My 5×5 Plan for the Next 12 Months

Centering your energy around 25 things per year is a great way to equip yourself with immense focus and clarity around what's to come.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Welcome to 2015! We've got a brand new season of "She Takes on the World TV," with a new look that we hope you love as much as we do.

Right about now, I'm sure your inbox is flooded with emails about New Year's Resolutions, and tips for "starting the year off right" by setting goals for yourself. These are fabulous things to take into consideration as we dive into 2015.

But a lot of you have asked me what I personally do to set myself up for a great year to come. My answer is more "big picture" than, say, making a pact with yourself to drink more green juice, or coming up with a new mantra to say in the mirror every morning.

It's also a simple way to put a spotlight on your biggest dreams for our next trip around the sun.

Ready? Here's what I do:

I take into account where I want to be in my business in 365 days, what I want to be creating, and how I want to be sending it out to serve all of you.

Then, from that mash-up of ideas, I create a Master Action Plan for my business -- a MAP for the year. At the heart of my MAP, I am setting five major goals. I create a vision board for each goal, and I decide on 5 major milestones I need to pass in order to reach it. (It's pretty simple, but crazy effective. Just think 5×5.) That gives me 25 total milestones for the year to work towards.

Centering your energy around 25 things per year is a great way to equip yourself with immense focus and clarity around what's to come.

Take a look at my video below for instructions on how to put together a 5×5 for yourself:

There's one more piece to this whole puzzle. While the MAP helps me structure what I want to focus on, I always keep in mind: Nothing is set in stone.

It's important to give yourself the space to switch out some of your goals for new, exciting projects that might come up over the year. Just be selective - and keep that fantastic focus honed in.

Your actionable this week is to create your own 5×5 -- take some time to write down those 5 goals, with 5 milestones for each, and you'll have yourself a big-picture plan for an ah-mazing year ahead. You can use any notebook you have handy or you can use my Bigger Picture Worksheet, which you can download for free at shetakesontheworld.com/resources.

Now it's your turn: When you've got your goals and milestones all written out, I'd absolutely love to see them. Be sure to leave a comment below and let me know one your bigger picture goals for 2015.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot