Plan For Your Success

I hope you’ve all had a good break over the Christmas and New Year Holiday and didn’t have to get too bogged down in work, while you were meant to be relaxing. I certainly didn’t. In fact I didn't touch my laptop for a whole four days.

If you were working last week and got a chance to have a tidy up and a sort out, you’re probably ready to get going for 2009. No doubt the thought of New Years Resolutions may have passed through your mind at some time over the last few days. These thoughts may have passed swiftly on because you just know you’ll have given them up by February.

But if you reviewed your successes from last year you can plan your success and plan of attack for this year. Knowing where you want to go, means you can at least work out how you’re going to get there and have an idea of which direction you’d like to go in.

• Create a plan.

• Set a few goals - make them specific and set a completion date against each one.

• Think about what achieving these goals will mean to you - personally, financially, emotionally and imagine how you will actually feel when you’ve got there.

• Tell someone about it - or at least write it down. Sharing it with a friend, colleague, mentor or coach makes it more likely to happen than just having it as a vague idea in your head.

• Now you can decide how you're going to achieve them. Break it down into achievable and realistic steps and develop an action plan to take you from A to B … and beyond.

• Importantly - track your progress - make yourself accountable. If you've got someone keeping tabs or nudging you along, you're far more likely to achieve your goals and stay on track. I use checklists as I find this is a good way of keeping me motivated as I tick off each action.

If 2009 is going to be a tough year, it's even more important to make sure that you take time to make time for what you want to achieve and don’t forget to have fun along the way.

You can find more on Goal Setting on www.clareevans.co.uk/articles.htm.