I started planning when the self-care industry boomed on the internet. There was bullet journaling on Youtube and Hobonochi flat lays on Instagram. I have been planning for more or less 5 years. It started with bullet journaling, then shifted back to the formatted planners you find in the book stores, coffee shops, and now, online.
This will be a compilation of what I've learned from, my favorite content creators like MuchelleB and Rowena Tsai, and what I've experienced as an on-the-go creative in the film industry.
But of course, each and every one of us is different, so I hope after you read this guide, you'll develop your own way of planning your year. This is not a one-stop ride. During your 2021 journey, I'm positive that you will make changes along the way.
How this is gonna go down: we'll start from the broad to the specifics. It doesn't matter if you're planning on the last week of December 2020 or the first week of January 2021. What matters is you're here, you're present and you want to set your plans for 2021. So, grab your journals, sit back, relax, and start planning!
PRE-PLAN
If you're someone who needs to re-align yourself and understand what you need to focus on in your life, then you can start here first. You'll be clarifying your priorities and which direction you want to head to before you start planning your year. But if you got it all together, you can skip this one.
Don't overwhelm yourself. Take your time. Set a day where you can sit down with yourself or perhaps do this with someone. They can be your accountability partner. It's nice to have someone you trust know your plans and push you to never give up.
You got this! Let's go find your north star!
1. List & rank the aspects of your life.
When I started planning my year, I really didn't know where to start. After studying and watching how others plan their year, I discovered that we first have to know our priorities. Among the aspects below, rank your four main top priorities for 2021, then, to follow, rank your side priorities:
Spirituality
Mental Health/Self-Care
Family
Friends/Relationships
Health
Finance
Work/Career
Personal Growth
School/Knowledge/Education
Hobbies/Creativity
Other/s (you can add)If you don't know what to prioritize, look back on 2020 so far. What are the things you lack? Or miss? What are the things you need to work on or improve on? Take your time to review and reflect.
What I do though is I separate my Personal priorities from my Career priorities. I feel more comfortable that way. As they say, we've got to separate work from our personal lives.
The image on your right is a list of the aspects of my life in 2020. For 2021, it'll look a lot different. I'll have my 4 main priorities in the front then the rest on the back.2. Write down your Dream Life
Have you ever been asked the question: where do you want to be 5-10 years from now? This is what you'll have to ask yourself for this part of the pre-planning.
This is based on Lavendaire's Dream Life Exercise. This exercise gives you something to look forward to, to keep your mindset in a certain direction, to attract yourself to a life you dream to be in. The more you think and imagine your dream life, the more you're attracting yourself to it.
Think of it this way: when you repeat something to yourself, in your mind, you'll absent-mindedly change your behavior. The more you imagine being in that life, the more you'll act as if you are truly living that life. "We are what we think" as Socrates would say. Hence, when we write our dream life, we should write it in the present tense.
Ex.
I am living in my dream house in Baguio.
I am the CEO of my own company.
Be as broad or specific as you list down your dream life. When we think as if we're living that dream life, we're attracting things, challenges, and opportunities into our lives.
Here's my Dream Life that I started writing in 2019 and edited in 2020. This is written in a program/app called Notion. I've blurred out some details for private reasons:
3. Vision Board
Your priorities and your dream life serve as a guide to how you'll plan your year, your months, and your weeks.
Now, it's time to turn them into visuals. A Vision board is a strong way to not only attract your goals but to motivate you. This can psychologically motivate you into reaching your goals.
Whenever you see it, you're reminded about where you want to be. You're pushed to ask yourself if you're one step closer to that goal of yours.
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| Here's a little snippet of my vision board on Pinterest. |
You don't have to get a corkboard and print out photos if you don't want to get all crafty. We're in the digital age now, so you can make a digital collage and put it as your desktop or phone wallpaper. Or you can make your own Pinterest board and then place the Pinterest Widget app on your phone so you can see it every day.Use whatever you see fit as long as you'll see it every day.
Get images that truly pulls you to envision where you want to be in the future. Don't go for aesthetics. For example, if your top priority is Career, how do you envision yourself to be? A successful businessman? A confident boss girl? Search for those images and put them on your vision board. You can also go for words or quotes that enlightens you.
PLANNING 2021
You finally found your North Star! Remember that not all is set in stone. As time passes and things change, you may need to change or adjust your plans as you go along.
Everything here is just to guide you to where you want to be, and to what you want to achieve. So be kind to yourself, and don't jampack all your big goals in one year. Take one step at a time.
1. Theme of the Year
Ask yourself: What do you want 2021 to feel like for you? You want to feel free? You want to grow? To be better? You want to take care of yourself more? You can also see the top priorities that you wrote down in your pre-plan.
Write down in one word what would be the theme of your 2021. If you know what you want, and if you know what you want to be, then you'll know what you want the upcoming year to be.
I'm guessing a lot of you guys would want 2021 to be a Self-Care year, after the things we've been through in 2020. Or perhaps a Year to Grow? Mine is the latter.
This will serve as a guide to the choices you make in 2021. If you choose for it to be a year of Self-care then you'll make choices that serve your well-being.
2. Set your Goals & Habits
Okay. Now, look at your theme, your priorities, your dream life, and your vision board. You can take a minute to soak this all in.
Now, ask yourself: what's the first goal that you can do within the year? What's the first step you can achieve within the year? To get closer to that big goal, that big dream of yours?
Remember to be realistic. You know yourself, your lifestyle and your own pace better than anyone, but don't underestimate your potential.
Looking at your top four priorities (or your career priorities if you have one), set one goal per priority.
Examples for Personal Priorities:
1. Spirituality - Finish reading the whole bible within the year, read one chapter every day.
2. Family - Call mom and dad once a month
3. Knowledge - Finish reading 12 books. One book per month.
4. Finance - Be credit card-debt free by the end of the year.
Examples of Career Priorities:
1. Film - Make your first short film
2. Photography - Build your Portfolio
Then continue to set the steps and at least one habit that you can do to reach that goal.
3. Breakdown your Yearly Goals into Quarterly then Monthly.
Now you've got your main goals. Break them down to even smaller goals, smaller steps. Work on each priority one by one to avoid feeling overwhelmed. Start with your top priority first.
If it's a priority that's based on habits, like finish reading a book once a month, then I think that's easy to plan. For example, setting aside a few minutes to an hour per day to read a book per month.
If you have really big goals like making a short film or handling a big project, then that's gonna take a lot of small goals and steps in order to achieve it.
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| Here's a sample of my monthly and weekly breakdown of a script I was working on. |
For example, as a filmmaker, you dream to be a big-time filmmaker in your local film industry. Of course, it may not be achievable within a year. You can start with smaller steps depending on where you are in your life right now. One small step can be creating a short film within the year and sending them to festivals. List down the small goals in order to achieve that main goal.
The first small goal will be writing a script. You can set that as your goal for the first quarter. Then next will be getting a crew or pitching it to a producer. So on and so forth.
Then you can get into more details when you plan monthly and weekly goals. For example, your goal for January 2021 will be to finish pre-writing your script. Then for weekly goals, the first week you need to finish writing down your ideas, then the second week finish writing the storyline, and so on. If you have Notion, here's a page template you can use to breakdown your goals: [ link ]
I hope you get the gist of how you should plan your goals. It may take time, but it's worth it.
PLAN. REVIEW. FOLLOW-THROUGH.
When 2021 is here, it's time to really follow through with what you've set for yourself. By the start of every month, review what's the month's goal and then its sub-goals for each week.
Then proceed to plan your first week. Write down in your planner or what have you your tasks each day of that week in order to accomplish that week's goal. Continue doing this every week. When a week and/or a month ends, review the previous week/month:
1. What were you able to accomplish?
2. What weren't you able to accomplish?
3. What works?
4. What didn't work? What needs to improve?
5. What to do about it?
After you reflect on what you're able and not able to accomplish, you can start planning your next week/month. This is going to be your routine for the rest of the year. This is how I do it, but you can adjust things here and there to what works for you and your lifestyle.
CONCLUSION
Planning your year serves as a guide to bring you to where you want to be in the future. We all have big dreams and goals we want to reach, but all it takes is to know what are the right steps, finding the right system, and building your habits.
First, you need your compass. Write down your dream life, your top priorities, and create your vision board. Second, create the theme of your year. Is 2021 your year of growth? Or of self-care? Of freedom? Third, based on your compass and theme, what habits do you need to build to reach your goals? What steps or mini-goals do you need to take in order to reach them? Lastly, schedule and breakdown those goals quarterly, monthly, and/or weekly.
Along the way, you not only get to progress towards your goals, but you get to progress as a human being. If this is your first time planning seriously, you'll get to learn things and systems that won't work for you. You'll tweak and try new things until you find that one system that works.
I hope this guide inspires you and helps you create a system that'll work for you. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below or message me on Instagram.
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