It’s the top of the year and like many people, I have taken some time to reflect on my past year as well as what I would like to accomplish for my upcoming year. Goal setting is invaluable in helping you decide what things you would like to focus on and how you will achieve them. I wanted to share with you some of the ways that I take my goals from ideas to actionable items. The beginning of the year is a great time to create a formal process for tracking your goals, however, you can begin using this method at anytime.
I use a tool called Asana, a web-based application for managing and tracking work. Asana is my go-to tool for organizing my projects and thoughts. I use it in so many ways. I initially began using it as a client tracking tool, but I soon realized it was equally good for handing my personal and non-client facing projects. If you have read other posts on The Happy Solopreneur, you know I am a fan of prioritizing and setting small, S.M.A.R.T goals to help you achieve larger goals. I use this same method here, but utilize Asana to help break my large goals into smaller goals and tasks that I can then track to completion.
In this video I will walk through the detailed level of how I use Asana. There is also a step-by-step process below.
Tracking goals with Asana
1. Use whatever method works best for you to begin the process of visualizing your goals. I love all the different methods of visualizing –
from vision boarding to intention planning.
2. After I visualize my goals, I like to put them into a practical document. This year I created a strategic personal plan, which includes categories of focus, for example, financial, business, education and fitness. I then created 1-3 top goals per category.
3. Now it’s time to move over from envisioning to organization. You’ll want to begin by creating a new account in Asana or signing into an existing account. Asana offers both free and paid versions. I am currently using the free version.
4. Create your Asana project and decide your project view (you can change this later). For this purpose you may want to make a project called “Personal Projects” or “Business Projects.”
5. For each bigger goal you have, you will want to break it into a number of smaller tasks. In Asana, you can add tasks and subtasks as needed. For example, one of my big goals for the year is to grow my blog, so I may want to create several tasks that will help with this growth. If I want to post a new blog every month, I can go ahead and set up a task for each of these. Other tasks I have like hiring help, or creating a stock photo account, or making an appointment with a blog consultant could be set up as individual tasks as well.
6. You can also invite team members to easily collaborate and assign due dates to tasks as well.
The thing I love most about Asana is I can easily add and modify tasks from the app and then view them on my computer later – and everything syncs up. Remember, no tool works if you don’t use it! I hope this helps you organize your goals and see them to fruition.