2022 ended a few days ago and there’s a mixed feeling of hopefulness, confusion, and overwhelm right now for some (including me, of course). I hope that during the last weeks of 2022, you had the time to look back and revisit how far you’ve gone and where you intend to focus this year 2023.
Setting personal objectives and key results towards a successful year
But let me ask: Are you taking steps towards these new goals for this year?
If yes, I am happy for you! But if not, it’s not too late to start now. I set a few intentions and goals for the freelance content writing business and myself last year. While I achieved some of it, I failed in some. Sad, right?
But I realized this is because I didn’t take the necessary steps towards the goals and areas in life where I failed. Now, with that in mind, if we all step back for a moment to see the bigger picture so we also see more than the ending. Let’s appreciate the progress we went through the year. Also, let’s try to pay attention more to our progress and really see how much we’ve truly grown.
Understanding the beauty of growth and going through the process
There is truly beauty in the process — only if we take a close look at it and really see. But analyzing where I lacked and areas I needed to improve based on what went down last year, I realized that maybe I’m just using the wrong measurement metric. Just like beauty, success is an abstract concept. In today’s time, most of us define success through others’ perspectives and beat ourselves because of not having any of these shiny, big, and tangible bases of progress.
It’s now time to change this and redefine success in your own way.
Together, let’s set our objectives for this year in a simple, measurable, and realistic way without playing too safe and restricting us from shooting to the stars. We can still go for aspirational or learning objectives which can push us to go beyond our limits. And though we may not reach the stars at the end of the day, landing on the moon still counts as success.
This is where we often get lost. We stop at setting the objectives and hope to manifest the success we aimed to achieve at the end of the year. But based on the popularized OKR setting of Google and how this proved to increase productivity and ensured progress within their teams, we can safely apply this too in our daily lives.
It’s important to streamline our key results and initiatives to take towards the goal.
From the objectives we laid out, let’s now define our key results. These are points on how we can really say that we achieved our objectives. Ask yourself, how can you say you’ve made it? List down measurement statements such as percentages, exact values, end results, and others. This can help you shortlist what defines your success and not let others tell you otherwise.
Once done, let’s now proceed with listing down our initiatives. These are actions that we’ll need to commit to daily, weekly, or monthly to ensure that you get the key results we’ve set. Let this also serve as our overview to-do list throughout the year. Whatever you need to do, revisit this and see if it aligns. This can help you be on track and avoid reroutes. Though reroutes are okay, objectives and key results may be revisited should your priorities shift mid-year.
Wrapping up
Now that we’re done with the general planning and goal setting for the year 2023, let’s now take this very moment to stop whatever you’re doing in the next two minutes and take deep breaths — this can help us have clarity and peace before pushing forward towards the success we aim to achieve.
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