Manifestival 2024! Revisiting Vision-Setting for the Year Ahead

Happy New Year 2024! I just completed the first iteration of my 2024 plans and used the process from my blog post titled: "Manifestival 2023! Creating your vision for a great year". This gave me the chance to improve on my 2023 process - in this post, I'll share what I did for 2024 and the improvements I made.

Summary of My 2024 Process:

Part 1: Define your most important Goals

What are the concrete accomplishments that are important to you? Consolidate these as much as

possible into themes, and I would recommend choosing a number of goals that you can memorize. Ensure these goals are SMART - measurable, attainable in a year, important to you, etc.

Part 2: Success Factors and Risks

First, you need to know what enables and hinders your success. I used my 2023 end-of-year reflection (blog post here) to identify a "formula" (literally like a math equation) for me that I can remember. For example, as a remote worker, I work from home mostly, but working home from my apartment all day negatively affected my energy and productivity. So "environment" is a really important success factor.

Next, I identified key risks for the year. In my case, too much travel prevented me from staying in my rhythm, and that will continue to be a risk this year. Also, living in New York and having a tight budget, finances are always a risk but to make sure I have enough savings and am meeting my goals to pay off student debt.

Part 3: Lifestyle

I described the lifestyle I want, from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed, during the week, and on the weekends. I made sure that this description was written to align to my 5 major values (love, beauty, wonder, legacy, and vivacity). This lifestyle is qualitative and not something I will track.

Part 4: Tell the story of this year.

Synthesize and manifest what 2024 will be about - what is the story you will keep in your head? Focus on what you want, not some prediction about how you think it will go. In my story, I include:

• A theme (my theme for 2024 is "emergence")

• What reaching my goals will mean to me

• How I will learn and grow, and

• What a great life looks like this year.

It should be an inspiring exercise!

Reflections on the Process

Here is a summary of what I improved from 2023 to 2024, and the next steps I took to address each reflection:

Reflection from 2023	What I did this time
My 2023 plan was too ambitious and it underestimated time, and effort and overestimated my readiness to take on everything	Easy (not) - cut down on goals! Choose the most important goals. You can always add more. I have only 3 buckets - career, health, and relationships.
2. I didn’t have the financial resources to meet my goals	Do a budget forecast that aligns with your goals - start with your overall budget, and then for any goal that requires money, see how to budget for that if you haven't already.
3. My 2023 vision had too many themes and small points to remember, so I lost track and motivation	Consolidate and reduce your number of goals to as few as possible - better both for memory and motivation.
4. I lacked effective systems to execute my goals, like a plan with milestones, time to check in and measure progress, etc.	Create a simple system. Schedule check-ins at some frequency. I created a monthly calendar aligned with my goals so that I can easily check to see if I'm on track.
5. Overemphasis on having more goals and tasks to get done, and not taking into account the lifestyle I wanted to live.	After reducing the number of goals, I added sections to think about lifestyle and the overall narrative of the year. It gives me a balanced vision and picture of what I want this year. Remember - it's important to keep the vision, or story, in your head.

Some additional reminders:

• Put down goals that you want, not ones that you should want. All the time, I hear people

• Reflect backward before looking forward. Make sure you are applying lessons from the past. Click here to learn about my process.

• Reread everything and ask yourself how you feel. A vision is something you should be pulled toward enacting. You should be clear, inspired, and excited for your future. If you are not, you have 1 of 3 problems: (1) you aren't clear or sure of your vision, (2) it's not what you actually want, or (3) you don't think you can make it happen. Iterate until you are ready for action!

If you’d like to discuss your goals for the year, schedule a discovery call (free) here!

For Learning and With Love,

Chris