The further along we journey into the year, the less likely we are to continue our “New Year’s Resolutions” progress. So many people are in this boat! In fact, many gyms and other fitness companies put this into their business model. If this person is you, you’re in the right place! So don’t worry, I have some fantastic news for you. I have found the secret to maintain my own goal progress and momentum throughout the entire year, which has allowed me to CRUSH my loftiest goals. And… guess what? I am going to share this secret right now. Ready? It’s completing monthly goal reviews! Twelve goal review might sound like a lot but don’t worry, they are super simple. Today, I am going to tell you, step-by-step, how and when to complete a goal review and how you, too, can start smashing all of your amazing goals this year! Ready to dive in? Let’s do this!
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What are Goal Reviews?
A goal review is reoccurring process where one evaluates and reflects on their current goal progress and sets up a realistic plan to further this progress and complete their goals. It can be done daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, and so on. However, to simplify this process, I have outlined the goal review plan I personally follow that has led me to success in the hopes that you can create your own personalized goal review process and use it to its fullest potential. My process includes quick weekly goal tracking, simple monthly goal reviews, and detailed quarterly reviews. Today, we will focus on the first two of this process.
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Why are Goal Reviews So Important?
Goal reviews are incredibly beneficial to the goal setting and achieving process. I truly cannot recommend them enough. They have countless benefits, but my favorites are the fact that goal reviews:
- Easily help you track your goal progress throughout the year
- Consistently inspire and motivate you to follow through with each of your goals
- Allow you to realistically modify your short- and long-term goals as your life changes
- Gives you time to reflect on your year, which is crucial for personal growth
- Construct an individual attack plan for each goal you may have
When Should You Complete a Goal Review?
Well, I am so glad you asked! A goal review can be done… whenever you like! The key is to add it to your calendar and to do list! Here is the goal review calendar I personally follow and can be a great starting place for you!
- January 1: Yearly, Quarterly and Monthly Review (of previous year, quarter, and month)
- February 1: Monthly Review
- March 1: Monthly Review
- April 1: Quarterly and Monthly Review
- May 1: Monthly Review
- June 1: Monthly Review
- July 1: Quarterly and Monthly Review
- August 1: Monthly Review
- September 1: Monthly Review
- October 1: Quarterly and Monthly Review
- November 1: Monthly Review
- December 1: Monthly Review
Supplies for Goal Reviews
Many people choose to complete goal reviews inside their planner or journal. Personally, I complete all goal reviews in a goal binder with my printable planner. Whichever way you choose, here are some great supplies to help you along the way:
- The Olden Chapters Goal Printable Planner: This is the ultimate goal printable planner! With over 25 different workbooks, calendars, trackers, goal worksheets, and more, this planner includes everything you might need to reach each and every goal this year.
- Bullet Journal: Many people use a bullet journal as a planner, list holder, or personal journal. I personally use it as the latter two paired with my printable planner. Bullet journals make amazing notebooks because they have dot-grid pages and a specific index area. If you want to learn more about how to use a bullet journal efficiently, check out Rider Carol’s fabulous book The Bullet Journal Method.
- Project Planning Free Printable: This is my free project planning printable that is perfect for starting your goals of on the right foot! It helps you create an attack plan for any large goal, with space for notes, a task list, reward, and more!
Related: The Ultimate Guide to Project Planning (10 Easy Steps!)
- Coletto Pen and Refill: These pens are absolutely my favorite to use when color coding tasks and notes. They are fantastic multi-pens that don’t feel too bulky and have amazing ink quality! Be warned, the pen itself doesn’t come with ink (because they are so customizable) so you have to purchase them separately.
- Tombow Duel Brush Pens: These fantastic brush pens are great for goal setting, journaling, and project planning. The lighter colors are great to use as highlighters and the darker colors are perfect for sketching out ideas. They are super popular to use with the bullet journal!
- Poster Board: When you’re working on your goals, it is important to print them out and post them somewhere (even better to create a vision board!). Poster board is one of the cheap essentials needed in this process!
- Glitter Glue: Another great craft supply to always have on hand is glitter glue. It just adds that extra bit of flare to any project, don’t you think?
- Command Strips: Command strips are perfect for hanging up your goals and poster board onto your wall. I use these ALL THE TIME to hang up my vision board and goals (which I keep in a picture frame on the wall near my desk). Command strips make it so easy to hang anything you need and ensure you don’t damage you walls!
- Mod-Podge: Finally, mod-podge is great when creating your goals, especially if you are going to hang up a list of your goals or create a vision board on your wall. Just add a layer of mod-podge and it will last forever!
Check out my Ultimate Goal Printable Planner today! It will skyrocket your productivity and help you reach all your goals!
Project Planner Free Printable
This freebie is perfect to kickstart your goals on the right track! It helps you turn your goals into actionable steps, with space to add a task list, notes, ideas, rewards, and so much more! Download it today to get started!
How to Create a Successful Goal Review:
Now that you have the basics, let’s get down to business! There are three main steps to a successful goal review: 1. Consistent weekly goal tracking, 2. Monthly goal reviews, and 3. Quarterly goal reviews. Today, let’s take a deep dive into the first two: weekly goal tracking and monthly goal reviews.
Weekly Goal Tracking
First, as discussed in my Ultimate Guide to Short Term Goals post, it is incredibly important to track your goal progress throughout the week, month, quarter, and year. Tracking your goals ensures you always know your current status on each goal, motivates you to continue on, and gives you actionable steps to pursue. Personally, I have found two great ways to track my goals:
1. Fill in Individual Habit and Goal Trackers:
When you create your short term goals, you will find that many of them can be turned into daily habits or weekly reoccurring tasks. For example, your goal might be to drink 8 cups of water every day this year and workout 4 times per week. This can easily be tracked by using a daily habit tracker (I have a great one in my goal printable planner!) where you check off each day you drink 8 or more cups of water and each day you workout. Then, at the end of the month, you can count up how many days you completed this habit and reward yourself if you reach a certain number.
Related: The Ultimate Guide to Creating Achievable Short Term Goals
2. Check Off Individual Goal Tasks/Steps from your Goal Project Planning Pages:
If your goal cannot be turned into a habit, it can certainly be turned into a project. This means that your goal has small, bite-sized, actionable steps that you can complete in order to reach your large goal. For example, if your goal is to land your dream job, your actionable steps might include: attend networking event, update resume, apply for job, etc. For more information on turning your goals into projects, check out my guide to project planning.
Related: Master the Project Planning Process in 10 Easy Steps
Pro Tip:
Keep all of your goal related trackers and projects in one place. A great way to do this is to keep a goal binder. I have created some awesome goal tracking pages in my goal printable planner HERE and you can also use THESE super helpful freebies! Suggested goal-related planning pages to keep include:
- Bucket List: A major list of things you want to do, see, and accomplish before you die
- Long-Term Goals List: Your goals for the next 3, 5, 10, and 25 years
- Short-Term Goals List: Your goals for this year, this quarter, and this month
- Individual Goal Project Planning Pages
- Monthly Goal Habit Trackers
- A Vision Board and/or Inspirational Images and Quotes to Keep You Going
- Goal Review Check List
Related: The Only Printable Planner You’ll Ever Need in College
Monthly Goal Review:
Next, let’s talk about monthly goal reviews. Completing a goal review every month is one of the best ways to ensure your goals are being met! This allows you to evaluate your progress, change what isn’t working, and make a refreshed attack plan for the upcoming month. Let’s check out the necessary steps to do this!
1. Reflect on the Previous Month
First, you’ll want to take a look backwards and reflect on your month. This will help set the stage for your goal review, remind you of your accomplishments, and allow you to revise what could have gone better. In order to do this, answer the following questions:
- What great memories and/or adventures occurred this month?
- Did I accomplish anything major?
- What did I learn this month?
- What went right?
- Did I struggle with anything this month? How can I improve this for next month?
2. Evaluate Your Monthly Habit and Goal Trackers
Next, ensure that all of your habit and goal trackers are properly filled in. This might mean that you need to fill out the last day or two if you have forgotten to do so. Then, evaluate your progress by counting up each of your completed habits and see if you have reached your goal! For example, perhaps you have a goal of drinking 8 cups of water for 25 days out of the month. Simply count up the days that you marked on your habit tracker where you drank 8 cups of water to see if you reached that 25 goal!
If you’re interested to learn more about habits and how they can truly change your life for the better, check out this phenomenal book: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.
3. Evaluate Goal Project Progress
Next, look at your individual goals, one-by-one, and check off all accomplished tasks/steps you have completed this month. As I stated previously, if your goals cannot be turned into habits, they can be turned into projects! For more information about this, check out my ultimate guide to project planning.
Related: Smash Your Goals By Turning Turning them into Projects (10 Easy Steps!)
4. Review Each Category
Your next step is to take a bigger-picture look at each of your short-term goal categories (health, career, finances, etc.). Combine your progress from your habits and goal projects for the entire year and evaluate them together by category.
For example, let’s say you have multiple health related goals under your “Health” category: drink 8 cups of water 300 days this year and workout 200 times this year. You can use your habit trackers and project planning pages to determine your entire progress for the year (so far) by keeping a collective total of how many times you drank water and worked out. You do this by simply adding your previous month’s values to your collective year value on a separate page! I like doing this with bar charts. This will help you determine what you need to do next month to get you further to your goal.
5. Check Off your Accomplished Goals from your Short and Long-Term Goals Lists
Next, look over your short- and long-term goal lists and see if you have accomplished any major goals. If so, check them off!
Related: Achieve Your Long-Term Goals in 8 Simple Steps
6. Reward Yourself
Did you reach over 80% of your monthly goals? If so, be sure to schedule in some time to reward yourself! This could range from a simple “day off” to rewarding yourself with a night out on the town on a fun date night (with yourself, a good friend, or significant other!).
Related: 34 Cheap and Fun Date Night Ideas You Must Try This Year
7. Create Next Month’s Goals
Now that you have evaluated last month, let’s dive into your new plan for a fresh new month. Go through each category and decide on the goals you want to focus on and write them down on a page titled “April Monthly Goals” (or whatever month it is…). Take note as to which goals need to be turned into habits and which need to be turned into a project. Usually, this will look a lot like the previous month, but not always!
8. Create a New Monthly Habit Tracker
Next, switch over your monthly goals to a new monthly habit tracker (I have a great one included in my Student Printable Planner!).
Related: The Only Student Printable Planner You’ll Ever Need in School
9. Schedule out Goal Project Tasks
Now, be sure to create a new project planning page to any new goal-related projects. Then, add any relevant tasks (or just simply the next one or two tasks) from all of your goal related projects to your monthly task list.
Don’t forget to grab your free project planner printable here!
10. Write Down Next Month’s Reward
Next, on your monthly goals sheet, be sure to write down a fun reward at the bottom! This will help motivate you to reach your goals this month. Need some ideas? Check out my 99 gift ideas under $25, they make great rewards too!
11. Take Action!
Lastly, all you need to do is take action! You have all of the tools at your disposal and a detailed plan of action, time to go and get it done!
Related: A Complete Guide to Monthly Planning
Top Books on Goal Setting
The entire goal setting and achieving process can be overwhelming and difficult. There are absolutely right and wrong ways of going about it and these books have helped me achieve my biggest dreams (and continue to lead me in the right direction today!). I am sure they will lead you on the path to achieving your largest goals in life.
The Compound Effect: Jumpstart your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy
First, if you haven’t read this book you are seriously missing out. It is a complete game changer and should be sitting on everyone’s shelf. This Wall Street Journal and New York Times Bestseller covers the powerful yet surprisingly simple principle that little everyday decisions will either help you achieve greatness or end up in disaster naturally, and how to steer them in the right direction. It covers how to win at everything, abolish bad habits, maintain motivation and more. It is an absolute must read!
Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals by Michael Hyatt
Next, as the title suggests, this is book covers a phenomenal 5-step plan that guarantees you set and reach the most important goals in your life. It covers tips that help you when you get stuck, how to quit-proof your goals, and so much more. As an added bonus, it is a quick and easy read!
Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John Doerr
Next, this New York Times Bestseller explores the secrets of the famous and wildly successful goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) that has been proven time and time again to be effective. This system ensures you maintain focus and stay on track until your goals are being met!
Goals! How to Get Everything You Want – Faster Than You Thought Possible by Brian Tracy
Lastly, this is a fantastic book that helps distinguish the people who reach their goals from those that just dream of having a better life. It then dives into a simple yet powerful goal setting method that is incredibly effective. Tracy also focuses on specific goals in different areas in life, such as finances, health, and family. A fantastic read!
Related: 21 Life-Changing Books to Read Before You’re 30
Goal-Setting Series
This post is part of my goal-setting series. Here are the rest of the great posts included in this blog series (and what order I recommend reading them in):
- How to Create a Personal Mission Statement and Why It’s So Important
- Discover How to Create a Motivational Bucket List (+50 Ideas to Get You Started)
- The Ultimate Guide to Long-Term Goal Planning
- How to Create Short Term Goals in 12 Easy Steps: An Ultimate Guide
- Create the Perfect Vision Board in These Simple Steps
- How to Complete a Monthly Goal Review
- An Ultimate Guide to Completing a Personal Mid-Year Review
- Steps for a Successful Quarterly and Yearly Goal Review
- 12 Secretes to Ensure You Reach Your Goals This Year
- The Ultimate Guide to Goal Setting and Achieving
Well, there you have it! My ultimate guide to successful monthly goal reviews. I truly hope you have found some useful bits of information and will be able to adapt my process into one that fits your life. I have found great success in goal reviews, and hope you do as well! Good luck, have fun, and happy planning!
Looking to achieve your goals this year? Check out my Ultimate Guide to Short Term Goals!
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