Hey there, Masha here from Masha Plans and today we are talking about setting and crushing goals with your Bullet Journal!

Your BuJo is an incredibly powerful tool and it can be a key part of you reaching your goals in 2020! However, like with every tool, it’s nice to have some directions. I’m here today to share tips on setting your goals and show you the exact Bullet Journal pages that helped me achieve mine.

First, let’s look into setting your goals since this is probably the most important part of the process and half of your success.

HOW TO SET GOALS

The key to setting your goals is to make them achievable and to make them yours.

To achieve achievable goals (he he he), make sure you aim high but not impossibly high. If you’re looking for your first job, don’t set yourself a goal of earning a million dollars on your first year. Make sure your goals are always a bit scary, but still plausible.

As for making them your own, this is a tricky one. We are surrounded by people and bombarded by their goals and new year resolutions. With all that pressure, it’s so, SO easy to slip into the goals somebody else wants for you. 

Don’t do it though! If it’s not really something you want, you’re more likely to give up and not have a motivation to go through with it when the difficulties start. Plus, why would you want to waste your time and effort on somebody else’s dream?

So, when you set goals, be sure to ask yourself - is this really what I want? Think of why you want this, how you will feel when you get it. This simple procedure will help you realize if it’s something you really want and get you motivated to achieve.

To help you get started on your goal-setting process, here are some questions you might ask yourself:

• What do I want my life to look like?
• What kind of person do I want to be by the end of the year?
• Why do I want to achieve these things?
• What areas of my life do I want to improve?

PLANNING MY QUARTER

Before we get into goal setting Bullet Journal pages, I wanted to explain the way I plan and achieve my goals.

Ok so now, I’ll tell you what is the biggest trap you might want to avoid when setting up goals. I usually used to set a big, huge goal in January for my year. However, with time, it would eventually get knocked back to the background of my mind and daily routine life and I’d just remember about it around December. It looked a bit too big and too scary and I kept putting things off.

What really helped me to change was the new way I started planning my goals  - by quarters. Here is my process.

I start from creating a vision board or just a spread with a general understanding of who is Masha by the end of the year and where she is in life. 

Then I set my goal for the year, but not one big goal, but smaller goals for each quarter. First of all, it makes goals more achievable because they are divided into smaller parts. Plus, it allows you to focus on one or two things each quarter and make it better, vs trying to reach all of your goals at the same time.

More importantly, it allows you to adjust your goals as the year goes. Life happens, priorities change, it’s totally ok if your goals also change. If you set a big goal for the whole year and at some point realize it’s not really what you want at the moment, it will be much harder to drop it. By planning your goals in quarter sprints you have the flexibility to easily adjust your goals for the changed circumstances.

Ok, enough theory, let’s get into practice and let me show you the pages I use to rock my goals!

SUPPLIES

First, of course, here are the supplies I use to create these pages.

Notebook - I’m using B5 by Archer and Olive. The extra space the pages provide is perfect for goal setting because it allows you to write a more detailed plan on just one page.

And if you want to get yourself one, or pretty much anything from Archer and Olive, be sure to use my code MASHA10 to get 10% off your order.

Fineliners - I’m sticking to my favorite Pitt Artist Pens by Faber Castell.

Color - I went maybe a bit overboard with that, but I just got myself Tombow Twin Tone markers and I wanted to use the heck out of them!

GOALS

The first page is an overview of my yearly goals. As you can see I divided them all by quarter. 

I’ll be honest with you I don’t necessarily plan each quarter at the beginning of the year. For example, at the moment I just have goals for Q1 and Q2.

I like that I have the freedom to plan the rest of the year later since my goals for the last two quarters will depend on how well I do in the first one.

YEARLY PLAN

This is a spread that would be very useful to have right next to your yearly goals page.

I divided the year by quarters as you can see, and here I’ll be writing milestones or events that are crucial to my goals. This is a simple way to see what could be a focus on each of my quarters.

For example, I have a lot of business goals and if I see that some months I have events to attend or a new thing to launch (no announcements yet!) I know that during these months, I won’t have time for other things. So I set my goals accordingly.

In a way, it’s a future log, but just for your goals. However! I’d also add here any travel plans you might have. This will help you see which months you won’t be able to work on your goals too much so you can plan accordingly.

Oh confession time! There are several mistakes I made with this spread. Let me know if you spot them! And then, you can check out how I tried to fix the mistakes in the video at the end of the post. As I always say, turn your mistakes into opportunities!

MY WHY

When you’re trying to achieve something, there is no more powerful tool than knowing your why I recommend everybody to create this spread to clarify yours!

Here I also used a bit of the vision board technique. You don’t just write the goal and why you want to achieve it, but think of how your life would be with it, what would you feel. 

There is a space for you to write it all down here and I recommend you to go in detail and try to write it as realistically as possible. This will be a mental push for you since your brain will start working by itself on achieving it already.

QUARTER PLAN

Once my quals are set and the quarter begins, it’s time to create a quarterly goals page.

I create one focus for each month, and within the month, I divide it by two-week sprints. This is an outline for my quarter which I’ll be referencing as I go and plan my months and weeks.

MONTHLY GOALS

Finally, we narrowed down to monthly goals.

First - I outline the monthly focus. This is very important because it will always be reminding me of what the goal is and that I should stay on track.

Then I divide this goal into smaller steps I should be making every week. I know that later on during the month I’ll have so many other things to do, something unexpected will come up and it will be difficult to keep the goals in mind. 

But, with this spread, I already have a plan in place so no need to fret about it and no way I can forget. Of course, it’s not set in stone and I might change it if needed, but at least I have a strong base to go off.

Planning for your goals is the single most important thing you can do to achieve them, and dividing the goals into smaller steps will make it even easier!

PLAN WITH ME

Finally, if you want to check out me draining my journal in rainbow colors and fixing some pretty silly mistakes while setting up these goals pages - be sure to check out the video below!

There is one more thing I’ve created for you! Planning is half of the success and I really don’t want anything to stand in your way.

So I created a free printable goal setting page which you could add to your Bullet Journal and start your journey to the life of your dreams right away!

Hope you found my way of goal setting useful and will give it a try. If you do, be sure to tag me and @archerandolive on Instagram, we’d love to see your goal pages!

And as always remember: Keep Bullet Journaling and Don’t Be A Blob!