Determine your destination to make 2021 a better year

2020 forced all of us to make a lot of adjustments. I doubt anyone finished the year in the exact destination they planned to this past year. Some things perhaps went better for you. While other parts of your life were derailed during 2020. Personally, I expected to get engaged in 2020. I did! Kim and I decided to get married which was an even better result. On the other hand, we planned multiple trips for 2020. Almost all of them were canceled.

I want 2021 to be a better year for all of us

I am sharing the process I use for setting my annual goals. Hopefully, it helps you make 2021 a better year than in 2020. This week I talking about determining your destination as you begin your 2021 journey. I believe to make real progress on your annual goals you must determine which direction you are going and the destination you are trying to reach. Otherwise, you risk wasting the year wandering and drifting around. At the beginning of each year, I spend time thinking about what success looks like for the year. I recommend you do something similar.

Asking questions is one of the best ways to grow as a human being.

Michael Hyatt

Determining your destination is not difficult

This concept is not complicated. You must answer two simple questions – where am I, and where do I want to go this year. Several ways exist to assess where you are in life. I recommend Michael Hyatt’s LifeScore assessment as a useful tool for assessing how your life is going. It gives you a score across several domains. They are listed below:

1. Spiritual
2. Intellectual
3. Emotional
4. Physical
5. Marital
6. Parental
7. Social
8. Vocational
9. Financial

Hard to determine your destination if you don’t know where you are

I like this tool because it allows me to see my life through multiple lenses. The scoring is useful. It helps me analyze how I am doing? I believe it is rare that anyone gets a high score across the board. If you do, hats off to you. If you are like me – you are doing fine in some domains, and bad in others. For the bad scores I ask myself – do I want to make changes in that area to improve my score? If so, I need to set a big goal and make it a priority. Perhaps it is not a priority, and I am okay with the low score.

A few examples from my own assessment

I am sharing a few data points from my own assessment as an example. My vocational score was high – I like my new job and am doing fine. Therefore, my annual goal in that area will focus on making sure I continue performing well. No major changes are needed. My parental score, on the other hand, is low. I am not a great father and an even worse step-father. It makes sense that I set a bigger goal in this area and invest more time in being a good parent for the sake of my wife and kids.

Time to determine your destination

Now that you have figured out where you are, the next step is to determine the destination you want to reach. In other words – what does success look like this year? I recommend you actually write a short description for each dimension of your life. The more specific the better. You can also create a visual version using images that represent your priority goals.

An example of my destination slide

Here is an example of what this looks like for me. I create one slide with the dimensions listed and a sentence or two that describes what success looks like. I picture myself writing this down on 31 December and writing in the past tense. Do whatever works best for you. Once again – I recommend being specific, especially for your top goals. It will really help inform the way you write your annual goals which I will talk about next week.

What is the key takeaway?

Determine your destination in order to make 2021 a better year. Assess where you are, and how you are doing in life. Then spend some time determining the destination you want to reach this year. This approach will help you decide on the direction you will head as you start out on your adventure in 2021.

I am Doug Keating and this is my letter to sons.