Up feature, a reflection timeline is similar but instead of music, it’s a wrapped up timeline of your emotional journey, from the beginning of the year until now.
How to do it: To create your own reflection timeline, draw a timeline like above of your emotional journey. Think about the events and situations that triggered those feelings. Why did those events make you feel really good and why do you wish other moments could’ve gone better?
Goal-setting time
Now that you’ve established your high and low points in the course of this year, you probably have some hindsight to what sort of goals you’d like to focus on next year. It’s very easy to lose track of the big purpose when you’re always thinking about tasks and deliveries. Instead of going with the flow and figuring it out along the way, why not do the opposite? This is called Reverse Engineering. What it is is basically imagining how you want your future to look like and think backwards to see what sort of things are necessary for you to achieve your goals.
How to do it: There are four different levels you can think of when you’re reflecting on your own Reverse Engineering:
The first thing you need is a vision — A future scenario of where you want yourself to be.
Departing from this vision, you go backwards, thinking about what sort of knowledge/tools/experiences you need for getting there.
The next step is to ask yourself what sort of attitudes needed in order to get the outcomes you’ve listed before.
When you have the attributes ready, you need to go one last step backwards and ask yourself: “What activities can I do to get this?”
A call to action to yourself
Fwooh, that’s a lot of thinking, wasn’t it? But we’re glad that you’re sticking with us on this. After you are done with the goal-setting exercise, get conclusions thinking of the changes you need to make in order to meet your plan.
How to do it: You need to break it down in three sections – write down a list of things that you need to stop doing, continue doing and start doing.
Whether you decide to do this personally or as a team in the office, remember to take it easy and take as much time as you need to really reflect. With greater awareness of how you perceive your skills and motivation, you can no doubt confidently make the right choices for your personal and professional growth for the next year. May the force be with you and Happy New Year!