Setting Personal Objectives For The New Year
The end of one year and the start of another brings the opportunity and inspiration for many to consider their situation and plan for the year ahead. We all hope that we will end the New Year better off in our personal lives than we start it. By better off, we may mean financially, in terms of happiness and relationships, in our careers and lifestyles, in fact, in any aspect of our lives.
If we start the year with a positive intent on improving our lives somehow, then there is a good chance we can succeed in so doing. One of the ways we can help ourselves succeed is by setting personal objectives for the year ahead. It has long been a tradition to make New Year's resolutions. They are an example of objective setting, usually correcting a personal weakness, such as smoking or being overweight. However, New Year's resolutions are quite often just a bit of fun and not taken seriously. Planning for the entire year based on a set of objectives can be a much more beneficial way to improve yourself over a year.
New Year's resolutions, however, do hint at one way to set personal objectives for the year: they tend to be about addressing the weakness. If you have a personal liability at the beginning of the year and have strengthened it by the end
of the year, then you will have made progress. So, when you sit down and consider what personal objectives to set yourself, focusing on your weaknesses may be an excellent place to start.How To Go About Setting Your Objectives
There is more than one way to set about formulating personal objectives, but I will focus on personal weakness. By concentrating, I do not mean just thinking about those weaknesses negatively, self-critical way. The purpose is to improve yourself by the end of the year, so those weaknesses, or even just one weakness, need to be addressed positively. Ultimately, you want the weakness you focus on to be no longer a weakness by the end of the year. Here are a few simple steps to follow:
1. Your first step is to identify an area, or areas, of your life where you want to make significant improvements. For example, let us say you have your own business, which is relatively new, and you are still finding your feet.
2. Once you have decided on what area of your life to concentrate on, you should then think about it in a detached and realistic way, pen in hand, with a blank piece of paper in front of you. Go over your experiences since you started the business in your mind, and pinpoint what weaknesses have been exposed since you began the business. Jot them down in a relaxed way; there is no hurry. When you are confident, you have highlighted the most critical weakness, and have missed none, move on to considering your list.
3. You should now go over your list of business-related weaknesses and prioritize them. If something stands out as critical, that will be your starting point. At this stage, bear in mind that setting objectives is not about aiming for the impossible; that is self-destructive. If you have a long list of weaknesses and looks daunting, prioritization is critical.
For this example, let us assume that your most critical weakness in your new business is finance and accounting. That is a reality for many people who start a business, so that is quite a realistic example. Do not expect to remove all weaknesses 100% in one year; you should be practical and take a staged approach. Each year you will build on your strengths and steadily eliminate your weaknesses. However, you cannot expect to do it all at once.
4. Now think more about the finance side of the business, and with a new sheet of paper, write down all the things that trouble you. Is it everything about finance and accounting? That would not be unusual either. You may not even be able to tell a debit from a credit, but that is not surprising. To an average person, double-entry bookkeeping is back to front.
5. Assuming everything about finance and accounting is a mystery to you, set out a plan to remedy that situation. Any wise businessman needs to understand his business finances; he will be vulnerable if not. There are several ways to approach this weakness, but you will want to improve your accounting knowledge over the year. So, as an example, you could set yourself the following objectives for the year:
a. Learn some basic bookkeeping. You can achieve this through a book on accounting for small business people or evening classes. If you have a local small business help bureau of any sort, they may be able to point you in the right direction; they may even have regular seminars.
b. Get to know your accounting system, or maybe introduce a simple accounting software program that will not only help you keep accurate accounts but teach you along the way.
c. Get to understand profit and loss accounts to start to understand how and why your business is making a profit or a loss.
d. Learn to do cash flow forecasts, which will always be critical to your business.
By the end of the year, you should better understand your business finances. When you go over the same exercise again the following year, you can plan to go up to a higher if you think it necessary or address those weaknesses you have not yet mastered.
The finance and accounting example is just one. It could also be marketing or time management, or any other aspect of the business. You need to assess the most critical weaknesses and address them through your objectives. That process can be applied to any part of your life you choose, whether related to career, family, personal health, or bad habits.
Photo: https://pixabay.com
