How to Prepare for the New Year

4 Ways to Prepare for the New Year

Prepare for the New Year with these 4 reliable ways to begin the new calendar with a fresh start to achieve new goals and dreams you may have.

These 4 things to prepare for a fresh new year have been compiled and used each year from many different resources and methods that I have tested on my own, or have learned from others. 

Beginning a new year is always exciting. There is nothing better than a clean slate and a fresh planner or notebook.

It’s a great time for self-reflection and self-assessment. Here are 4 things in preparation of the new year with a clean slate and a plan of action. 

1-REFLECT

• Reflect on the past year. This is something I learned from reading John Maxwell’s 15 Laws of Invaluable Growth (seriously one of the best books you can read – highly recommend!) 
• I have learned to revisit my goals. What did a accomplish? What needs to be given priority, what needs to be scrapped.
• Review my calendar. Make a note of meetings, events, or other things that served me. I jot down what I learned at each. Then look at where I am wasting time and make note of that for the upcoming year. 

2-DECLUTTER

• After Christmas, I like to sweep out the holidays, clean, and have a fresh slate in my environment. This includes my home, office, vehicle, and other areas I spend time.
• Go through closet and donate or sell items not worn or used over the past year. Clean out makeup and other beauty products in your bathroom cabinet and vanity.
• Clean out cupboards, pantry, refrigerator, and freezer; trash outdated and unused pantry items and condiments.
• Include your virtual space. Delete and unsubscribe in the inbox and organize email and other files. This is a good time to upload to a cloud storage and delete files from devices. (Looking at your iphone camera roll at over 14,000 images)
• Go through paper clutter. File away what you really need, and throw away what you don’t. Keep in mind that tax season is around the corner so this is a great time to begin gathering and organizing any receipts or digital files you will need for the CPA or tax preparer. 

3-FINANCES

• This is also a great time to look at your monthly spending and work on the budget.
• Perhaps you don’t need to subscribe to all those streaming services? This is a time to assess and cancel what you aren’t using. 
• Make those credit cards work for you instead of paying them each month. If you are in that minimum payment debt cycle, I would look for a legitimate financial advisor and pay them off. This is something I learned the hard way, but now, I make money off of my credit cards. 

4-PLAN

• Now that you reflected on the past year’s goals, it is time to plan the goals you have for upcoming year.
• Choosing new year’s resolutions does not work for me and I don’t know many people who are successful with this method of goal setting. Instead of resolutions, I like to choose a word to guide my year.
• Check out this blog post for 5 ST
• eps to Choose a Word for the year and download a list of 400 words to give you some inspiration.
• Choosing goals for an entire year is typically too lofty for me; so I break my year into four quarters and evaluate 10 life areas and choose goals based upon how I land there. 

I have several blogposts with more information. Here is a good one to start: Goals Can Change

You can also download the the free Goal Getter Guide: