Reading time: two minutes.

Have you ever set your intentions for something in your life, and after only a short time you’ve thrown in the towel?

Maybe you wanted to start exercising again, or get a project finished?

Maybe your goal was to do nothing. Just to take a break?

Were you writing down your goals and tracking your progress? Many different factors contribute to whether you achieve your goals or not. One of the most important factors is writing them down. If they’re not written down they remain part of the daily mind chatter, and that’s no good to anyone.

There are many different ways and techniques to plan out your time, it’s ultimately about finding a way that works for you and your needs.

To give you some inspiration I’d love to share with you what works for me:

I use a really simple Bullet Journal style to plan each day, in a plain old A5 notebook.
Every Sunday I plan for the week ahead, and once a month I’ll sit down and plan for the coming weeks ahead.

I make it one day per page, and I allocate spots for:

My top 3 To-Do tasks.
The rest of the To-Do tasks.
Note taking.
Space for an affirmation.
Space for gratitude journaling.
Some self-made habit-tracking symbols.

Each new month I have one page with the calendar sketched in, and one page with:

Top 3 To-Do tasks, one Top 3 for my business, and one Top 3 for the rest.
Space for specific goals in other areas of my life, right now it’s for study goals.
I also have an overview of the entire year in the notebook, where I document important dates and deadlines.

I also use a weekly Habit Tracker. This is a tool to track all your activities clearly and in one place. You can track:

Specific habits and goals for some time, usually in the form of a checklist or diagram.
You’d track them for a certain period, like weekly or monthly for example.
Each day you mark off whether you do the ‘thing’ or not.
This helps in identifying good and bad habits
Helping you regroup and refocus, to achieve your goals more effectively.
You’ll notice quite quickly which areas in your life are working great, and which areas need improving.

Even if your goal is to do absolutely nothing, when you plan and write it down you’re reducing the tug-of-war mind games that come up, when you’re busy with one thing and then feeling guilty for not using that time otherwise.

Through planning out your goals and journaling, daily or otherwise, you’re:

Getting it together.
Getting things moving in the right direction.
You’re nurturing your soul and taking care of yourself and becoming more able to obtain what you want to achieve.
You’ll have more structure and balance in your life.
You’re more likely to carry out the goals when you look at them regularly (daily in this case), and when you evaluate them regularly.
You’ll be using your time much more efficiently.
You’ll have more peace of mind, you’ll feel less stressed and overwhelmed.
And don’t forget that extra free time for yourself!

You’ll be amazed at the results, you’ll be ticking off your tasks in no time. What’s important is that you experiment and find a manner that works for you.

I’ve designed a simple weekly Habit Tracker available for newsletter subscribers, more details are available in this month’s letter. I’ve also included my top five tips to help you stay on track with your habits and goal-getting.

I hope this post was helpful to you, and that it inspired you to apply it to your practice. Thanks for your time, feel free to use the comments section below to share your thoughts.

Have a productive/ or relaxing day,

Yvonne Martha x