We are already in December and 2018 is practically over, so its time to start thinking about 2019 already. My approach to yearly planning is something that has evolved a lot over the past 20 years. These days planning tends to be something I do on a continual basis versus a one time event. When I look back at the current year my plans definitely evolved a lot and I ended up accelerating many of my business related goals. There were also some things I had planned on doing in 2018 that I ended up dropping. But its always to good to idea to start thinking now about what you want to accomplish in the new year.
“Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Everything”
That quote is attributed to Dwight Eisenhower, although like a lot of well known quotes he may never have actually said it. Nonetheless I think its true. If you think through what you want to accomplish for the next year and put together a credible plan it will not only help you get things done, it will also help you figure out how to change them when the inevitable things you didn’t expect (both good and bad) come up. I emphasize the word credible, because its not helpful to come up with a lot of pie in the sky goals and then never achieve them. In the aerospace industry I saw a lot of non-credible plans…. The flip side of that is you don’t want goals that are necessarily easy to achieve either. Planning and goal setting is somewhat of an art form. Don’t bite off more than you can really chew, don’t set your sights too low otherwise won’t grow, be flexible as both unexpected setbacks and opportunities pop up…. During this month I’ll spend a lot of time thinking about what things are going to be important next year and which ones aren’t.
Cape Coral Mastermind
This week I’m traveling to Florida for Scott Carson’s Mastermind group. I look forward to hanging out with a lot of the people I spend so much time interacting with online and on the phone. I’m sure planning and goal setting for 2019 will be on the agenda. I’ll definitely be comparing notes on the outlook for 2019, and should come away with some new ideas that I haven’t thought about yet.