The Only Goal Setting Guide You Need for 2023

Or at least a good place to start (featuring Toni Morrison)

I got my first planner when I was a senior in high school. It was a Franklin Covey¹ that my mom bought for herself but didn’t use. I took it and made it my own and used it to track that hectic senior year…and there has been at least one planner in my life at every turn ever since.

In 2020 I found it challenging to keep a planner. The days felt unbearably the same most of the time and for a while. It felt frustrating to plan and then unplan, but now I see it as the most mystic invitation to planning I have ever experienced. Any inflexibility that lingered in my planning process was folded—like many of the weeks that seemed to blend together.

Do you plan to dream?

For the past few days, I have been resisting my body’s urge to organize and strategize into oblivion. Old habits die hard and I can’t help but do it a little bit…Some things require it.

But I have been thinking about what it looks like for us to consider our embodiment when we make plans in the new year. Especially for the things we dream about making possible.

In my thinking, I found this video of Toni Morrison reflecting on a “goal setting” practice that helped her establish her priorities.

It’s a short video, but if you cannot watch it now, let me share the crucial piece, transcribed:

“I remember sitting down at a desk at Random House One. Thinking of all the things I had to do was quite overwhelming. I mean, everything that I had to do, not just the little things, but the big things. You know, the mother's daughter, the sister sister, [laughs] you know all of that. And I found myself unable to stand up from the desk.

And then I decided, well, maybe if I write down all my obligations, I can sort it out. And I started writing out all these things, and the list is getting longer and longer.

Then it was down to 40! Then I thought, Oh, this is gonna go on forever... […]…And I decided to use another sheet of paper, and I would write down what I really wanted to do.

And I decided to write down—not just what I wanted to do, because I wasn't sure about that.—but what I thought if I didn't do I’d die.

Well.

And there were two things. Only two that I really thought if I can't do these two things, I will disappear from the face of the earth…”

Toni’s Two Things

There were two things—only two. One, mother my children, and two, write books.”

—Toni Morrison

I didn’t hear her say that the obligations disappeared. But I think this exercise helped clear her mind, centering her vocations as a mother and an author.

I am going to try this exercise to see what floats to the surface. And you are welcome to join me:

Landing Track —Yes, there is only one:

1. What’s on your list of things you know you have to do before you die? Take time to write these lists, and consider how your priorities will change if you commit to putting those things on that shortlist in the forefront.

1. Brother of the guy who wrote “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen Covey.