How to Make 2024 Productive?

Happy New Year to all readers, visitors, and everybody else!

I trust you had wonderful celebrations for the end of the year. Even a chance to reflect on the year, realizing your strengths and achievements, what made the year good or even not so good.

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Reflection is an important process

Each year between Christmas and New Year’s Eve I spend a large portion of that week reflecting on the year gone by.

Some of this is aided by the end of month reflections and end-of-season reflections (over the top? Not for me)

This level of tracking and reflecting helps to see where I am going, what I’ve been doing, and what I still need to do.

Each month it adds a level of awareness and the following month I can already tweak what wasn’t working and turn it into a productive task.

Reflection builds awareness.

If you haven’t already take time to reflect on 2023.

Write a list of all you accomplished and achieved – you want to feel good about yourself.

Now, I am not saying to do this next part to bring yourself down but rather to grant you personal insights.

Write a list of everything you had hoped to achieve and didn’t.

You are not a failure.

That list however long it is, is not a reflection of how bad you are. Rather it is a reflection simply of what you were unable to do last year. The activity is a tool for awareness shaping.

Now you can see right before you what you didn’t get done, and what you did get done.

Take some of the strengths from what you did achieve and apply them to the tasks that did not get started.

Always the SMART goals

Check in with yourself if those tasks you didn’t get done are still tasks you want to achieve for this year. Then write out each task in the SMART goals fashion. This has been around for many years now. But in case you don’t know how to write this I’ll share an example.

As a writer – I did not achieve nearly as much writing as I hoped to in 2023. So this year I seek to publish. Now I already have one manuscript seeking publishing, but there are 3 others. 1 of those is almost at the final stage, yet two are still in the research stage! The horror was the realization I hadn’t even touched the other two writing projects for the entire year!

How to be SMART?

Specific: What specifically are you trying to do?
My example: Write daily to achieve writing tasks.

Measurable: How can you measure the specific task you are trying to do?
My example: Write for 1 hour each day and track this (ps. Bullet journalling is the best!)

Achievable: When do you hope to achieve this by? What is your scope?
Actionable: Some sources use actionable, meaning what action are you going to take to achieve the outcomes you desire?
My example: Aim for 6 months and reflect on which writing pieces I have worked on more and which I haven’t. (Note: I don’t put the whole year because a year is a very long time! By aiming for 6 months, I still have a remaining 6 months to re-adjust if needed)

Realistic: How can you make the goal realistic to avoid overwhelm or stress?
Relevant: Some sources use relevant, meaning what can you do to make your goal relevant and help you to achieve it?
My example: relying on habit automation: I can realistically set my goal of writing every day with other tasks I do daily. Waking up early, exercising, spending time with God, and now writing.

Time-Based: Set a date to keep you focused and motivated! Set it on your most used calendar.
My example: Like the Actionable task, the time basis of 6 months is the scope. Yet I prefer to be more specific. Did I write daily? Check it off in the tracker. And what did my writing go towards? Was it book content, blog content, or other?

Go forwards!

What better way to set yourself up for success than to access the newly added Freebies tab.

Check it out and download your free copy of a 2024 calendar and tracker.

Use the tracker to record your wins across 2024!
You can record important milestones from previous years to celebrate your ongoing commitment to success.