During the start of the year, it has always become a habit of mine to reflect and to contemplate. If there’s one thing that I like doing, I love contemplating, creating goals and thinking of ways on how to achieve them. I know that some of us do this, but some may also consider it very tedious and time consuming. I’d like to share how me and my husband do our goal planning or goal setting. We have done this since the time we got married in December 2009. I, personally, have done it since 2007.

Okay, for this year, we have already actually made our plans last December. We agree on a set schedule and we really sit on it. I have learned from a previous female boss that once you really block of something in your calendar, it helps you stick to this schedule. I know that their are things that may come in the way of the schedule that may delay and even cancel it, but all you need to do is reschedule. Both of you and even all your children should stick by this ‘agreed’ goal setting meeting.

Now that you have gathered everyone, ask each member of the family to share what they want for the themselves, the family and for other people in the future. To make it fun for the kids, they can cut out pictures from magazines or draw something that will answer all of these questions. This time of reflection will lead you to knowing your family’s vision/mission. Since right now, it’s just me and my husband, we discussed it and we found out our vision for our family. The vision of our family is to be “A family that will spread knowledge through various media to help people grow and achieve their goals in life.”

We realized that both of us have this gift of spreading knowledge using our skills. EJ is a great presenter and communicator. In the future, he really wants to try it out as a motivational or attitudinal speaker. I am great at events coordination so my business, Manila Workshops, for me, will be the medium that I will use to help spread knowledge. Both of us are bloggers and this year, we intend to carry out this vision by writing more educational and informative articles that would be beneficial for our readers. So that’s our vision? Do you have your own family vision/mission already?

Now going back to the goal setting activity, once you have your vision/mission, you now can create goals. What we do in our home is divide the goals into categories. In my list, we have divided our goals into seven sub-categories. These are:
– Goals related to the baby (since this is a major change in our lives in 2013)
– Spiritual Goals
– Financial Goals
– Fitness and Health Goals
– Career Goals
– Mental Goals
– New things and experiences

I also have columns on who will be the main driver of a particular goal. The driver will be the one encouraging the other family members to work on the goal. I also have another column for duration. I have a set deadline for each of the goal.

It really depends on you and your family on how you want to create the sub categories or even how to lay them out or how to document them. I use an excel spreadsheet, but for some families, they use manila paper. Others use a plain sheet of white paper. For us, it has been like this for the past 3 years. I still have the file from three years ago. What changed is that we just added the goals related to the baby this year 🙂

To cast this is stone, I print out the paper and have me and EJ sign the paper. We then do a monthly review of our goals just to see that we are on track.

How about you, mommy? What do you do to set goals for the year? Do you have any activity that you and your family go through for goal setting and planning? How do you do it? I’d love to hear how you do it at your home, momtrepreneur?

Love lots,