It’s December 24th! Those of you who celebrate Christmas may be anxiously awaiting its arrival. Let’s distract ourselves with today’s question from the 31 Days of Goal-Setting: Brainstorm – where do you want to be in one year? What do you want to have accomplished?

Your one-year goals should be a representative slice of your five-year goals! In theory that makes things easy. But of course not all goals are amenable to being split up into neat 20% increments, and in some cases you’re still figuring out how you will achieve your larger goals. Try to come up with one-year milestones that represent meaningful progress towards your five-year plan.

Yes, that does mean that you should make sure every single item in your five-year plan is represented somehow in your goals for the next year.

At this point, your goals should be 100% SMART. Remember, you don’t need to use language that absolutely anyone would understand, but you do need to use language that makes complete sense to you. And at this level, it’s worth it to push yourself to clarify things, even to yourself. When you find yourself writing “improve X” or “get better at doing A, B, and C”, challenge yourself to specify exact what that means and how you’ll be able to tell that you’ve accomplished it.