Personal Performance Review and Goal Setting

My Type A, project manager self loves, loves, loves the idea of doing a personal performance review at the end of the year, and setting goals for the new year.  A few years ago, my friend G pointed me to Chris Guillebeau's post on conducting an annual review. (Gotta love Facebook!)

Every year, I vow to do this and have downloaded his Excel template several times, and just haven't ever gotten around to completing it.  Partly because December is a busy month, especially if I'm taking custom orders in my Etsy shop.  And on the heels of that is January, which is my small business tax month, where I have to reconcile all my money in and out and pay my state sales tax collected.  On the bright side that means I don't need to do anything else for April and our regular income tax.

Anyway, back to goal setting. I never seemed to get it together to do it well. I always have a half-hearted "lose weight" goal, and maybe a vague "spend less money" one, but by June I've eaten my weight in pie and have stuffed seventeen more boxes of scrapbooking supplies into my craft room. First world problems, I know.

But this year, I think it's going to be different.  I've had an entire year to absorb the magic of the Mondo Beyondo class I took, and realized that writing down my dreams and thinking about them actually has made many of them materialize. (cue Twilight Zone music here)

I thought about taking it again - there's a session that starts on Monday.  

But I have a habit of signing up for lots of online classes (ooh shiny!) and not following through.  I am currently signed up for a Project Life class at Studio Calico, and have yet to do more than download the class materials.

This year would be perfect for me to get off to a roaring start on that weight loss goal.  I'm currently on maternity leave, which means I have some time to plan my meals and cook. I'm breastfeeding, so I've got that extra calorie burning boost. I'm no longer getting paid, so it would behoove me to eat more simply, and at home anyway. I know that the Paleo diet works well for me so I don't even need to "experiment".

But the other goals?  Still kind of fuzzy for me.  I was looking around for some way to structure my "personal performance review" and do some detailed goal setting for 2013.  Like you know, actually writing stuff down. Having a plan. Not having too many things to focus on at once.

And thanks to AskMoxie, I read about this amazing planning workbook thingy called Creating Your Incredible Year 2013.  It's a PDF download for less than $10 and has close to 100 pages in it.  As a crafty person, I love the hand-drawn pages and all the sparkly bits  in the drawings.  

Yes, it's definitely geared towards women, and yes, it looks totally fluffy and hippie. But the cool thing is the content - it's solid and asks the right leading questions to get me to my goals and more importantly, HOW I'm going to achieve them.  Leonie Dawson, the gal who created this tool, calls herself a "hippy who gets shit done."  I can get behind that!

  

Here's a peek at some of the pages (click image to see a larger version):

It starts with a review of 2012 and then moves into the 2013 planning.  It's very detailed and long.  I've had it for a few days and have completed about 10-12 pages so far.

The best part is that it's something I can do on my own time, and in bits and pieces, which is about the only kind of time I have these days.  I just printed it at home on the "toner saving" setting and it looks great.  I'll either bind it myself with my nifty binding tool, or stick it in a binder.

I got the Life version and am debating also downloading the Business one for my crafty stuff.  But I wanted to complete one first.  I've recommended it to a few friends and would love to find other folks I know who are interested in working on it together!

If you click on my link, I'll get a tiny bonus for referring you. But like my other reviews, I'm honest about what I like. I definitely dig this and am looking forward to completing it! Let me know if you end up getting it too!