Episode 1: 2023 Goals and Priorities
Show Notes:
Through the Creative Fire's first episode, where I dive into my goals and priorities for 2023, how I set them, and my secret weapon to work on them all year long.
Links Mentioned in the Episode:
Books Mentioned in the Episode:
Transcript
Hi there! You've arrived at Through the Creative Fire. I'm Cianne McKinnon, a chronically curious, creative, and chaotic human who also happens to be a book coach and editor in training, a multi-passionate creator and an all around nerd. While you'll usually find discussions about writing, business, following your own path, and the challenges that come with living a creative life, you never really know what you'll find on the show.
I'm so glad you're here. Let's get into it.
Welcome to Episode 1 2023 Goals and Priorities
So it's the start of a new year, and for me it's the start of a new adventure in podcasting! I've been thinking about starting this podcast for a long time now. Long to me it's been, I don't know, three or four months that I've been thinking about starting a podcast. And I am so excited (and a little bit nervous) to be here doing this.
I'm recording this on Saturday, January 14th, 2023. Already a couple weeks into the new year, and I'm a little late to talking about my 2023 goals, but I've decided showing up imperfectly this year is better than not showing up at all.
So I thought that given it's the beginning of 2023, that it would be a great place to start talking about my goals and priorities that I've set for the year, how I set them, how I came to decide what I wanted to set, and what I'm doing to help myself ensure that I'm going to be doing them all year long. Cuz as we all know, actually sticking to your goals is usually a lot harder than setting them.
I've picked a Word of the Year for 2023, and it has me both excited and nervous. My word of the year is consistency, but I've added a little asterisk to it that it's gonna be loosely held. I have historically not been a very consistent person, other than I guess in my consistency that I'm inconsistent, and I would like that to change this year because I know that bringing consistency to just about anything will help you improve it over time.
I think part of that is just how my brain works. I have ADHD and that makes it super difficult to build habits and keep them going consistently. My brain doesn't find consistency all that rewarding, but I decided that this year I wanna focus on being more consistent in the areas and towards the goals that I've decided are important to me.
I finished 2023 by finishing Atom Habits by James Clear and it just really brought home something that, of course I already knew, that the more often you do something, the better at it you'll get. But I couldn't get over just how strong of an impact consistency has on both quality and just impact that you can have with your actions.
Here's a small quote from James Clear himself:
The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astound. Here's how the math works out. If you can get 1% better each day for one year, you'll end up 37 times better by the time you're done.[Atomic Habits]
Think about that. 37 times better. But I know myself and I can't aim for 1% a day cuz if I have to try and do anything daily it's very likely that I just won't succeed and I'll get discouraged.
So I decided to add the loosely. I'm gonna do everything in my power to be consistent, to keep coming back over and over. But if I don't do it every day or quite on the days that I had first planned, that's okay as long as I keep coming back.
So you might be wondering if you are not a person who normally sets goals and priorities, and that's totally fair because I haven't every year, and I don't know if I will every year going forward. Can't tell the future. But why I set goals and priorities for 2023 broke down into a few things.
The first one is I wanted to identify what was important to me and what I wanna build on this year because I wanna be more productive in those areas that matter to me.
And I wanna be more intentional with my time. And I want a goal and I want goals as a way to track my progress in those areas, to see what progress I'm nicking and I determined a few thing, a few areas that are important to me and that I'm gonna be putting that consistency into this year. And I thought I would go over them with you.
I always find it really interesting to hear what other people's goals are, how they got to them, and how they plan on trying to stick to them. I can find it inspiring, I can find it eye-opening, I can learn new things. So hopefully you find something interesting in how I did my goals, how I set my goals this year, how I identified some priorities for me, and hopefully just find something useful in it.
So I started with a review of 2022. I, for my personal review, I used Tiago Forte's annual review template, which I'll link into the show notes. It was a big review. It was like, two pages, two typed pages of questions and things to think about. So I did it over three different days. Took me about a week from start to finish cause I didn't do it again consistently, but I did keep coming back to it, set aside an hour or an hour and a half each time to, to let myself really get into it.
The first part of the review was all about remembering, so remembering things that I loved from the year music, food, I dunno, I might have just added food, but definitely there was music and memories and I wrote a gratitude list of what I was thankful for the year.
And the whole purpose of this section, as far as I could tell, was to get me thinking about the year as a whole. And so that, really good. 2022 was challenging for me in a lot of ways, but it was also filled with so many wonderful, good things that it was rewarding just spending some time thinking about that.
Then the second part of the review is connect. So you start looking at the bigger picture. Connections between different parts of your life, of things you enjoyed, of things that went well. You're also talking more rather than just remembering memories or specific things you're talking about, like the risks you took, and I was happy about from last year and what were regrets from last year, and what I’d actually accomplished.And what a I had actually accomplished was crazy cuz I'm a little bit forward focused. I don't always take the time to celebrate how far I've come, everything I’ve done. And that was really cool.
It also asked you to think about like where you had invested your time over the year and if it was in alignment with what you would hoped it would be, which mine was not quite where I wanted it to be, but that's okay. It also wasn't terrible.
And then the last section create is where you take the insights and everything you've been thinking and feeling from the two previous sections. And you take it and you combine it with your dreams and your hopes for the new year. And you start making plans, you start making the actual goals, you start thinking about what you wanna explore. Like one of the things I wanted to explore in 2023 is podcasting and here we are. And then you write down what goals you're gonna commit to, and you start thinking about what habits are going to be helpful for you in reaching those.
And habits are key as far as I'm concerned, to actually reaching. I'm not saying anything groundbreaking here, folks, but it is, habits are a huge part of reaching your goals and getting yourself to stick with them for the year.
Then after I did my personal review, or, I think actually it was in the middle of it, I had done about two thirds of it, but I sat down and also did an annual review following some different questions and a little bit less of an intense format with my partner.
So my partner and I he and I have been living together for five and a half years. He's a wonderful, amazing man, and I feel so lucky that he's in my life. And we sat down and we reviewed the year together.
We started with our finances and took a look at if our spending aligned with our priorities, cuz I'm a huge personal finance nerd, and we also spent time dreaming and discussing and talking about what we want our life to look like. What we want to plan for 2023, what we wanna accomplish, what we wanna budget for, and that led into the goals and the habits that we want to adopt together for the upcoming year.
And I really enjoyed doing both of these. They were different. Different ways of thinking about what you want and what's important, but I was able to see, my, my financial position, of course, is important to me of feeling secure. I was able to see that I wanna spend more time working on building my own business as a book coach, as an editor. I want to build this podcast. I wanna focus on my health. I want to travel more, get ready to do tr my traveling. And so it was great to integrate my own personal and business sides of the year along with my domestic side with my partner cuz they are, they're completely intertwined and interlinked.
So after I had done these reviews and started to see what I wanted to prioritize in 2023 I sat down and created my goal sheet. I took some of the goals that I had written and some of the ones that my partner and I had written, and I made a sheet that was split into three parts.
So we have our joint goals for my partner and I. Then there's his goals that he wants to accomplish this year. And then I had my own specific goals.
Our biggest goal for 2023 upcoming here is that we want to save a specific amount each month towards travel. We finally decided, that in 2024 we're going to take a bigger travel break. We're going to go travel Europe for three months. He's from Europe, he's from Lithuania, so we're gonna go spend about a month and a half with his family and he can visit all his friends and family cuz he's been here in Canada now for eight years. It's been here a long time and hasn't had a chance to go spend that much time at home in a long time.
And then we're gonna spend about six weeks traveling around Europe and seeing places that we wanna see and exploring and just having a wonderful time. I love Europe. I've lived in Europe for about a year, two and a half years total.
And we're also using this as a little bit of a research trip. We're gonna, we're gonna try and decide where we want to make our home after that trip, if we wanna stick with Canada, look for somewhere else in Canada or if we wanna look back at Europe.
So it's very exciting and that is our biggest goal, but we also have other goals. Adding more physical movement into our life was important. Gonna be honest, you're more important for him, but I really want to live a long and vital life and I've been thinking about this more and more in the past year or two. Maybe that's what hitting 30 does, is you start thinking about getting older and I realize that I wanna maintain my vitality. And for me, I know that means adding more movement into my life.
So we decided that our goal for 2023 was to go to the gym together three days a week, Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays. We also wanna run a 5K together. We're gonna try cross-country skiing. I tried it back in high school, gym class, but he's never tried it.
We also want to try and create a meal plan.We have, we've had some hits and some misses on that in the past.
We've also decided to do what we've called Creative Mondays. So Mondays will turn off the TV and do creative work, whether together or separately. And we will do our weekly budgeting on Wednesdays.
And the last two are not physically on the list, but they should have been, but, we added timers into your calendar, so fingers crossed that helps.
Then he had his specific goals.
My specific goals for 2023 are a little bit all over the place. One for me, as I said, I'm a multi-passionate creator, and I love to work in different mediums. So I cross stitch and I knit and I crochet. Last year I tried making soap for the first time. I write, and I like to dabble in visual design.
But for this year, for 2023 tying into that consistency thing, I'm also gonna try and bring some more finishing energy into my life. So no new cross-stitch knitting or crochet projects for me. So it is a not doing something for 2023, unless through some miracle I managed to finish all of them. But I have so many half-done projects. I don't think even one full year is gonna be enough.
I like to try and set a reading goal for every year. Last year my goal was to read 52 books. I read 50. My goals around reading were also to read more non-fiction, which I did. And to not reread any books cause I'm a huge comfort rereader and that was successful. I reread one book, which I'm not even a hundred percent sure if I finished it the first time because I read it in high school. But still.
But a big thing for this year, there was two big things. One, is to start this podcast, and here I am starting it. I am feeling very silly and nervous to be doing it. Feel like it's rambling and I hope I can fx it in edits, [note: I did not fix it, much, in edits. I’m keeping it mostly as is to see my podcasts improve over time] but that's okay. I'm starting it even though it doesn't feel quite ready because you just have to do the things. You just have to start them.
And the other thing that is a really big goal for me this year is to finish my book coaching certification. And I started that last year in June. And I wanna finish it before my 31st birthday in June of 2023. So I want it to be done in less than a year.
And then I took that goal sheet that has my goals and his goals and our goals that we're sharing. And I've put it in a prominent place by our front door in our living room so that we see it and we have to look at it. And then this is, I think the key for how I am going to try and stick to my goals this year is I've created a habit tracking sheet.
I stole this idea from Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project, which is a fantastic book and I highly suggest it. If you haven't read it, I wanna reread it this year. And I've made a paper sheet. This is me working with my brain, cuz if I don't see it, I will forget about it. Thank you ADHD object impermanence.
And I've made a physical paper and I have it by month. So I have January's up and I have a list of all the things, not all, but of my main habits that I want to focus on this year. And then underneath is my partner's, his are there as well. So we can track them together and I check off every day that I, if I've done it, if I haven't done it well, if I haven't done it, it doesn't get checked off.
But I have to look at the list and that helps keep them front of mind for me because one of my biggest challenges is I set a goal and if I don't put it somewhere very prominent, I forget that it exists. And it's helping me build some new habits. So things on there are don't start a new project. Killing it on that one. It's not eating out this year or trying to really reduce that. It's going to the gym. It's finishing a book. It's budgeting, it's working on my podcast. It's book coaching or editing coursework to keep working on those. And it's up in our kitchen. It's in on our tea cupboard,
And I would say that so far, it's only two weeks into the new year, but I can see some changes. The habit tracker, I've done it in the past and every time that I do it and remembered like I have to put it in the right place in my house so that I see it and remember to check it off and think about it.
But that is the biggest game changer for me. I've actually gone to the gym, which I was not, I've never been a regular gym goer. I hadn't, my partner dragged me to the gym I think once last year. But I've been going this year, and it's also really good at reminding me what I haven't been doing.
So I haven't been working on my podcast or my book coaching as much as I want to. This week's been a bit better. Last week wasn't so great. And I think that for me is the key, is building these habits, building reminders so that I'll be thinking about these goals and priorities all year long.
It's also gonna be an evolving habit tracker. So for February I think a couple things are gonna get added just around other goals that I wanna introduce or something that I didn't think of when I made this one. And this is really highlighted, cuz as I was reviewing my goals that I'd made for this podcast, like just, making some notes before sitting down to.
I had already forgotten a couple of the goals that I set two weeks ago. Two weeks, and I had forgotten. And reviewing them is really important. So by having monthly having to put up a new sheet and check it off every day, it keeps it in front of my brain so I can keep working towards it.
And I haven't been perfect like I have I haven't been going to the gym on the days that I had originally wanted to. But I have been going so it's that consistency loosely held that I think is gonna be my saving grace this year.
Tips for doing your own.
I think it's really important to start with a review.
So whatever goals you want to make, like whatever you're making goals around, whether it's the new year or a specific project or to make a change I think it's important to start with taking stock of where you're already at with that project or from last year and get grounded in where you're at.
And then you can think about, okay, what do you want? What do you want this project or these goals to create for you? What is it that you want to change in your life? And then you can make goals that directly align to those changes around that project or for the new year.
And then make a habit tracker.
There's some great habit tracking apps. If you prefer apps or more of a digital person. You can print it out, you can scroll it on a piece of paper and just mark it off. I'll post a picture of my hand drawn one that may end up being an Excel sheet for future months cuz it took a bit. And sometimes I just need to make it easier for myself.
And then yeah, track your progress.
Pencil in some review time, whether that's just monthly, when you make a new habit tracker. Weekly, quarterly, whatever works for your schedule to review the progress that you are making and aren't making, and don't look at what you're not making to punish yourself for or to get down on yourself.
Just review what about your systems aren't working. What did you not plan for that's been tripping you up? Come at it with curiosity not judgment, and you'll be able to move so much further.
Some books that I recommend if you're interested in this, are as I said Gretchen Rubin The Happiness Project. Fantastic book about habit tracking and how habits impact our happiness in life.
Obviously Atomic Habits by James Clear really great for understanding how to build and break habits, which I'm still learning. I read it last year. I already know I wanna read it again and again.
Those are two that I would, I'd suggest starting with.
So did you make any goals or priorities for 2023? What are they? How did you decide on them? I'd love to hear about it. You can leave a comment if you're watching this on YouTube, or you can leave a comment on the blog where the show notes will be. But I hope that you are enjoying 2023 so far that you are treating yourself with kindness.
And the next episode two will be Why Every Creative Needs a Second Brain System. I will be chatting with my good friend, Cassidy Scott, as we discuss Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte, and talk about personal content management and how that is really important for everybody in the information age, but can be extra special and it can be extra impactful for people who are trying to be more creative or who are creative professionally or in a big part of their life. We'll be talking about the second brain system, what that is and why you probably need one.
All righty. Have a great week.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Through The Creative Fire. I'm Cianne your host and I hope that you'll join us on the next one!
