Winter’s Depth: Plan Your Garden of Goals

Winter and the New Year are the perfect time to plan your garden of goals.

A superb year begins with planning, and there’s no better time to plan than the reclusive, inward, quieter days of winter. Why plan? Because this year, like last year, will slip away, as time tends to do. Stop thinking “Yeah, I’ll wait until later… maybe spring” (remember how well that worked last time?) and start thinking about sketching out your dreams and goals now, AND connecting them to timeframes throughout the year. Put thought into what you want from this year while it’s newly arrived and fresh and still has that wonderful feeling of 'foreverness' to it.

This is your Garden of Goals. For contrast, think of all the things that ended up being last-minute or skipped over or pushed aside for lack of time last year. Things you thought you’d have endless time for and suddenly, it was mid-July and you only had a few weeks to turn it all around. How time flowed away and suddenly it was October and the year nearly over. With a little “garden” planning, that doesn’t have to happen, and you’ll be much closer to getting the results you want.

Envisioning your goals as garden also helps you tie in to the cyclical nature of your own growth. Where were you at this time last year? How did what you achieved then, grow you and prepare you for the year you’re facing now? What did you have to cut away to make space for that, finding in the end, the letting go really did lead you to what you desired? What garden did you plant, what harvest did you reap, what do you envision now for that garden space?

Everything you want, desire and thrive on, underneath it all, reflects your wish to grow yourself, in all the ways you want and need to grow, so that you can do even more as time rolls on. What will you select for your Garden of Goals this year, knowing there’s only so much space in that garden plot to put things?

Your Garden of Goals needs planning, care and attention, and the best time to sketch it out is now. Here are a few tips to get you started.

#1 List Your Goals for the Garden

Take paper and title it, “Your Garden of Goals: This Year’s Growth”.

Make a priority list of everything you’d like to achieve in the year. You want to have them in process or done by this time next year.

Add a list of experimentals — other goals of interest to you that will grow your skill, experience, or potential, or simply add to your richness of life.

List the practical items too. This can include travel to see family members, dealing with annual medical checkups rather than procrastinating until it’s year-end, and more.

Finally, add a curation list — what will you cut out, let go of, eliminate? What should NOT go in the garden this year around?

You can frame your goals any way you’d like. They can be experiential (“I want to explore the thrill of travel”), emotional (“I want to feel confident and secure financially, every day”), skill-based (“I want to learn to negotiate like a boss”), or have a definite finish line (“I want to run my first marathon”).

#2 Sketch Your Garden On Paper

Take a blank sheet of paper and draw 12 boxes, representing the 12 months. Now, begin to plant your “garden” in the months of the year. This begins to connect your goals with the actual year as it’s spread before you to be lived. For example, are you going to visit distant family in the summer months? If so, which? Are you aiming for an academic goal? When’s the academic year begin? And so on.

This also lets you see whether you’re overplanting your garden. It’s great to say you’re going to write your first novel while also visiting friends while dialing into that data statistics course, but that garden’s probably going to look pretty weedy by the time you try to juggle all those things.

#3 Add Your Growth Timelines

Add in timelines if there are any. For example, for travel, you must book your flights outside a certain window prior to the travel date. You may also need to get the right selection of travel gear purchased and ready - how long will that take? (Not something you want to leave until it’s too late!)

Make your timelines broad, perhaps with notations on any specific deadlines if these are involved so that you can address these in plenty of time. But don’t over-struggle with defining timelines past the first few months. This is a general yearlong plan, and things will naturally shift and change.

#4 Add In Your Rest Periods

Perhaps one of the overlooked aspects of achievement is building in rest periods. Be sure there’s enough time for your Garden of Goals to go fallow in the year so you can rest. Tune in to the seasons and your own seasonal energy. Most people have higher energy during the bright, expansive days of spring and summer, and somewhat lower energy as the nights grow longer toward Winter Solstice. (You’re there now as you read this, so, feel out how your energy has shifted now that Solstice is giving way to rising light again.)

Put your sketch where you can see it. Use it to remind you of what to focus on throughout the months. This is a living document, so keep working with it throughout the year.

For now, you know what you want to be up to for the year, and where, in general, you wish your achievement adventures to take you in your Garden of Goals. Sit back, reflect, and look forward to tending your garden and seeing it grow!

Keep Growing,