How do you usually approach planning for your business—either the big picture or the more short-term goals?

I was on a group call recently where someone shared an abashed confession.

She’s typically a confident, inspiring, brilliant creator who is usually very tuned into what is right for her and her business.

But she said that she has become so burnt out on setting goals for the year that she just stopped doing it.

Someone else chimed in that the process of annual reviews seems so messed up, because if there’s a problem and you don’t even look it in the eye until just one part of the year, it’s probably become so ingrained that it needs a big fix.

My personal favorite issue came into the mix from someone else, who said that it’s so easy to get off course with all the things you didn’t do and to beat yourself up for them. Then the process is just draining, demoralizing, and thoroughly demotivating.

The exact opposite of how you want to feel about your business planning!

I maintain that setting out your dreams and plans for the path ahead for you and your business should be an affirming, motivating, energizing, and hopefully even joyous experience.

Have your goals gone wild?

I’ve spent the last three years mainlining information on what scientists have learned in experiments on motivation and goal setting, along with the counterintuitive insights neuroscientists have brought to the table.

That’s why none of the issues these folks had with year-end reviews and more general planning for their small business surprised me.

They’re all known issues with what one scientist had called our “goals gone wild” culture.

But wait . . . Should we throw out goals all together? And reflection? And review? And the entire concept of taking stock and making plans?

I bet you have your own approach to this whole conundrum. Some things that have worked for you, and some things that aren’t working yet that you have hopes of tweaking for the future.

That’s crucial.

Nothing works for everyone, and no one knows what works and doesn’t work, what you will and won’t try, and what excites or deflates you like you do.

It sounds like a maddening answer, but I bet it reassures something you already know: the right thing for you is personal to you. You must—and absolutely can—experiment and discover it for yourself.

And that’s why I want to propose something different this year.

It’s not you. The process is the problem. Not you.

Most business and new-year planning processes start far too late.

Have you ever had that feeling where you get to the part where you’re supposed to write down your goals, and you’re like, “Whoa! How am I supposed to know what these are already? Shouldn’t there have been something to get me ready to know what these are first?!”

A lot of “methods” to plan for your business generally or for the new year pretty much skip to writing down what your priorities are, if not jumping all the way ahead, expecting you to magically design specific, measurable, blah, blah, blah “goals” to reach them.

They skip anything resembling helping you get clear on your priorities.

(I always wonder–do people think we all walk around crystal clear on what we want, what is important to us, and what the meanings of our lives are?? How are we supposed to choose which goals make sense to set with these cute acronyms???)

It matters that you choose the right goal—not that it fits the specifications of some acronym.

What really gets me is that most goal planning methods seem to expect that you already know exactly what works for you in terms of how to make whatever you want to do happen. As if you clearly already know whether you’re more likely to get what you want through a habit, or a learning goal, or some other approach.

But, if that were the case, why would you even be reading someone’s advice on goal setting?

I want to suggest something different.

I want you to see how it might make a crucial difference for you to see what early, important steps you’ve been missing all this time.

I want to propose that, rather than dive into what went right or wrong in the past–and what you want to magically do in the future that you haven’t managed to do before–we first spend some time getting really, deeply, super crystal clear on you.

Do we need a crystal ball here?

One of the most startling insights to come out of neuroscience and psychology in the past thirty years is demonstrations on brain scans that what we’ve done in the past is not the best predictor of what we’ll do in the future.

Shocker: The best predictor of what you *will* do in the future is what you *want* to do. (Hence all the fascinating research on motivation!)

But that begs the question:

What do you really, actually want for your future?

Specifically?

Do you know?

Determining that is the crucial step toward getting your incredibly, powerful, complex brain behind your plans. And that’s the secret to those plans organically becoming realities.

This fall, we are so excited to bring you something that I have spent the last three years pouring more and more insights and tweaks into based on the research findings of thousands of scientists.

It’s not something you have to set aside time to slog through on your own. You show up, we go through everything together, and at the end you are done.

Actually, scratch that.

It’s not that “you’re done.” Rather, you are armed with invaluable insights, customized clarity, and an actionable plan ready to seamlessly implement, because we’ve already done everything hard in our time together.

You’ll roll into the last part of the year with confidence and excitement that you’re going to finish what you set out to do. And you’ll bring optimism into the new year ahead, because you know that it’s all down hill from here and you’ve already set the ball in motion.

How You’ll Set Yourself Up for Simple, Streamlined Success

The Strategic Planning Mastermind Workshop will be delivered entirely online in a small group, live-only format. We’ll take two days together, with five hours each day with an hour break in the middle. You’ll complete all your work during the workshop itself.

I’ll be offering the workshop twice:

Personally, I’m a big fan of getting my new year planning done in the fall. That way I’m looking at what I have left to do for what I expected from myself this year when there’s still time to hit high gear and finish it.

It’s actually one of my favorite motivation hacks!

If you’re curious, you can learn more and grab a spot here.

And if you’d like to take half off the price of your workshop admission AND have on-going coaching with me for $147 a month, you may want to check this out.

To your success,

Gabi

p.s. One of the biggest things that’s broken with most annual goal setting systems is that you plan once a year for too long of a period of time. We’ll look at what is the very specific amount of time it’s best to plan ahead for, what to do with everything else you want to get done in the future that doesn’t fit and a cool hack for how to handle the rest of your year as a result. Learn more and grab your spot.