Over the last two weeks I’ve been going through my annual review and
planning for 2011. I love this process: reviewing results, making lists of things I want to do in the upcoming year, and outlining the steps I need to take to get there.

Because of this enthusiasm, I actually finished my 2011 Action Plan nearly a week ago. Except that I keep thinking about it and tweaked one of my goals the day after I “finished”. Then a few days later, I changed two more of my goals, adding a new one and combining three others. Just yesterday I tweaked another of the goals after discussing it a bit more with my wife.

Change is part of life

As you’re well aware, change happens. Even though I was happy with my action plan, I am glad that I kept thinking about it and made the changes that I have. These changes will make the goals easier to reach (because they better align with my strengths and interests), not interfere with each other (fixing something I struggled with in 2010), and provide a fuller life in 2011 (because some of the goals are just for fun).

Sometimes change is not a good thing

While I’m happy with the changes that I made, I’m glad to have them out of the way. Even though it’s perfectly fine to make changes to my Action Plan throughout the year (it is mine, after all), I much prefer to keep it the way that it is, as long as it is working. So I will be working through my plan three months at a time. Each of my goals naturally has a good stopping point scheduled for those time periods.

In order to help me stay the course, I will be utilizing quarterly reviews. Every three months I have a day scheduled to review my progress for the quarter, and over the year as a whole. These are the times when I will be checking my progress and seeing if my goals need to be tweaked or changed.

Other than these review periods, however, I will be sticking to my plan. It’s too easy to stop because something is hard or stressful. By building in pause points and knowing that I have a break coming up, it will be easier for me to focus on the goal and completing it.

I’m excited!

Out of the three years I’ve been doing annual reviews and action plans, this is the one that I’m most excited about so far. I have some great goals set for 2011, a detailed map for how to achieve them, and reasonable time-frames for work on them in.

How is 2011 shaping up for you?