The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan – Part 3 – Define Your Focus Areas

After the last post, I hope you have a bunch of things written down that you want to accomplish in your life and in more specifically in the next year. We are going to come back to that list shortly. I firmly believe that success in certain areas of one’s life can equal extreme failure in other areas of one’s life, if one is not careful. For example, how successful would I really be if I wrote 4 books next year; but at the same time, alienated my family and friends because I never spent time with them? I also believe that the synergy of success from one area, can fuel passion and greater achievement in another area. So take that same example, if I met the needs and wishes of my spouse and family, and thus ended up improving my relationships, that joy and success would carry over and make me more passionate and motivated to duplicate that success in another area of my life, like writing books. Plus I would probably have more support from my wife and family for doing so.

It is important then to figure out what are those areas of your life that need attention. You cannot have  a couple of annual goals without taking into account the areas of your life that will require attention during the year and like I mentioned, it would be a failure to achieve your annual goals, but then ruin your relationships, your health, or some other important area.

This next exercise will help to bring more focus and balance to your annual goals. You need to determine the “life areas” that you want to focus on, together, that will in-turn make you successful all around.  At this point we are not concerned with the specifics of what kind of goals you will have under these life areas; you just need to determine what they are. Here are some examples:

There could be a lot of other options, but you don’t want to have more than 7 or 8 focus areas to work on. More than that and you might be spreading yourself too thin, ideally around 5 focus areas is ideal. These focus areas are really important, because they help define what your will be your balancing act of the next year. Plus they will help you determine your top annual goals.

The annual goals will encompasses all these things. It helps to focus you, and it helps you to determine what is not important in the coming year. This list of focus areas is not all-inclusive, as there are bound to be many directions you are pulled in, but this really helps to limit that pulling from the many areas of your life and to focus on what will make you the best you can be at the end of the coming year.

Here is your homework:

1. Think about the focus areas that are important in your life. Ask yourself, what things if I accomplished this year would make me feel more successful and have a greater sense of satisfaction with my life? You may want to read this  with your spouse, children, or other stakeholders, and go through the exercises together. Ask what areas you and your stakeholders feel would produce the greatest level of satisfaction?
2. After you come up with all your focus areas, you need to now focus further. It is likely you will come up with a lot of areas. You need to slim this down to only 5 to 7 focus areas. More than that and it will be difficult to create any balance.

In the next post we will discuss annual goals, annual vision and drill down more on the focus areas. Good Luck! Please share your thoughts below, your wisdom might help another.