Let's set your goals and outcomes for 2023

Daren Smith -

BCC Newsletter | Issue 083

sponsored by Conceptseeker

Who we rooting for in the World Cup? 🇭🇷 🇦🇷 🇫🇷 🇲🇦 Hit reply and let me know!

The New Year is approaching quickly, and now is the time to set your outcomes and big goals for 2023.

You want to be able to hit the ground running on January 1.

(One way to do that is to join us in the Society of Independent Creators for the inaugural 10k Challenge. We’ll build the systems you need in order to grow your business in 2023!)

I’ve written before about setting goals, but I have a new approach this year.

I’m taking the “Set goals you can achieve in 90 days” approach and shrinking the timeline even further.

In 2023 I’ll work in 6-week projects, taking a week off in between.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll break down the process, and even share my template with you in case you need a way to kickstart your planning for the new year.

The process looks like this:

1. Decide your outcomes and Big Goals

2. Plan out your projects

3. Schedule your year

​2023 Goal Planning Template.pdf​

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. ~James Clear

Decide your outcomes and big goals

The first thing you want to do is get clarity on where you want to be next year. I love this prompt:

“1 year from now, looking back on today, what has to happen for you to feel happy with your progress?”

I recommend getting into a “peak state” for this exercise. You don’t want to be slumped over, head in hand, breathing shallowly, and feeling nervous or anxious about the upcoming year.

Stand up, take a few big breaths, stretch your arms out and make yourself physically big and tall, then turn on some pump-up music and start writing.

Write down everything you think you might possibly want to accomplish and obtain in your lifetime. Any area is free game.

Then, once you’ve done that, circle or highlight the things that you want in the next year. Then out of those, take a look at the ones that excite you the most, and pick 2-3.

These will become your big goals for next year, and the way you accomplish them is through projects.

Plan out your projects

“A goal without a plan is just a dream” 
~Tony Robbins

For each of your projects/goals, you want to clearly define a few things.

- What is the outcome you are after?

- How will you measure your progress along the way?

- What are the daily activities that will help you achieve it?

- What can you do right now to get started and build some momentum?

You’re not going to start all of the projects at the same time, so using the template I provided, look at when you would like to work on each project.

Then decide which project you’re going to focus on first and answer those four questions. This is the start of your plan, the process that you’ll use to achieve your goals and finish your projects.

If you skip this step and simply write down your goals, you will have a much harder time achieving them. I don’t want you to get to the end of 2023 and think, “oh, yeah, I was gonna do that...”

Schedule your year

We can’t stop here. We have to take the final step of committing these goals to our calendar.

Scheduling is a powerful step to help you achieve your goals. It’s ok - and even expected - that things change.

You also won’t have a lot of clarity on what your life will look like 6 or 9 months from now. So start with the first few months, get those schedules dialed in, and pencil in your initial thoughts for the rest of the year.

You’ll revisit this document every week off, adding more clarity to the upcoming two blocks.

This allows you to adapt and alter your schedule to meet your new needs as they change throughout the year.

Don’t leave your desk or the table before writing in your main projects for each block.

Have at least one that will be the main project during your “craftsman time” every day, the 30/60/90/120+ minutes each day you’ll set aside to work on your creative projects.

I have mine set the first 3 hours of each work day when I’m not working on a movie. (All bets are off if I’m on set...)

Then get those projects into your CALENDAR, not just this document.