Oh How I Love to Plan!

Once a year, in January, I spend one full day "planning". "Planning", for me, consists of:

- finding a fun, cozy location FOR my planning

-Praying

- Drinking lots of coffee

- Reviewing the previous year, and measuring how well I did, in terms of living up to the goals I'd set for myself

- Assessing how I can do things better in the coming year

- Deciding what new things I need to implement, in order to more closely align myself with my "life goals".

"Life Goals" is kind of a cheesy little phrase, and I actually hate that I just used it. It really isn't even the right way to convey what I mean.

Basically, when I first started doing this, I sat down and listed out the four categories that I felt like kind of make up my life:

-Spiritual
- Marriage
- Parenting
- Personal

Then, I wrote kind of a "summary statement" for each one, summarizing what my main goals for each of those categories were. These are not goals that change from year to year, but "forever goals" (wow, that's even cheesier than "life goals"). Basically, I asked myself the question for each category, "Describe what it is that you are trying to achieve in this area". I spent a LOT of time last year thinking through those, prayed a ton about them, and then finally wrote them down. I won't share all of them with you (lest you die of boredom), but as an example, here is what I wrote out under "Parenting":

"I want to create good memories for and with Gunnar. I want him to grow up feeling loved, special, cherished, enjoying life, and enjoying time with his family. I want to take seriously mine and Nason's responsibility to teach Gunnar about Jesus. I want to help him discover his God-given purpose, and how to be a godly man, a responsible person, a good husband, and a good father. I want to cherish every second I have with him, and not wish for it to hurry by. I want Gunnar to love Jesus genuinely. I want Gunnar's biggest driving passion in life to be to find out what will please God most, and then do it. I want him to be confident and secure. I want him to enjoy and savor life. I want him to love other people well. I want him to know how to make wise and sound decisions for himself"

So anyway, every year, I revisit this and remind myself what I wrote in each category, and then decide what I SPECIFICALLY need to do/change/start/stop/implement/do better/etc, to continuously stay on track with that goal.

This system has worked great for me, and really helps me to stay focused, and be purposeful with how I spend my time and energy. Well, at least January through October. Come October, I start to get extremely lazy, and a lot of this stuff starts falling to the wayside. Not to worry though...January rolls around, and the process begins again!