Vegan lifestyle by Jessica Goodenough

Live your best plant-based life!

  • Family
  • Food
  • Home
  • Style
  • Favourites
  • About me

Explore

  • Family
  • Food
  • Home
  • Style
  • Favourites
  • About me

Learn more

  • About me
  • Favourites
  • My Etsy store

Connect

Mindset · 5 January 2019

How I am setting goals for the year ahead

Whether you’re reading this in early January or later in the year, it is always a good time to pause and reflect on what you want to achieve this year. It is indeed better to have a plan than to live life on accident! Read on for some advice on how to set goals, with examples from by goals for 2019!

Visualise and prioritise

In order to figure out what do to this year, it is worth thinking of the bigger picture. Like all personal development exercises, it is best to do this with pen and paper rather than in your head. Visualise your life in 5 or 10 years and then write down your ideas as they come to you. This can be free writing line by line or mind map style.

Based on this, you can start thinking about what you can do this year to get there. For example if you want to own a house in a few years’ time, when you might be thinking about starting a family, you could start by creating an income goal for this year.

Think about this relation between the year ahead and your vision of the future, and then break it down into the main areas you can act upon. The idea of agency is important here: only having goals that sit outside your control or revolve around other people will lead to frustration.

For example the main areas of my goals are: my health/fitness, my research work and my income. Once you’ve identified these areas for yourself, you can move into setting targets for the year ahead.

Think big

Common advice is to set “S.M.A.R.T. goals“, with the R standing for realistic. However realistic goals won’t push you, get you out of bed in the morning or help you evolve into a better person. Try to pick goals that will challenge you and that you don’t feel like you know how to achieve yet.

Your mind will push back and try to force you to settle for something easier. But the idea of goals is to grow out of your comfort zone and become a better person. So dare to dream of marathons and successful side hustles!

My health goal is to get five personal bests this year. This involves running a 5K, 10K and half-marathon race faster than I ever have, but also trying something new: finishing a marathon and an ultra-marathon, eek! My research goal involves getting two papers accepted for publication in scientific journals and my income goal is to earn £30,000 this year.

All of these are definitely a stretch for me and I’m doubting myself even now while I write this, but that is the point! To help with the “dauntingness” of big goals, it is key to create effort goals.

Create effort goals to go with your performance goals

Sitting around hoping to finish a marathon isn’t going to accomplish anything. We need effort goals to make our performance goals more likely. To run faster races, it is important to practice more! So my health effort goals are to run 1,000 miles in 2019 and to cover 2,019 miles total (running, walking and cycling).

My research effort goal involves sending twelve drafts (either to my PhD supervisors or to the NGO I’m writing articles for). And my income effort goal is to write 52 blog posts.

It could be easy to get overwhelmed, especially if you have several goals, or to lose steam after the first few weeks. Therefore it is key to have systems in place to make your goals happen.

[You may also like: Setting goals for the year ahead: my blueprint so you can too!]

Stay on track by tracking your achievement towards your goals

As you may have noticed, the goals I have set for 2019 are all measurable. This means that – as opposed to vague goals like “lose weight” or “be more productive” – I will know whether or not I reach them.

It also enables me to track my progress towards them in a spreadsheet. I divided both my performance and effort goals into weekly targets. I will review my progress towards these targets during my weekly planning sessions on Sundays, and adjust course as necessary.

Helpful advice I got from the Perfectionism Project podcast is that progress towards yearly goals doesn’t have to be divided into equal quarters. I would recommend setting lower targets at the start of the year, to get momentum going, and larger ones at the end. For me, this looked like dividing the goal by two every quarter, counting backwards from the end of the year.

So for my goal to run 1,000 miles this year, I have set a target of 500 miles by the end of September, 250 by the end of June and 125 by the end of March. Having approachable goals at the start of the year will enable me to start ticking things off and encourage me to keep moving on my goals.

Voilà, there you have it: this is how I’m setting goals for 2019 in a way that will increase my chances of success. If you found this useful, please:

  • Share your goals and goal-setting process in the comments section below;
  • Send this post to a friend/relative you think might appreciate it or share it on social media;
  • Give me a small tip on Ko-fi – it would be very appreciated!
An infographic about how to set goals for the year ahead

Posted By: Jessica Goodenough · In: Mindset

Want to walk and read more? Try book hopping!
Books I’m reading this quarter #1

About Jessica Goodenough

I'm not a regular mum, I'm a vegan mum 😉
Helping you live your best plant-based life 🌱
All welcome - no vegan police here! 💚
Learn more about me here.

Related posts

In this episode of the Living the Goodenough Life podcast, I interview Nasreen about how we can make time for our personal goals. This includes her personal development journey and what her non-negotiables are!How to make time for your personal goal(s) with Nasreen
Are you struggling to follow through with your plans and show up for your goals? In this episode, I get specific about the reasons why you're feeling discouraged or unmotivated, and what you can do about it! What I cover in this episode: Not having a compelling "why"; Feeling overwhelmed; Being afraid of judgement; Experiencing imposter syndrome; Going through the dip; Upper-limiting; Not having enough energy; Your homework, including this week's journaling prompt! Find the show notes at jessicagoodenough.com/episode10The 7 reasons you’re feeling unmotivated
Are you feeling overwhelmed with all the competing options for your time? Do you know you have a lot of potential, but you're frustrated at your lack of results to show for it? Then maybe what you need is to improve the way you set and go after goals, which is what we're talking about today on the Living the Goodenough Life podcast!How to choose your next goal

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

About Photo
Hi I'm Jessica! Welcome to my blog, where you can find vegan lifestyle inspiration to help you live your best plant-based life!

Don’t miss

5 vegan dinners for meat-eaters: to please family or vegan newbies

Vegan clothing stores

7 vegan clothing stores for real-life cruelty-free shopping

Hearty-plant-based-soups

The only 2 hearty plant-based soups you need in your life

Get on the list

As the vivid colours of summer wane and a brisk br As the vivid colours of summer wane and a brisk breeze fills the air, it’s time to embrace the cosiness and versatility of autumn fashion. 🍂⁣

One of the key elements that define this transitional season is the art of layering. 🎨

Click the link in my bio for the rest of the tips + six autumnal outfits! 🍁
Hello autumn! 🍂☕🥰 #LivingTheGoodenoughLif Hello autumn! 🍂☕🥰

#LivingTheGoodenoughLife
Drop an emoji in the comments: where are you in yo Drop an emoji in the comments: where are you in your vegan journey?​​​​​​​​​
❌ Not vegan and not interested haha
🤔 Thinking about it
🌱 Taking baby steps
🪴 Plant-based most of the time
🌳 Fully vegan
✨ Something else

To be fully transparent, I've been on the vegan train for the past 8 years, but I had animal products while on holiday recently. Still committed to the vegan lifestyle though! The objective is progress, not perfection. 😊 #NoVeganPoliceHere 😉

#GoingVegan #PlantPowered #PlantBased #Vegan
It's Friday... Time for some kitchen karaoke! What It's Friday... Time for some kitchen karaoke! What's your pick? 👩🏼‍🎤​​​​​​​​​
I chose "When You Believe"... @mariahcarey watch out! 😆

Though my talent isn't really appreciated here as everyone deserted the kitchen... 🤔

#LivingTheGoodenoughLife #KitchenKaraoke #UndiscoveredTalent
Can you guess what they all are? 😊​​​​​​​​​
If you've checked out the blog post, which one is your favourite? 😘

I was quite surprised to love a lot of the mermaidcore items! 🧜🏼‍♀️

But more generally my style is somewhere between new traditional and organic modern (or is it modern organic??). 🪴😅

#TrendingInteriorDesign #InteriorDesignStyles #InteriorDesignTrends2023 #InteriorDesignTrends #InteriorDesign
On a new journey to improve my body composition:
📖 Reading How Not to Diet by @nutrition_facts_org
🥗 Experimenting with new foods, like this sushi bowl

What are you working on right now? 😘

#SushiBowl #HowNotToDiet #EatTheRainbow #PlantBased #VeganLunch
Did you know that an estimated 25% of the global f Did you know that an estimated 25% of the global fish catch is being used to produce omega-3?! 🐟🐡🐠​​​​​​​​​
You can find cruelty-free alternatives by following the link in my bio. 😘

PS: this is not an announcement of any kind haha, just a new section on my blog devoted to vegan family – everything from vegan weddings to vegan kiddos! 😊

#VeganPregnancy #VeganFamily #Omega3
“I could never give up meat”… How many times “I could never give up meat”… How many times have we heard that? Or said it ourselves? 🤔

The foods we are used to can have a very strong emotional bond, even though they’re not always the best for us. Plant-based eating is better for our health and the planet (and of course the animals!), but I can understand having cravings for foods we have enjoyed for a lot of our lives - "even I" had some animal products while on holiday recently. 😬

In the blog post, for each dinner, I’ll offer two options. One is the 100% vegan option and one is the one to use if you’re taking baby steps towards eating less meat. Find them by following the link in my bio! 😘

#AddDontRestrict #ForksOverKnives #VeganFood
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Get in touch

Copyright © 2023 Vegan lifestyle by Jessica Goodenough · Theme by 17th Avenue