Hello Friends!  It’s Amanda aka @shenoteditall on Instagram from the Archer and Olive Ambassador Team.  Today I’m bringing you a blog post that will hopefully help you use your bullet journal to not only figure out and set your goals for 2023 but also truly achieve and crush them!

For me goal setting can be both exciting and overwhelming, even as a goal oriented person.  It’s incredibly easy to start the year on fire to get your goals accomplished but slowly over the year that fire fizzles out.  Typically this change happens because we don’t define our goals well enough or break them down into small enough pieces to make our brains think the end is truly attainable.  My aim with the spreads I’m sharing with you today is to help you break down those goals and give you some tools to stay on top of them through out the year.

Supplies For Goal Planning

• An A5 journal by Archer and Olive
• Colorful Markers (I suggest Archer and Olive Acrylographs)
• A Fineliner pen

So, the first question you need to ask yourself is…

What do I want in 2023? 

This is a sort of pre-goal setting page and it can be as simple or as elaborate as you want.  It’s a place for you to brain dump all the things you want out of the coming year, big or small.  It could be tasks as big as “go back to school” or “get a new job”, or as small as “go swimming in a lake” or “learn how to bake a layer cake.”  You’re going to use this page in the next step so be fully honest.  Knowing what you truly want out of the year will help you set goals you’re excited to work towards.

SETTING YOUR GOALS

Now that you’ve figured out what you want out of the year the second step is to set your big, overarching goals.  I typically choose to set 10 goals but you can choose any number you would like, be it 5 goals or 15, this is totally up to you.  For this spread in my bullet journal I have also chosen to color code each of the goals.  This will come to play in later spreads and helps to organize each of the goals.

DEFINING YOUR GOALS

So you’ve figured out your goals, now it’s time to really dive into each of the goals.  This spread was designed to help you define what you want out of each goal and plan how you will reach them.  This is the most complicated spread that I use for goal setting but it’s also one of the most important.  For the sake of this example I have chosen my first goal to show you.  This same spread would also need to be repeated for each of your other goals.

You may notice that I continue with the color coding on this page, using the light pink I assigned to the goal from my primary goals page for the details.

Now, when you break down this spread you see that there are several elements and it’s important to follow it in order which is as follows:

• Timeline: How long to you plan to spend working on this goal?  Is it a short term goal or a long term goal?  For my goal I plan on working on it all year so my time frame is 365 days.
• Brainstorming: This will be more important for some goals than others, especially broader goals.  This step allows you to create a visual for all the smaller elements of the goal.
• Setting Sub Goals: These can either be small goals that help you obtain the big goal or simply multiple smaller goals within the main goal.  For me “Have Adventures” is a very broad goal and not very specific so by setting sub goals I’m able to make my overall goal more attainable
• Make a Gameplan: This is where you define how you plan to reach your goals.  I find including a calendar in this portion helpful, but it’s not required.  The calendar can also be dynamic and as opportunities pop up throughout the year you can add to the calendar.

Goal setting Printable

For those of you that are totally overwhelmed by this step I have made a printable of this spread (that will fit into an A5 notebook) so you can simply print, cut and glue it into your book if you would prefer.                                      

MONTHLY GOAL PLANNING

Ok, you’ve now done it, you’ve set your goals and defined them, now it’s time to get to work! This next spread is designed to help you stay on top of your goals every month. You can lump them together in a specific goal section of your journal or you can incorporate it into your monthly spreads (as I do), it’s up to you!

In this spread you layout the different goals you want to work on throughout the month and then figure out if it’s something that will take the whole month to work on, something that you need to work on every week, or if it’s a goal you want to work on every day. For me, my daily goals are more like habits I’m choosing to work on this month. In January there are 31 days so next to each of the daily goals there are 31 boxes you can use to keep track of each goal.

You may notice I have also continued to use the color coding from the original goals page here. This helps me know which of my goals are helping me work towards my big goals. You may also notice there are a few goals that aren’t colored coded and that’s perfectly fine! It’s absolutely normal to have small goals that pop up here and there and there’s no reason why you can’t mix them in with your pursuit of your big goals.

WRAPPING UP YOUR MONTHLY PROGRESS

Another monthly spread I use is the monthly goals wrap up.  This is a page for you to figure out what worked for you this month in the journey to achieving your goals as well as what didn’t work.  Mainly though this is a place I use to shout out all the really cool things that happened as I work towards my goals.  Again this page is totally customizable to your interests.  Sometimes you’ll have a lot to write, sometimes you won’t and that’s totally OK.

MAKING YOUR GOALS VISUAL

The final spread I’m sharing with you today is kind of a bonus spread that I like to use in my goal setting.  I’m a very visual person so having a visual representation of my goals is a great reminder for me of what I’m working towards.  Enter the Vision Board.  For my vision board here I found photos on Google, put them into a word document and then printed them off on my home printer.  I then cut them out and glued them into my journal.  It doesn’t have to be super elaborate or fancy, it just has to work!

Goal Setting Layouts Video with Flip Through

If you would prefer to hear me explain my process I’ve made a helpful youtube video that you can find at the link below.

So there you have it!  I hope that you all can find these spreads useful in the pursuit of your goals and I can’t wait to see how many of them you all crush this year! If you would like to check out even more goal setting spread ideas you can check out this 2022 blog from Archer and Olive as well.  And for all of you who do share your goals on social media make sure to tag #archerandolive and #aoshare so we can see!  If you want to find more posts from me as well as how I’m tackling my goals for 2023 you can find me on Instagram @Shenoteditall.