This is the final part of our look at 2025. To recap, we ignored the noise around making sweeping changes and made a list of how awesome we are. Last week, we got a bit more specific around 2025 – things that we know we’re definitely doing (for me – painting a highland cow at the end of this month! It’s going in my, what will be, newly decorated lounge!) – and things we’d like to do this year.
If you’re anything like me, some of the goals you chose look quite big. My big goal for 2025 is to buy a car. It’s not quite as simple as just handing money over and yay, I have a shiny new car! I wish that it were!
You can do the following exercise for all of your goals, or just one, but pick one that excites you. On the top of your paper, write down the goal. I’ll go with New Car. And this is when we break this down to the steps that need to be taken for my car to be sat in my drive. So first I’ll do some research – what kind of car do I want – manual or automatic? Petrol / diesel / electric / combination? Is there a make I’d like? Model? Colour? How many miles? What’s my budget? What cars can I get in my budget that tick a lot of the boxes I’ve identified?
Do a mind dump of everything you need to do for your goal. I could also add where I want to get my car from, who I want to take with me.
Once you have all the steps that are required, go through them and order them. So I’ll do my research before I work out who will come with me to see the car! How long will each stage take? Do you need anything to be able to complete a stage? My research is likely to be a few hours. And to buy my car, I need money, so I might also want to mind dump ways I can earn money and boost my savings.
Finally, when you have your list of steps, or stages, think about when you can do them. Remember, this is a 2025 goal and you don’t have to do it all in the next month! There are a number of ways you can do this, but one way is to take another piece of paper (or word document) and divide it into 12 and put a month in each area. Put a step in each month. If you think that some of the steps will be really easy, or won’t take long, you could put several in one month. If you think some of the steps will take longer, put them in over several months. The important thing is that you have your big goal for 2025, you have your steps to how you’re going to achieve it and you now have a plan.
This is likely to take you the longest time out of the 3 exercises I’ve given you, but it is worthwhile. One of the main reasons we don’t reach our goal, is that we’re not specific with what we need to do to achieve it. A big goal can mean a lot of changes and if we don’t know what those changes are, it can be overwhelming or simply easier to put it off.
Once you’re done with this, you’ll have your piece of paper telling you how awesome you are, you’ll have your piece of paper with all the amazing things you’re doing in 2025, so you have things to look forward to all year (and don’t forget, you can add to both of these at any time) and you now have your roadmap of the actions that, once you’ve methodically taken, will lead to you achieving your goal in 2025.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? 3 pieces of paper and boom! 2025 is sorted! I know real life isn’t like that. Things will happen this year that you can’t possibly predict. But you have your roadmap which you can then move things around. You don’t have to do everything in a month or two. You have all year. And guess what? If you don’t achieve your goal in 2025, you can carry it forward into 2026 and beyond. But this is your goal, on your terms.