NEW YEAR, NEW GOALS - HOW TO PLAN OUT YOUR YEAR EFFICIENTLY

Planning isn’t one of the strongest suits in a startup and it’s operations. You hear it here, you hear it there, you hear it everywhere - setting a strategic objective and defining the steps towards it is what will make you successful. How do you do that when you don’t know where to start? 

With the new year coming, many start looking back, reflecting, and wondering what it is or was their downfall or success this or that year. Usually, either one of the two achievements and disappointments is due to either the presence or lack of a concrete plan. 

Imagine that: you sway through the motions, month to month, and you are stuck within the grind, not realizing how much time has passed from the year. And suddenly, it’s Christmas. 

Nobody wants to be that person.

This is equivalent to having a mid-life crisis every year and is in no way productive or moderately close to that. So how do you get yourself to be productive and stop procrastinating? Lay out a concrete yearly plan that you need to stick to going forward.

How do you do that? 

Step 1: Divide the year by quarters. Dedicate an umbrella goal to each and every one of them. Base these goals off of challenges or achievements that you saw happen in the last year e.g. if you had 200 sales in a quarter, see if you can double that within the first 4 months of 2024 and etc. If you failed at getting your first customer, set this goal again for Q1. 

Step 2: After you sit down with your quarters, break these down into 12 months. What does getting 200 customers require from you? Jot down 4 steps to get there. For instance: Max out the Google Ad Campaign budget to 500 per month for a month. The next month I go to some conferences to get out there. The one after, do some collaborations with some influencers in your niche, and so on. 

Step 3: Go into every week for the first quarter, and then once it’s late March, draft up Q2 and so on. See what incremental changes you can do on a weekly so that you can get to spend the 500 dollars at the end of the month. Will you have to stop paying a subscription, or perhaps add some more time to do customer research or competitive analysis in week 2? Perhaps you would want to research fitting keywords in week 3 that won’t waste your budget, and in week 4, you might want to get some help setting up the ad. 

Now that you are down to the weekly, add these goals to your Google Calendar or whichever planner you are using. Create these milestones as tasks for yourself, so you can tick them out whenever you complete them. 

And now, get to business and don’t let yourself get distracted. You will get much more done than you have, and will likely have an easier time reaching your goals. Even if you don’t, you still will have taken a step in the right direction. 

What goals would you like to reach in 2024? Comment down below!