5 steps to plan your best year ever - Ali Abdaal’s Annual planning workshop

A detailed 5-step plan to make 2024 your best year ever

We’re already 10 days into the new year. What, already?

Are you clear on what you want to achieve this year? If not, this 5-step goal-setting process might just be what you are looking for. I attended Ali Abdaal’s annual planning workshop as a bonus for my preorder of his new book (review upcoming!), and I want to share with you what I’ve learned during the workshop.

Ali shared a detailed framework to determine our dreams, goals and aspirations for the year to come. Here’s what it looks like:

1. Look back on 2023

The first step in any goal-setting process is to reflect on the previous year.

Start by looking at your calendar and jot down the most important events that have passed. Proceed week by week and select a few memorable events for every month.

After you’ve gone through your calendar, assess and select 3-5 major milestones from 2023.

Ali suggested a few prompts to reflect on what went well in our career and relationships, and what we were grateful for, but the two prompts that resonated with me the most were these :

• Challenges Overcome : What were the biggest challenges or obstacles you faced in 2023? How did you overcome them, and what did you learn from these experiences?

• Unfulfilled Aspirations : Were there goals or aspirations you had for 2023 that you did not achieve? Reflect on why they were not met and how you feel about it.

Powerful stuff eh?

2. Finding your North Star

After we got clear on what 2023 meant for us, we can start envisioning our North Star, which I see like the values that will inspire the goals you’ll set.

Ali guided us through a series of exercises to inspire this reflection :

• Design your ideal Tuesday : If life was perfect, what would a typical Tuesday look like? Write a timetable of your ideal day. I like that he chose Tuesday for this exercise, cuz it’s easy to think of your ideal weekend day, but choosing a work day helped me reflect on my current job situation. Is it really what I want to be doing?

• What would you choose to do if you knew you couldn’t fail? This is a pertinent question to have you dream big. Go ahead! Try it!

• What would you still do if you knew you would fail? Love this question! For me, the answer was writing this Substack. I absolutely love writing and sharing what I learn each week, and I would still do it if I knew I would fail.

• The future TED talk prompt : This one is so interesting! Imagine yourself 20 years from now attending a TED talk. The speaker is so inspiring and moves you deeply! Except the speaker is you, 20 years older. What is he talking about? Why is it so inspiring? That will give you an indication of what’s important to you and how you can devote your time for the coming years.

• Write your obituary (using Chat-GPT!) This bullet deserves its own newsletter! In the spirit of finding our North star, we have been invited to imagine what we’d hear if we were a ghost attending our own funeral. We wrote bullet points of what we’d like our loved ones to say about us, and fed them to chat GPT who wrote us a most moving eulogy. Very inspiring!

3. Dream big!

To find your greatest and most inspiring goals for 2024, think of all the things you would like to have, be and do for the next 10 years.

Dream big! What are the grandest ideas that float in your mind when you daydream? If you did not have that inner critic who would say it was not feasible? What would you like to accomplish? Write it down.

These were the prompts that made me think outside the box:

• What do you want to learn?

• Who do you want to be?

• What do you want to try?

• What do you want to overcome?

He instructed us to find dreams in each of these 3 categories :

• Relationships

• Career

• Personal development

Jot down everything that comes to mind. You can set a timer for 10 minutes and write everything down. Do not censor yourself!

4. Establish a timeframe

Review your list from number 3 and write a number next to it from 1 to 10.

1 are the dreams you would like to accomplish in 2024. 3 is in 3 years time. Next, 5 years, and 10 years. After you’re done, rewrite your dreams according to what number you attributed to each of them.

You should have a number of dreams or goals for each timeframe.

5. Set your annual goals

Now that you have a list of dreams numbered with 1s, it’s time to choose your goals for 2024.

In that list, select 3 goals that you absolutely want to achieve this year. If possible, choose one for your career, one for your relationships, and one for your personal development. The other ones you’ve identified can be worked on when you’ve achieved any of them or can be postponed to next year.

Now, for each of them, ask yourself why this goal is important for you. This is crucial. Sometimes, when you dig deep into the why, you’ll realize that what you set out to achieve isn’t exactly what you really want. Ali suggests that you ask yourself why 5 times for each goal. That should get you to the root of that desire.

After you’ve identified your strong why, decide on an action plan you will take to achieve each one by the end of the year. That plan should contain detailed actions you can take, as well as habits to put in place. Now that your plan is in place, schedule the main steps and identify when you will do each habit.

Now you’re set to make 2024 your best year ever!

Make sure you review your list of goals every so often to keep them top of mind. If you have a Bullet journal, track your new habits to see your progress and adjust accordingly. I like to look at my goals as part of my weekly review. I also have them top of the page in the dashboard I use in Notion every day. You can also make it your phone wallpaper!

What are the goals you are most excited to work on this year? Are you already clear on what you want to achieve? Please share with us in the comments below!