Travis Robertson explains the process he walks his clients through in planning their businesses. Discover nine areas of your life that you need to focus your goal setting on to move your business and your life forward in the next year!

9 LIFE AREAS FOR GOAL SETTING

There are nine different areas that you need to set goals in. However, the goal isn’t to have a lot of goals, the objective is to have the right goals and just a few goals that are going to move you forward. By breaking it into nine areas, it gives you a little bit more control over your goals and the effectiveness of them. Let’s look at the nine different areas.

Spiritual

This is that inner part of yourself. That’s that deep need that we all have to be a part of something greater than ourselves, to make a difference in the world, or to make an impact. This is going to be different for everybody. If you’re a Christian, let your Christian faith drive how you set goals in this area. For others, who may not be religious or practice a religion, that’s okay. Maybe for you it’s you want to get out and take more nature hikes or you want to get out and meditate more or just have some more down time. Whatever feeds that soul part of you, put down some goals.

Personal Development

This is your mind. Ask yourself this: how are you going to be better at who you are? How are you going to be a better husband, wife, father or mother? What is it that you’re going to do to grow yourself? What do you need to learn? What do you need to read? What events do you need to attend? What classes do you need to take? Set some goals for yourself and focus on “how am I going to be a better person? What am I going to do to grow myself?”

Health

What are you going to do to take care of this instrument, this tool that you have? What are you going to do to feed yourself correctly? Get the right rest you know so you have more energy, so you can actually accomplish all those things that you’re setting out to accomplish? This one’s pretty straight forward. I think we all know what we need to do, but we just don’t often do it, right? So don’t try and set goals that are ridiculous here. This isn’t about having six pack abs. It’s about being healthy and feeling good at the end of each year.

Romance

What are you going to do to bring the romance back into your relationships? There is no relationship that we have while we are on this Earth that’s more important than a romantic relationship, than the one with our spouse, the person that we looked at and went “this is the person I want to spend the rest of my life with”. That’s the most important relationship you have, so how are you going to keep the romance and how are you going to have some fun with it? And yes, guys, you can put some goals as it pertains to maybe getting in the sack a little more, but you’ve got to do something to get there first. I would encourage you to sit down and put some goals together with your partner, with the person you’re in that romantic relationship with, because it’s going to make this fun! It’s going to make this a whole lot more fun than maybe it would be if you just did it on your own.

Family

A lot of times people put this category and the family category together, but these two areas need to be broken apart. Your romantic relationship is the most important and if that relationship is healthy, it allows for your family relationship to be healthier. Your relationship with your kids, your relationship with your extended family all hinges on having a first and foremost a healthy romantic relationship. Here’s where you’re going to put your family goals. Do you want to invest in your kids soccer league a little bit more or spend more time coaching? Or do you want to see your extended family, make more trips or pay for them to come out and visit you? You want to have some goals and some things you’re working on to improve your family relationships.

Business/Career

What are you going to do in your business or career that’s going to move it forward? This category will probably have the most number of goals. It will probably have more goals that the other areas, because it’s the one area or the one category that deals with your professional life. All the other ones tend to deal more with your personal life, though they may have some bleed over, but this is the one that is solely dedicated to your professional life, everything else is to your personal life. So if you add up all the personal categories, they will probably outnumber the goals you have here, but don’t feel like “oh my gosh, I have six goals for my business and only two for my family…does that make me a crappy father?” No, it just means that you’ve got other areas or goals for other areas and that this is just one category for one big area of life. So you want to put your business or your career goals in here.

Finances

What do you want to achieve financially? Do you want to buy a house? Do you want to increase the amount you’re saving this year? Do you want to pay off some debt? Student loans? What are some financial goals you have for yourself? Put those down so you know  what you’re working towards and again, if you’re in a romantic relationship or if you share funds with your spouse, this is something you’re probably going to want to work on with them so that you’re both on board and on the same page.

Fun and Recreation

What are you going to do for fun? Are you going to take vacations? Are you going to join a hockey league? One of our clients, she is a very athletic person. She’s awesome. She’s got so much energy and she’s involved in hockey, she’s involved in marathons, and that’s what she does for fun. When she’s not at work, she’s out there on the athletic field and so that’s how she spends her fun and that’s what she does for her recreation. For others, it’s vacations or weekends away. It’s time with friends. Whatever it is for you, put some goals down. Say “what do I want to do this year that’s going to be fun?” Skydiving? Hang-gliding? Surfing? Whatever it is, put it down.

Social

This is your friendships, this is your relationships outside of family and this is what you’re going to do socially. Do you want to spend more time with your friends? Whatever changes you want to make in your social life, put them in this category.

QUICK TIPS

Make sure that your goals are specific so you can tell whether you’re going to achieve them or not. Too many people go “well I’m going to be a better friend.” Okay, great, but what does that look like? How are you going to be a better friend? Or they say “I want to lose weight.” Great, how much weight do you want to lose? Get specific with these goals so that you’re able to figure out how to put a plan in place to achieve them.

Another thing is this: don’t put down too many goals. Don’t be an overachiever and put down upwards of 10 goals in each category. The reality is you’ll never be able to complete them all. Instead, pick one key outcome that you want in each one of these nine areas and then make sure the two or three goals you have all work together to drive that singular outcome. The business category is going to be the exception because your business category is going to cover a lot of different things, but in social, maybe you say “I want to spend more time with friends. I want to go out one night a week with my friends or with a friend or grab lunch with people during the week.” Whatever it is, just make sure you are working towards the same singular outcome so that you know that your goals are aligning and pushing you in the right direction.