In last week’s episode I shared how you can survive the rest of the summer and the rest of the year. Because let’s be honest, we’re on the downhill part of the year and if we aren’t careful we’ll blink and it’ll be January again.

Today we’re going to talk about an approach you can take to reset your goals now that we have passed the midpoint of the year. And if you never set goals earlier in the year, no worries. You will still learn a process you can take to set them for the remainder of the year.

A note about annual goal setting: I’ve never found annual goal setting to work well for me. It feels like too long of a time span and too many things can change and flip the goals on their head. Instead I prefer quarterly goal setting and breaking down those quarterly goals into monthly goals.

Before we dive into the resetting portion of your goals, I think it might be helpful to start with some tips for setting goals if you haven’t. The rest of this episode might make you glaze over if you don’t have any goals to reset, so let’s think about what kind of remainder of the year goals you could set.

Before you decide on the projects or goals you want to do, you have to think about a few things.

1. What time do you want to take off for the holidays? If you want to take off the whole month of December, you need to mark that off and work backwards.
2. What are your boundaries during the holidays? Similarly, do you want to be totally offline, posting on social media still, or starting on your recipes for Q1? All of those decisions should be made before you set your goals. Otherwise, you might set goals that prohibit that from happening and you’ll think you just don’t have time to take off the whole month of December.
3. How do you want to feel at the end of the year? No one sets out wanting to feel frazzled and stressed out. But unfortunately not planning ahead can often leave you burning out and feeling overwhelmed at the end of the quarter or year.
4. How much money do you need to make each month or quarter? If your family requires you to bring in a certain amount of money, this is important to consider. Even though you might want to take off Q4 and relax, that might not be possible if you need to bring in an additional $2k a month.

Find and review your goals

If you never set goals, you get to skip this one. But if you did, it’s time to break them out. Whether you have them digitally in a task management tool like Asana or you wrote them down on a piece of paper, gather them so you can analyze them.

Analyze your goals

What status are your goals?

• Didn’t start
  • Never turned the goal into projects/tasks
  • Didn’t write them down somewhere you could see them
  • Forgot about them completely
• Started but didn’t finish
• Completed

For the goals that are not completed, analyze why.

Were they S-M-A-R-T goals?

SMART goals are goals that are:

1. Specific
2. Measurable
3. Achievable
4. Relevant
5. Time-bound

Often times we didn’t complete our goals because we either weren’t all that interested in them, they were too big to get started, or they weren’t realistic. Doubling your traffic in a month is not a realistic goal, as an example.

Another problem goals often have is that they are not in our control. If your goal is to double your traffic, that isn’t really something you simply put in X and get out Y. There’s a variable in there that we cannot control. A better goal would be to increase your posting frequency and target high volume, low competition keywords, as an example.

Delete or Reset

Now that you know what your previous goals were, you can choose to let them go (or delete) them or to reset them to be more realistic and achievable.

If you are no longer interested in a goal you set, don’t be afraid to let it go.

If you set a goal that wasn’t specific or measurable, adjust it so that it is.

Add new goals

If you set goals during another quarter or month, they may not be relevant for the upcoming season. Add in any new, relevant goals that you need for this season.

A few ideas for projects that are specific to Q4 might be:

• Creating a new paid ebook
• Optimizing your email forms for the holiday traffic boost
• Creating holiday specific round ups
• Creating a holiday Pinterest plan of action
• Hiring a new team member
• Reshooting old holiday recipes
• Creating new holiday recipes
• Fixing your long list of broken items to prepare for Q4
• Redesigning your website

If redesigning your website or honing in on your branding is on your goal list for the year (or needs to be!) we’d love to chat. We have space for your project and would love to discuss how we can support you with your branding and website goals.

For more ideas to help you get ready for Q4, check out this blog post we wrote with 30 different things you can do to prepare your blog for Q4!

The process for resetting your goals can be that easy! Simply find your goals, analyze them, delete or reset and then add in new goals that you’re excited about.

If you need more support in setting goals, be sure to check out these episodes:

• Setting SMART Goals for Your Blog
• Setting Quarterly and Monthly Goals
• Setting Weekly Goals
• Summer & Beyond: Prioritizing and Surviving

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