Shocking as it is (as much to us as it may be to you), but it’s about to be July. If you’ve processed this fact already, we salute you.
But yes — this means, regardless of whether you find it thrilling or horrifying, we’re halfway through the year and about to enter a new quarter. Sort of a 😵and 👏feeling at once.
For many, this will provoke our doubling down in a frenzied effort to get ahead of the goals we set at the start of 2024 or running headlong into new plans for the back half of the year.
But before you jump immediately into the “hows” (how to make it allll happen NOW), it’s worth pausing before reentering the fray.
When we’re busy rushing ahead toward our goals and in a flurry of activity, we may miss out on some truly important data points.
Contrary to what you might think, the first step in reaching your goals (and the plan for how to get there) is not figuring out where it is you want to go. It’s not creating a S.M.A.R.T. goal or identifying the key metrics you want to hit. While these might be key steps in the process, the first and most essential step is to figure out where you’re starting from.
If you skip over this first step, you’ll have a tough time making it through the next three. You’re going to struggle with:
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Step 2: Visioning (step #2) — Depending on where you think you are, you could either end up setting a goal you can’t possibly reach or may set your expectations so low — make the win too easy — you won’t even bother.
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Planning (step #3) — How can you chart a course to get somewhere if you don’t know where you are really starting from?
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Executing (step #4) — It’s hard to gauge progress or know how far you’ve come if you don’t have an accurate assessment of where you started from.
Figuring out where you are starting from may seem obvious and therefore unnecessary, but it turns out we don’t always have the most accurate perception of where we actually are — reality, and our perceived reality can look very different.
Is your real starting line, in fact, further ahead than you think? Have you placed yourself at someone else’s start line? Or are you in the right place but making the starting more difficult than it needs to be?
Before you jump into the what or hows of your project, consider taking a good long look at your current circumstances. Since most of us are biased towards action, there’s a tendency to run in swinging without understanding the game. To quote the Buddha:
If you want to know the past, look at the present. If you want to know the future, look at the present.
Here are some tips for July on how to develop a clearer understanding of where you’re at and your present coordinates:
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Look back to move forward. Make sure you’re setting yourself up to start from where you are, not where you might have been in the past. You’re changed, your capabilities have changed, your circumstances have changed so plan accordingly. Because…
Or you might want to take some time to check in with the past version of yourself you once were.
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Start from where you are, not where you think you should be. We can get caught up in a history that should have been — if only we’d been born to different circumstances or made different choices in our past, then we’d be in a better starting position. But “what have been” isn’t a strong foundation to build upon.
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Play to your strengths (not someone else’s). We see Jane having great success by doing X so we think that to be successful we must do X as well. But when we do that we discount the fact that we have our own unique gifts that may or may not align with Jane’s. Rather than start your project in hard mode (and at someone else’s starting line), why not start from a place of strength?
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Acknowledge what you do have. We humans have a default negativity bias. We look around and instead of seeing where we are, we see where we’re not. We pay attention to what we don’t have more than what we do. Make sure the stories you tell yourself don’t leave you making decisions or plans from a deficit.
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Let go of what is no longer needed. What got you here, won’t (necessarily) get you there. Maybe it’s time to set down the remnants of that past version of you that are no longer needed. It’s time to…
Now that you’ve taken the time to get a better understanding of where you are, where is it you want to go this quarter?
And how might you get there? Next week be on the lookout for a new post to help you build out your project roadmap including planning worksheets for our paid subscribers.
Once you’ve clarified where you are, and identified where you want to go in the next month, download your free July weekly planners to work through the process of how you’ll get there.
Premium subscribers can access the full suite of dated planners below. 👇
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During our June Monthly Community Coaching Call (MC3) we covered the four steps of the wayfinding process (which happen to align with those steps listed above). Premium/Paid subscribers can catch the replay here.
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Back by popular demand! Our Momentum Planner Digital Pack is again available for individual purchase. If you haven’t picked up your 2024 planners yet, you can get the rest of 2024 (July-December) for a special price.
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Our next Monthly Community Coaching Call (MC3) will be on Wednesday, July 17, 2024 11:00 a.m. PDT (for Paid Subscribers). Join us for a 60-minute call that’s a mix of teaching,
hot-support-seat coaching, and Q&A.
While we hope you find our free resources helpful and catalytic for your journey — if you become a paid subscriber, you are helping support our (all of us on team PF) ability to devote our time, energy, and attention to this enterprise. The work we do here wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
Premium PF subscribers get immediate access to the full year of the 2024 Digital Momentum Planners, which include not only the monthly, weekly, and daily views but yearly and quarterly planner pages.
Premium subscribers, your download links and additional content are below. If you don’t see them, please make sure you’re logged in to your paid account.