Review With Me: Q1 Goals

Taking time for a quarterly review is something I have covered previously in goal setting and planning articles. I have recently completed my first quarter review and thought I would share some highlights from my process, outcomes, and actions that I have planned. You can make this as simple or complex as you need for your process. The first step for me is to try to summarize the last three months and provide an overview for myself of what has occurred relative to what I had expected to achieve. I think of it almost as a journal entry to myself. I dig into the specific goals and actions as a separate part of the review. The overview portion though, which sets up everything else, seemed like something I could share that may be helpful for others in getting started on their own quarterly goal review.

Setting Up

Schedule some quiet, uninterrupted time for yourself to begin your review process. It doesn’t have to be long. You know yourself better than anyone, so start with the time you think you need, I may err on the longer side at first, as you may find that once you get started, you discover more things to ‘unpack’ than you realized. Use the best method possible that makes it easy to capture your general thoughts and feeling from your last ninety days. This can be a notebook, voice recorder, your phone, or your digital note-taking application. And then, just write or speak your thoughts on your last quarter. If you need some starter questions, begin with the tried and true, ‘what worked’, ‘what didn’t work’? You can also use the ‘BEST’ method, similar to a start, stop, and continue (which you can also use). BEST represents: begin, end, sustain, transform.

Don’t make the set-up too complicated or fancy. Don’t overthink it. Just get started and capture your thoughts.

I have broken the summary of my process into three areas, professional goals, personal goals, and hobbies and other. Those represent the biggest areas where I currently have goals. In this case, I have separated hobbies and other from personal because I need to review that independently of some of what my personal goals are. If not, I fear they get lumped in with too many other things. Plus, I know those are areas that I need to work at differently to achieve my desired outcomes. Your groupings can be anything you need or want them to be.

Professional Goals

For the first quarter, I had a very positive set of outcomes in this area. Despite it being a hectic and often chaotic quarter, the professional goals I set for myself, and even the ones I had for my team in the job, came out well. We accomplished the vast majority of what we set up to achieve this quarter. Although some took until the very end, we can cross several items off the list. I am pleased with how this first quarter turned out, and feel like I am well positioned for the next quarter.

Personal Goals

My personal goals were more of a mixed bag. There were a couple of items where I feel like I have made good progress. Even factoring in some days when I was sick and dealing with the lingering effects thereof, numerous things are underway and new routines are being established. The biggest miss for me was healthy eating. I consider this a significant miss for the first quarter. The first two weeks were outstanding and good progress was being made. From there, different activities plus a hectic work and meeting schedule derailed my efforts. Some of the elements that lead to positive professional outcomes negatively impacted my personal goals, notably these health items. Knowing this can help me be better prepared for similar situations in the second quarter as I try to get back on track for improved eating habits. I can already begin to plan for how I will handle the travel and other activities planned in the coming weeks ahead.

Hobbies and Other

The final area I covered in my review was hobbies and others. Again, this is more of a mixed bag for me. Many starts and stops. I realize that trying to stick to a schedule for these isn’t as easy as I would like. Reading (or listening to books) has gone fairly well. I have completed seven books so far this year, and I am about half-way through another. How I have completed this is not exactly as I had planned. I had hoped to build some extra reading time into an evening routine, but I have achieved the outcome mostly through car time and prioritizing reading over other listening activities. I still would like to use reading as more of a wind down process, in addition to continuing to listen in the car. One thing I want to achieve with reading is a greater ability to make some notes from what I am listening to, which is a challenging process in the car.

The other miss is staying on a routine of time for building LEGO. This has been a long-standing hobby, but one I am inconsistent in dedicating the time I would like to it. The process of building is mind-settling escapism for me. I can let most other things fade away while I focus on building and enjoying the clever ways that LEGO typically brings a project together. This is an area I want to dedicate more time to in the coming weeks and months.

It may be difficult to believe that we are already well into April. If you haven’t had a chance to complete your review of your first quarter, schedule some time now, in the next week or two, to do so. I think you will find it rewarding and helpful as you look ahead at what you want and can accomplish in the coming weeks for the second quarter. As scary as it may sound, at the end of this quarter, we are half-way through another year. Make this quarter a big one in terms of working towards what is most important to you this year.

What were the big takeaways you had from your quarterly review process?

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