While the start of the calendar year is most people’s preferred time for goal-setting, spring is the perfect time to check in on your progress and reevaluate! And if you didn't have a chance at the start of 2022 to plan your yearly goals, now is a great time to take that step and set down your goals and intentions.
We’ve created a checklist for you to reassess your start-of-the-year goals and priorities. Goal check-ins are always good practice, but they are also especially important during this time of ongoing uncertainty. Circumstances related to public health, business regulations, the economy, various markets, and even social norms have fluctuated over the past two years. It makes sense that we might need to reevaluate our goals and intentions more often during this time.
Aside from work and business goals, you may also have goals for personal development, health, relationships, and so on. This checklist will focus on business goals but could also apply to goalsetting in other areas of life. So, jump into the following steps to start spring cleaning your goals!
1. Review Your Goals (or Make New Ones)
Begin by looking over your goals that you set at the start of the year and asking yourself a few questions about them. Do these goals still feel relevant to you, months later? Do they still feel realistic, given what you’ve accomplished in the first few months of the year?
If you didn’t have the opportunity to set 2022 goals at the beginning of the year, take the time to do so now. You’re already a few months in, so you can use your knowledge of your current situation to make your goals even more informed and strategic than they would have been in late December or early January. Consider a few areas of focus to base your goals around and then select two or three final goals that feel challenging but ultimately feasible. It’s best to make goals measurable and quantitative, so that you can easily monitor their progress. Plus, you can use these checklist steps again in a few months to check back in on these goals.
2. Assess Your Progress
Consider the steps you’ve taken so far this year. Have you established any new habits, made any mindset shifts, or made other progress toward your goals? Take this chance to celebrate any progress you have made. You may still have a long way to go, but you’ve made it this far in the year and you deserve to feel proud! Even if you haven’t moved toward your goals yet, it might just be time to recommit to them – or readjust them.
In considering how far you’ve come and how far you still have to go, you may also find yourself closer to having a goal accomplished than you’d expected. In this case, you can consider making the goal even bigger, to continue to challenge yourself throughout the year.
3. Consider All the Factors
There’s no shame in revising goals you made at the start of the year, especially when you consider all the factors that are still unknown about the year ahead. The overall economy and individual markets continue to shift. The future still holds many unknowns for businesses and consumers. Public health and safety remain major concerns.
Given all these unknowns, it’s important to remember that just getting by is an accomplishment in itself! Don’t be hard on yourself – consider all that you’ve dealt with and continue to deal with in order to keep your goals in perspective.
4. Adjust as Needed
Now that you’ve taken the time to review, assess, and reflect, it’s time to make any changes to your goals that you feel are necessary. You can adjust your goals by either changing the scale of your goal (making it bigger or smaller based on current progress and other factors) or picking a new goal focus.
If new opportunities have arisen that might be more meaningful to you now, you could shift to that from a goal that now feels less relevant. You can also add an additional goal or two to the ones you made in January if you have the capacity to take them on.
5. Recommit
Even if you don’t make a single change to your goals, it’s still important to take this step as part of your spring goal check-in! Remaining committed to a goal is challenging, even under the best circumstances. Take this opportunity to rededicate yourself to your 2022 goals. Remind yourself of why what you want to achieve is worth doing. And write your goals down somewhere visible to help you stay focused on them each day.
Whether you’ve stayed on track to meet your goals or had to make adjustments, recommitting to them will renew your motivation. Remember that your goals can be a tool for success in 2022. Keep striving to accomplish them, and you’re bound to reach new heights this year.
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