The Nomadic Planner - How I Plan My Goals and Map the Year Ahead

Sneak Peek:

Kristin:    00:00:00    So if you feel like you need some big changes, not just goal setting, but like a life overhaul and you have no idea what your values or your mission are, then I recommend listening to this podcast or also checking out the video version on YouTube. 

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin:    00:00:39    Hey there, Kristin Wilson from Traveling with Kristin here and welcome to episode 241 of Badass Digital Nomads. This week is a bit of a continuation from last week's episode where I did an annual review of 2023, so definitely check that out in case you missed it. You can always find all of the episodes on my personal website TravelingwithKristin.com, as well as on the podcast website, badassdigitalnomads.com. You can just search in the search bar, you can scan episodes by tags and categories, or you can just go to badassdigitalnomads.com/the episode number, so just 239 or just slash 240 and you can go directly to the episodes there. So that makes it a really easy way of seeing more of the details and links and resources from every episode. I wanted to do an episode specifically dedicated to Goal Setting because it's such an important part of leading a fulfilling life, and that's what this podcast is all about, how to design an unconventional life on your own terms that works for you and really maximizes the opportunities of the time that we're living in right now.  

Kristin:    00:02:04    I know that I talk about that a lot because I'm just constantly amazed by the extent of the freedoms that are possible in the world today and individual freedoms where you can really live on your own terms and achieve things that have never been possible in the past. And it doesn't mean that you have to do something you know really crazy like be like Elon Musk and do rocket science and invent things that completely change the world. It's just about living a personally fulfilling life and goal setting provides the structure that allows for the unfoldment of your life as you, so it's a process and a system that allows you to achieve the things that are important to you and to spend your time, which is our most valuable commodity on the things that really have meaning for you, whether you're still in high school or just graduating from high school or college and entering the workforce, or if you're in the middle stages of your career or if you are entering a new phase of retirement, your goals are going to change throughout life, but it's always really important to have them.  

Kristin:    00:03:29    And so I wanted to share how I do Goal Setting because I've been living a lifestyle where I've been working for myself, I've been pursuing hobbies that fulfill me. I've been traveling full time or living in different countries and over the years I've been able to come up with a system and some tips for how to tie all of these things together and really give you some insight into how I plan my year so that you can take what resonates with you and apply it in your own life. Now, if you already have a Goal Setting system that you use, then feel free to continue with that and maybe just pick up a couple of tips along the way. But if you don't have anything really structured for your goals but you're interested in doing that, then I hope that this episode can provide some inspiration as well as some practical tips on how you can do that regardless of which phase of life that you're in right now.  

Kristin:    00:04:40    Every day I come across people online or in real life who really inspire me with their stories of how they're living in the world, and that's one of the reasons why I have this podcast is to share those stories. But just recently I met a girl named Ksenia from Russia on the Nomad Cruise, and she was featured in my newest video this week talking to Digital Nomads about how they make an online income and she was sharing how she moved from Russia to the US to go to school at UC Berkeley, learn to code, worked in the tech industry for nine years and then now is working for herself as an independent contractor. Was just a couple of months into her journey in the location independent lifestyle and was just having a great time. I also met two girls from Germany who changed careers and industries quite a few times from the fashion industry to the events industry, to working at tech companies like Facebook and now they partnered together to create their own Facebook ads agency and they have been traveling the world for three and a half years as digital nomads while also keeping a home base in Berlin.  

Kristin:    00:05:59    But you might want to just dedicate this year to doing something like starting a side hustle or learning a new hobby. Maybe you want to learn how to code yourself just for fun. Maybe you want to learn how to play an instrument like the piano or learn how to sing, or maybe you want to start a YouTube channel or start a blog or some other type of business that can produce income but also can be creatively fulfilling. I met a woman just last week who started an online gardening business and she has a YouTube channel where she specializes in making videos about gardening techniques for Florida soil and climate. So imagine you could be the gardening expert in your town or your state or your country. Really the options are limitless, but having a good framework for how to achieve your goals, whether it's learning that new hobby or something more complex like Elon sending rockets to Mars and what have you, you need to have a system to get there and also a way to track your progress.  

Kristin:    00:07:15    When I was younger and most of my goals were related to school, I would plan my year on a semesterly basis on an annual basis, but I always felt like my personal goals were really in the background and I used to just set some goals at the beginning of the year, write them in my journal, and then I would forget about them and sometimes I wouldn't see that journal again for three years and I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot that I had a goal to do that. So whatever your goals are, writing them down, but also keeping them top of mind and reviewing them throughout the year can make them a reality. And that now that I've been using more of the structured system, at least in the last five years, I've noticed that it almost has a snowball effect where you set goals and then you look back and you see how they're all connected together and even goals that you might have set three years ago to achieve in that one year, you can achieve them two years, three years, five years, 10 years later.  

Kristin:    00:08:24    Big things start with small ideas and very rudimentary plans, but they can ultimately come together in the end. One of the first real estate properties that I sold, I created the business plan for developing this piece of property. So I was living in Costa Rica at the time working in real estate and I was also helping out at my friend's sushi bar on nights and weekends just helping serve sushi, uh, work at the bar. And I just sketched out this business plan. I had just come out of business school and finished my MBA that same year. So I was thinking a lot in that mindset, but I wrote a business plan on these, uh, the, the receipt pad or the order pad before everything was digitized where you would, uh, write down people's orders and then give the ticket to the kitchen. And then that, you know, turned into a a viable plan.  

Kristin:    00:09:24    We sold the property and started developing it before I moved on to Nicaragua. So don't feel like your goals are too unreasonable or they're too small and insignificant. There is really no rule for this, but there are some parameters that you can use to get started. So today I'll share what I do and then also give you some resources that you can look up at the end to use in your own goal setting. And I'll also leave you with a very strange tip that I just learned this year and it's really just blown my mind and completely changed the way that I think about goal setting my future and life in general. Before we jump in, just a few reminders that we have our Annual Feedback Survey available. Now that's linked in the top of the show notes. So if you just take a minute to fill out what you love about Badass Digital Nomads or even my YouTube channel, what you don't like, what you want to hear more about, then you can fill that out and five people will be randomly selected for a free phone call with me.  

Kristin:    00:10:41    I think this is the third year that we're doing it and it's always really fun and getting your direct feedback helps me choose guests for the year and also prioritize different topics given that it is the beginning of a new year, you may also be thinking about your travel plans for the year or potentially moving abroad or slow traveling in the near future. So if you are thinking of, so if you are thinking about moving abroad anytime from the next three months up to the next three years, then you could qualify for my individual help with your relocation planning. My signature program Ready to Relocate is reopening next month, and you can apply for help by going to TravelingwithKristin.com/relocation. And we'll also link to that in the show notes that's at TravelingwithKristin.com/relocation. If you want to move abroad this year or anytime up until the next three years from now, we can start that planning now.  

Kristin:    00:11:54    Okay, so Goal Setting, the first thing that I like to do each year is reflect on the past year seems obvious, but I like to look at my wins and losses or really wins and achievements and also challenges. I have an annual system that I then break into quarterly goals and then monthly, weekly, and daily. So that's what I really like about this process is that you can adapt it long-term over a year, three years, five years, 10 years, but then you can also break it down because how we spend our days and our moments is how we spend our lives. So there's no point in having big goals if you don't have a way to do the daily actions that are gonna get you there. And your wins and successes for the year can come from any life category. It could be your personal life, it can be your health, it can be finances, relationships, career.  

Kristin:    00:13:00    So just brainstorm a list of things that you achieved or things that you would consider as wins throughout the year. So some things for me, just as examples in the health department, this was a really important year for me because as I talked about in another episode on how to live a better life, in this year I quit drinking coffee and caffeine and I also quit sugar, and that was in June of last year. So I haven't had any processed sugar or any caffeine from June to January, which is pretty crazy, especially having been drinking coffee since I was 20 years old. That was a big win for me as well as quitting alcohol, which I haven't 100% quit. I still had a handful of drinks throughout the year, but it's been about two years now that I pretty much stopped drinking on a regular basis, like having wine with dinner, things like that.  

Kristin:    00:14:00    And so I categorize these as massive ones for my personal health. Now, of course you could think, you know, that's crazy, I'm not giving up my morning coffee or my glass of wine at dinner and plenty of my friends and family members think that that sounds awful, and that's not a goal that they have. So again, this is just every, every goal is personal and every win is personal. So those were some wins for me. And also in my career, I took a six month break from YouTube when I was writing my book Digital Nomads for Dummies, but I got back on YouTube at the end of 2022 and was really consistent through 2023 publishing videos every week and of course publishing a episode of the podcast every week. So that was really important for me. I also started working with International Living last year, which was not a goal that I had specifically, but it was definitely a win.  

Kristin:    00:15:04    It was great to work with a big company that has been in the same industry as me for 40 years, and I met so many great people there and had a lot of new experiences, spoke at their conferences, hosted their events, and also did some collaborations with them by offering my relocation services to International Living subscribers and readers. Speaking of which, I helped three groups learn how to relocate to other countries. So that was a huge win for me. We hosted programs of Ready to Relocate in January, July and September. So that was the first time we've done more than one or two programs in a year, so that was very exciting. And then travel, of course, you might have some travel goals and wins, maybe you got away for a nice vacation or maybe you visited a place that you had never been before.  

Kristin:    00:16:04    Some wins for me on that front. Were moving to the UK for six months, going to Ibiza for the first time, and also traveling with my family members, with my mom and my dad throughout England. And then generally spending a lot of time with my family this year compared to previous years, especially during and before the pandemic. My hobby, as many of you know, is DJing and music. So I completed a music production course in England and I also was able to DJ in new places that I had never DJ'ed before, like Dublin, Ireland, New York City, Amsterdam, Ibiza, London, Manchester, and I even landed a monthly residency on a London radio station. So those were fun, not necessarily goals that I had, but a fun wins to celebrate. Then there's also struggles or challenges to reflect on, uh, not to say that you did this well and this bad, but just areas where you might wanna focus on for this year.  

Kristin:    00:17:15    And it's really important when you're looking at that is to determine why you quote unquote failed at those goals. So if it was income related, maybe you didn't save as much as you wanted or maybe you didn't hit your income goal and you can look at, you know, why was that? If you were working for yourself, did you lose clients? Did you need more clients? Do you need to adjust your prices? If you are working in a full-time job, is it something where you might wanna consider changing jobs this year or next year or starting a side hustle where you can make some extra income? It's not just looking at, okay, I, I wanted to make $10 million this year, but I didn't so fail. It's like, okay, well what is my goal? Is that realistic and how can I get there? A struggle that I had this year was still getting into a good sleep schedule.  

Kristin:    00:18:22    That's something I've struggled with for many years. If I look back even to when I was traveling full-time, 2017, 2018, changing time zones, jet lag, just being in different places, I would just have a very inconsistent schedule where I could never set a recurring alarm clock on my phone. I was always changing it, like changing the time I went to bed, changing the time that I woke up in Bulgaria. I remember waking up at five or 6:00 AM every day to do some riding in the morning and then go snowboarding. But then, you know, I would be somewhere else and would be staying up later like midnight or one in the morning and then my schedule would be off. I also struggled with screen time. I feel like my screen time really went up a lot this year possibly because I was living in the UK in a place where I didn't know anyone.  

Kristin:    00:19:21    So I spent a lot more time on social media, on messages, on phone calls, FaceTime, things like that. And whenever I spend too much time on screens and devices, I always feel depleted, even if it is connecting with people. Also, as the community's grown, I've struggled with, you know, how much time and how many hours to spend on answering messages and comments and email. So that has been a recurring challenge for me ever since I read the 4-hour work week back in 2007, I really adopted Tim Ferris's outlook on communication and email where he would separate answering email into different chunks throughout the day rather than being available all day long. Cal Newport has a similar outlook where he barely uses social media at all and he also dedicates his communication time in the quote unquote hive mind, as he calls it, email, Slack messages to X messages.  

Kristin:    00:20:35    He dedicates that to certain times of the day. But I do feel like this year I spent a lot more time being on Slack all day, you know, communicating with brands and other companies that I was working with, with contractors and just felt like I was always online and always answering messages. So if that's something that you struggle with as well. Then as I mentioned in last week's episode, Digital Minimalism is a really good resource, that book by Cal Newport, and I'm also reading A World Without Email right now from Cal Newport that I bought at least three years ago, and I didn't read it until now because of that experience last year, I also read less books than I normally do. I did a lot more audio books because I felt like I was always on the move or you know, taking a walk or in an airport on a train or just listening during breakfast or lunch.  

Kristin:    00:21:31    So I did do more audio books, but not as many normal books as usual. So these are just some of the things that you can reflect on and try to identify where those struggles come from and kind of diagnose what the issues are there. And sometimes it can be both. So although my YouTube channel grew a lot this year by 50,000 people and in the first year or so that I was publishing on YouTube, I think it took me a year and a half or more to even grow to the, the first milestone of 1000 subscribers. And so that was a big win. But then on the other end, I also noticed that a lot of the videos that I made in the past year didn't really connect with people in the way that previous videos did. So even though it could be a win to be consistent with publishing or to grow your community on a certain platform, it can also be a way to reflect on, okay, well what was working about this, but what isn't?  

Kristin:    00:22:42    And it's not just about, okay, grow your community by some arbitrary number, like 1 million or 10 million people. It's, it's more about is the content that you are making for people, is it valuable for them? Do they want to watch it? Do they want to listen to it? Are you in tune with their interests and their needs? And for me, that's what's really important. So this reflection is really the first stage of goal setting and I recommend doing it on an annual basis, but also more frequently ever since I was in a mastermind that I started with some friends in digital nomads that I met in Bulgaria in 2018, we did this annual reflection as well as quarterly with goal setting. And for our weekly calls, we did a mini weekly reflection for five minutes at the beginning of each call. So you could do something like this every day where you review your day and you just look at what was a win, what was a challenge, or you could do a weekly reflection, or you could even do it monthly.  

Kristin:    00:24:01    I used to keep a note in Workflowy, which is an app and a website for, it's like your brain on a computer screen. It's really cool. I'll link to that in the show notes too. But you could use Evernote, you could use Apple Notes, you could use Notion, whatever type of personal organization or or goal setting, project management system that you use in your life. Whenever you have a win, you can just jot it down there. So I would just break things into categories for the month. Maybe you have a savings goal where you wanna save a certain amount of money per month, you want to pay down a certain amount of debt per month. So I would have my finance goal, my health goal, you know, work out three days per week, lose five pounds in a year, whatever that is. And then as you get some wins throughout the month, just go over to your note and jot those down under the, the category that they go with.  

Kristin:    00:25:02    So if you're enrolled in an online course and you're learning to code and you finish a module or you finish the entire course, you could write that down as a win for that month. If you want to read a book per week or a book per month, you can also write that down that you finished the book this month or whatever it is. The next step after going through your wins and challenges is to look back at your goals. So I like to have one year goals, three year goals, five year goals, and 10 year goals, and keep that in a Google Doc or in a folder on your computer where you can go back and review that often. And when you look back at the past year at your goals, you can maybe check some off or you can see how far you are making progress towards that goal and what you need to adjust to continue on the course.  

Kristin:    00:25:57    Because some goals can take many years or even a decade or more to achieve. It's also good to assess which goals are no longer relevant. So there might be some ventures that you were pursuing or some things that were really important to you that now are no longer relevant. In the past, surfing was very important to me and I had all of these goals around being a professional surfer, winning certain tournaments, going on sponsored trips, but eventually that was no longer important. And surfing is something that I do a couple of times per year if I'm in a place with good waves, but it's uh, not something that I am striving for on a regular basis. So if, uh, you had a, an interest or a hobby or goals that were really important in the past, maybe there's some that you can discard and maybe there's some that you've already achieved and you can move on to the next thing.  

Kristin:    00:27:00    So I look at those past goals and then I revise them for the next year, the next five years, the next 10 years, and you know, you can always go back and change those anytime. The third thing is to reflect on your personal mission and values. So what is a personal mission? What are these values? This is just, this is like your mission statement as if you were a big company or a corporation. This is something that should be a guiding principle in your life and sets the foundational why behind all of the actions, decisions and goals that you set throughout the year. So if you've ever been doing something and then woke up one day and thought, why am I doing this? <laugh>, this is where your personal mission comes in really handy and can help you make a lot of the tough decisions that just come up in life from what to do for work to where to live.  

Kristin:    00:28:05    And this is something that also helps me decide where I'm going to be moving throughout the year, which we'll talk about as well. When it comes to planning your travel, a personal mission should be clear, it should be easy for you to remember to understand and to communicate. It should be inspirational and motivating for you, providing a sense of direction and purpose in your life. It should also align with your core personal values, honesty, integrity, compassion, respect, responsibility, loyalty, creativity, excellence, whatever is important to you in life. And your mission should also focus on long-term goals and your overall life plan rather than short term objectives. So like your personal values, your mission probably won't change that much, it won't change as often as your short term goals. If honesty is a value that's very important for you, chances are it will always be important for you.  

Kristin:    00:29:13    So your vision can really be based on these long-term guiding factors in your life, but it should also be flexible and allow for some growth and change as your goals change over time, as your experiences change, and also as your insight and your perspective on life changes over time, which can definitely change, especially if you are living this international lifestyle where you're meeting a lot of people, you're observing how people are in different cultures and you're learning from a lot of new experiences. So my mission is to empower people like you to achieve personal freedom by providing information and stories and context that can help guide you in making informed decisions when it comes to changing careers or relocating to different countries or feeling validated to pursue hobbies and passions and interests that inspire you. My aim is to help you travel the world and be yourself pursuing your career and passions and aspirations in any environment.  

Kristin:    00:30:34    In doing this, I commit to spreading this information through all the modern media platforms that we have access to while also living with integrity and embodying the lifestyle that I advocate, showing and sharing how a global location, independent life is possible and empowering you with the tools and information to be able to achieve it. In hindsight, maybe my mission's a little bit long, but this mission really drives me and it speaks to why I do the things that I do. Why am I publishing videos on YouTube? Why am I publishing this podcast? Why do I write books and blog articles and create programs to help people with these things? Because this is my mission in life, these are my values and this is what I want to help people to do in living out my mission. I am also personally fulfilled and satisfied. It's a creative outlet, it's a challenge, but it's also I feel like I'm walking in my life's purpose.  

Kristin:    00:31:46    And when I was not answering that call, when I was not clear on this mission and vision yet I felt a sense of unease that I wasn't on the right track, that I wasn't doing the right things, and I had to do many, many years of inner work. I would say from around 2007 to 2017, a lot of reading, a lot of podcasts, a lot of studying, a lot of traveling around the world to get answers and meet people and try to understand what my purpose was here in life. And in 2017 is when I committed to this mission, which had always been a part of me, had always been inside of me, but that I wasn't actively living. So your mission is probably something that you've always known for it to be ever since you were very young, but you either didn't think you could do it or you didn't think it was for you, or you thought it was something for you to do later, or something to do in your free time when you're not working or taking care of the kids or doing all these other things.  

Kristin:    00:33:02    It doesn't mean that you have to quit everything that you're doing and start working towards a new mission, but try to think of it as uh, a mission and a value system that can align with your current life and maybe shift you one or two degrees in the right direction if you feel like you've gotten a little bit off track with why you're here and what you're doing. Cool, so we have your self-reflection, your goal review, your mission and values, and now we're onto the goal setting part. So we are four steps in now and it's important to do these other tasks first because if you just jump right into setting goals, you could end up setting the wrong goals. And I think we've probably all heard this metaphor of making sure your ladder is up against the right wall. <laugh>, you don't wanna climb the corporate ladder if being at the top of that ladder has nothing to do with your mission, your values, and your personality and your goals.  

Kristin:    00:34:07    So goal setting should really be based on what's most important to you. I've been using the smart goal system probably since I learned about it in high school or college. This is to ensure that goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. So a specific goal, reading more would be a general goal, but reading 10 pages per day would be a specific goal. It's very specific, it's measurable. You know, when you've read for 10 pages or 30 minutes or whatever time bound parameter you wanna put on that, it's achievable. You have 20, 30 minutes a day that you can do it. It's relevant. Why would you be reading 10 pages per day or one chapter per day? Maybe it's because you want to increase your area of expertise on a certain topic, you want to learn something new, you want to research biographies for a book, you're just curious about something.  

Kristin:    00:35:11    Maybe you just want to be entertained. Whatever the reasons are, it should be relevant to your mission statement and your values. If you want to learn how to play the piano, you could practice for 15 minutes per day or 20 minutes per day. That is a specific goal to learn how to play a certain song on the piano by the end of the year. And to get there, you'll practice for 20 minutes per day at this time per day. And it's relevant to you because you want to be a piano player. Setting goals helps you then break down the goal into smaller actionable steps that you can work on throughout the year. A goal that has been in progress for me, but I haven't achieved it yet, is learning music production and releasing my first ep. So releasing my first ep, this is like two songs or two tracks, let's say, of electronic music.  

Kristin:    00:36:17    I could set that goal for the end of 2024. And then how to break that goal into smaller steps would include practicing or learning a certain amount each day and being consistent at that. And then maybe, you know, hiring somebody to help or sharing the tracks with other producers to get feedback on them. These are these other smaller action steps that you might not know all of the steps at first, we're just creating your annual goals at this time, but then you can go and break them into a quarterly plan, a monthly plan, a weekly plan, a daily plan, and go smaller as needed. And then once you're on that timeline, you're gonna recognize when you need to add a new action, bring in a new resource, take another step that you couldn't see before. So let's say your goal is to get a high paying remote job by September.  

Kristin:    00:37:21    You would want to define the type of job that you want, what, what role, what job title, what level, C level, entry level, what industry, that's your annual goal. Then you wanna work backwards and set quantifiable targets or actions that you're gonna take to get to that goal. So it could be quarterly, it could be in Q1. You are researching different jobs that you can apply for. You are interviewing three people that have that job. You are attending one networking event per month with other professionals in that field. And then in quarter two you are applying for jobs. So you are signing up to remote job sites, you are reading emails every day with the new job listings, you are hiring someone to look over your resume or CV, you're applying to three jobs per week. You wanna set these quantifiable targets that are supporting the overarching goal.  

Kristin:    00:38:35    So the first stage of any goal is usually research. Then you start taking action, you know, updating your LinkedIn profile, talking to people, going to job fairs, networking. Then you're applying for jobs, then you're following up on your job applications, preparing for interviews, and then finally evaluating those job offers and making a decision. Then there's also the angle of regularly reviewing your goals and assessing your progress and then adjusting as needed. So if you've applied to 50 jobs and you're not getting any responses, then maybe you need to, you know, get professional help with somebody to review your resume or maybe reaching out to them to get feedback onto why you weren't asked for an interview. Or maybe it's something that you need to increase your qualifications and add new skills or awards or certifications to your resume. It could also be that maybe you are applying for a job that is too much of a stretch goal and you need to look at more entry level jobs that you're more qualified for.  

Kristin:    00:39:53    So this is just an example of how you can take a smart goal and then you can break it down into pieces and then also track it. So you're never gonna remember how many jobs you applied for. You need to track this somehow in a document, in a spreadsheet, in a project management system. And you can, you know, if you're using project management system, you can have some jobs in the research phase, some jobs in the application phase, some jobs in the interview phase, round two or round three of interviews. And then finally the negotiation phase. You can use Trello, you can use Asana, you can use Monday, you can just use a Google sheet or an Excel spreadsheet as long as you're tracking it, that's what's important. So whenever I am writing a book, I track exactly how much I write. I track the time that I write every day, how long I write for, what I wrote about, and then how many words I wrote.  

Kristin:    00:40:56    So I can actually look back at the month and see how many days did I write, how many hours did I write, and how many words did I write? And I can even find out how many words do it, do I write per hour? You can also do this with reading books or really anything. So in my 5-Year Journal, there's pages in the back for writing down all of the books that you read during those five years. And tracking this also gives you a lot of motivation. So if I look back at my YouTube statistics from 2018, 2019, you know, I can see that I've met my goals going through the years. Could be quantitative goals, publishing 50 videos per year could be hitting a certain income level on ad sense. Uh, this year I have a goal where, and last year as well where I was not accepting many brand deals, I was only accepting brand deals or over a certain amount of money, and also brands obviously that I use or that I support.  

Kristin:    00:42:03    So I'm turning down 99% of companies that contact me to advertise on the podcast or advertise on YouTube because I have this very specific goal in mind and I have these specific parameters of who I am willing to work with. And at what rate. Step number six is to take action. And this is starting with the easiest thing to do. If it's reading more books and you set out these lists, you wanna read 200 books per year, you know, the first step is making a list of the books that you want to read and then buying the first book and then opening the book and reading the first word of the first page. There's no shame in breaking these down into the tiniest possible steps. If you're having a hard time getting something done that's on your goals, chances are you need to break it into smaller steps.  

Kristin:    00:43:00    I'll also link to a medium article that I wrote about this on easy ways to achieve your goals. Like literally break it down into open your computer, navigate to the folder where the document is located, open the document, read the document, like whatever it is that you need to do, just make it really easy so that by the time you're actually doing it, you've already checked off seven or eight things on, on the list. Yeah, taking action could be joining a gym, enrolling in a course, dusting off that old resume and updating it. Identify the first action that you need to take for one single goal and do that action and then ask yourself what is the next action? Step seven along the way is monitoring and adjusting. So I do this on an annual basis. I do this on a quarterly basis. I do it on a weekly basis and a daily basis.  

Kristin:    00:44:03    So if you have four main goals for the year, you could do one goal per quarter, or you might have 10 goals and one or two of them are annual goals, whereas others might only take a month or so, or one or two quarters to be able to achieve whatever it is. You just wanna break it down into manageable steps. So what this looks for me, looks like for me on a given week is looking at my quarterly or monthly goals and then breaking those into weekly goals. I have what I call my most important tasks of the week. And then from that I look at my most important tasks of the day. So let's say my goal for the month is to publish for YouTube videos. My most important task for that week might be to research and brainstorm all of the four videos.  

Kristin:    00:45:06    My task for the next week might be to write all of the scripts. My task for the next week could be to film the videos and my task for the next week could be to delegate those to the editor and review the edits and approve the edits to be able to publish those videos in the next month. You could have a goal for the month of April, for example, if you're in the US that it's tax return time and you want to finish your tax return. So maybe this goal starts in January and you're setting monthly and then weekly and daily goals to make sure that you have your taxes filed in time, clear goals, small steps, monitor and adjust along the way. And then the eighth step, which is super important and I'm guilty of not even doing this a lot of the time, I don't know why it's, I think it's something that a lot of people can relate to, is to celebrate your goals, celebrate when you achieve something.  

Kristin:    00:46:10    So when you get that remote job at the end of the year, celebrate getting that job. Tomorrow actually, I'll be signing the paperwork to sell my house. This is an investment property that I owned with my brother since 2008 and we had the goal to sell our house this year. We sold it and tomorrow we close and so on. My list for this week of most important things is to celebrate the closing of that house and also celebrate being able to reinvest those proceeds into new properties. You could have a goal of moving to Spain by the end of the year and when you get there, I hope that you celebrate with a nice glass of sangria or a paella or whatever it is with uh, maybe a get together with your neighbors or friends, whatever is on your goals for this year. I really hope that you celebrate those small wins along the way and big wins if you're feeling a bit stuck with what to even put on your goals.  

Kristin:    00:47:17    My go-to is always to refer to the different areas of life to consider. So you've got your career goals or your educational goals if you're still in school or if you are in the midst of your career, what are your goals related to your professional development? Any sort of skills that you want to add or certain achievements that you want to attain. If you're in college, maybe your goal is just to graduate from college. If you are a radiologist, maybe you want to get an extra specialty added on so that you can use different equipment. If you are a freelancer, maybe your goal is to sign one new recurring client per month and if you're retired, maybe your goal is not to work, but maybe you want to take on a new hobby or start a side hustle. I just read a book by Jim Santos from International Living that he was writing about myths of living abroad as an expat.  

Kristin:    00:48:22    And something I didn't know about him is that he used to work in government in Washington DC and when he retired to Ecuador, he became a travel writer. And I think that's really cool to just reinvent yourself and change careers. And now he's probably working just as much or if not more than when he, before he was retired, but now he's just doing things that he wants to do, which include travel and writing and travel writing. So you've got career and education, you've got health and fitness. It could be around your physical health, your mental health, your nutrition. For me, I definitely want to walk every day at least six to 8,000 steps. 10,000 is ideal. I want to do my exercise routine four or five days per week, of course, you know, living sugar free and these other goals that I achieved in the last year.  

Kristin:    00:49:15    Just continuing with that. Then you've got personal development, so anything related to personal growth, reading, hobbies, learning new skills, quitting smoking or vaping, well that's probably health goal anyway. Then you've got your financial goals, so targets for savings, investments, paying down debts or just improving your overall financial literacy, but getting specific on how you're going to do that. Relationships very important. So any goal that's focused on improving or nurturing your relationships with friends, partners, family. As I mentioned, one of my goals was to spend more time with family in the last year, but then I got specific on how I would do that. That means calling or FaceTiming one family member per week. I had the goal of visiting my cousins who live in London. I traveled with my parents in England. So you know, spending the holidays with them, what does that look like for you?  

Kristin:    00:50:16    Also, dating was important to me this year because some, some years I feel like I don't have a goal for personal relationships. This year I did, I was in a relationship. That relationship ended, but at least, you know, I, I spent more time focused on that goal. And then fun, leisure, recreation, hobbies, travel, anything that brings you joy. I went on Nomad Cruise this year. I stayed in the UK for six months. I traveled to Ibiza in Amsterdam. When you have clear goals, that makes it a lot easier to be able to choose places to travel or live. So last year I had a goal of going somewhere where I could stay for six months without having to leave. So somewhere that had a Tourist visa, that was at least for 180 days where I didn't have to leave every 30 or 90 days and move somewhere.  

Kristin:    00:51:19    I was also looking for a place where I would be near family, a place where I could focus on deep work. So I was looking for a non expat or digital nomad hub. So whereas you might be looking for a place that has a lot of foreigners where you can have a solid community maybe in Bali or Chiang Mai or in Lisbon, Portugal, I was actually looking for the opposite because I had just spent three months in Portugal with a lot with with hundreds of other digital nomads and and foreigners. And I was looking for a place where I could really tune in and do some deep work and my social calendar was not a priority for at least six months of the year last year. So you can go to a a geographical place that supports the goals that are most important to you at that certain time of year.  

Kristin:    00:52:14    I also chose to be in the UK during summer because they have so many parks there and it's great for hiking and those are other activities that just really make me happy. And then last but not least, community and contributions. So beyond relationships, any goals or aims that you have that are related to volunteering, getting involved in your community or charitable activities. This was something that was kind of a fail for me in the last year. I had a goal to get more involved and explore more about sustainable tourism initiatives and how I could support that, but I had too full of a plate in the last year and that kind of took, um, a backseat to some other goals. But I do have goals for the future related to not just contributing to other causes like um, the U-N-H-C-R, Refugees Agency that I've supported for many years, Charity Water that I've supported for many years, plant a tree foundation, not just contributing financial resources or even time, but having my own foundation in the future.  

Kristin:    00:53:32    So that's one of my more long-term goals. But my neighbors here in Florida, their number one goal throughout the year is charitable contribution and they work at least 40 to 60 hours per week in food kitchens and meals on wheels type of programs. Uh, they are fully retired, they do take a few months off per year to travel in their van and they go all around the country and to Mexico and up to Canada. But they also, when they are at their home base in Florida, they spend all of their free time volunteering. And that's actually two of my neighbors in in Florida. So if you're stuck for goals, then just look at each area of life and make a wishlist of what you want to do and then just make sure that you can make those smart goals and actually start taking actions on them this year.  

Kristin:    00:54:30    There might also be goals that don't necessarily fit into these categories. So one of my top three goals for the year is to get my Romanian passport and get citizenship in Romania. So that has also affected my plans for the year and my travel plans because traveling around the world is not conducive to collecting documents and getting those documents certified and translated and notarized and sent in and working with a bureaucracy. So I'm actually thinking of postponing my trip to Argentina, so I can spend that month of March, well February and March, February, I'll be in Florida, March. I had planned for Mexico and Argentina before going to Portugal, but I might just stay in Florida in March to make sure that I can get those documents in. So if one of your goals is related to changing your tax base, moving to another country, getting a second passport, then your travel and other goals could be contingent on the success and progress towards that goal.  

Kristin:    00:55:45    If you want some extra motivation on how to plan your year, Steven Pressfield has a podcast on How to Organize Your Year, and Cal Newport also has a podcast on, okay, I pulled it up, <laugh>, it's called How to Reinvent Your Life in Four Months. This is episode 263 of the Deep Life Podcast on a four month journey of how to overhaul your life. So if you feel like you need some big changes, not just goal setting, but like a life overhaul and you have no idea what your values or your mission are, then I recommend listening to this podcast or also checking out the video version on YouTube that I will link to in the show notes. And now we've gotten to my secret sauce. This is the secret tip. It's not really a secret, it's just something that I had never considered doing before.  

Kristin:    00:56:44    I had never heard of anyone doing it before, and I don't even remember who told me now, but I think I just learned it in the past year. And that is to create a 500 year plan. Have you ever done that? Have you ever thought of doing it? You know anyone who's ever done that, this totally blew my mind. Imagine if you had five lifetimes, what would you do? And this is one of those things that just expands your mind and stretches the horizon of what's possible in a new way. And it's also very personal, I think. So I'm not gonna share my 500 year goals with you right now, maybe someday, but if you're struggling to come up with your one year goals, actually doing a 500 year plan can really give you some insight into, if time were no option, what would you do?  

Kristin:    00:57:44    What would your purpose be in life? What would your impact be in the world? Would you commit to one path of just world domination and exponential positive impact in one industry or field? Or would you have like five separate lifetimes where you pursued different things? Would you be a pilot in one lifetime? Would you be a president in one lifetime? Would you be an entrepreneur in one lifetime? Would you be a scholar in one lifetime? Would you be a professional athlete in one lifetime? I mean, this is a really, really fun and you know, obviously we're not living to 500, but it can help to sift through what is the most important thing for you in this lifetime when you're looking at things on a trajectory of five lifetimes. So definitely give that a try. It's difficult, but it's like swinging with eight or nine baseball bats.  

Kristin:    00:58:45    Once you've got your 500 year plan outlined, then coming back to your 10 year goals, your two year goals, your one year goals can feel a lot easier because you've got that bird's eye view and that clarity. So just to review the goal setting structure that we talked about here, you wanna start with a reflection of your wins, losses, challenges from the year, review your goals from the last year if you had them. If you don't, that's okay. You can start now. But when you're reviewing your goals, make sure to identify any goals that you want to double down on, any goals that you overlooked and goals that you want to discard that are no longer important for you. The third thing is to review your mission and values or write out your personal mission statement if you haven't done that before. And if you need more examples, you can just Google, you know how to write a personal mission statement and you can get a lot of more info on that.  

Kristin:    00:59:51    It's just important to go through each step, right? Reflection, goal review, mission and values. And then the fourth step, setting your smart goals, specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, time bound. Step five, break those goals down into smaller pieces. Quarterly goals, monthly goals, weekly goals, daily actions and habits that you can take to get there. Then take action on your first step of your first goal. Seven, remember to monitor along the way, whether you're doing a daily review in your journal, weekly planning, a monthly review, quarterly review, track your goals, monitor them, adjust as you go along, and finally, celebrate your goals when you achieve them. If you're like me, you'll find out that celebrating the goals, it feels good in the moment, but it's the celebration itself is not necessarily as meaningful or fulfilling as the journey to get there. But we are humans, we are animals, and we are trained on a reward system.  

Kristin:    01:01:02    So having that reward for hard work and a job well done is very satisfying and also provides motivation for us to keep going. If you get stuck, go back to the different categories of life for inspiration. Try making a 500 year goal plan and also check out some of the other resources in the show notes for help to get started. I hope that this insight into how I plan my goals every year and also how my travel goals are related there is really helpful for you in refining your goal plan for the year or creating a new one if you haven't made one yet. For more background on what I've been thinking about and some of the themes I've been pondering for the year checkout, last week's episode 240 for my annual review, it's great to be back here with you again every week. Remember to fill out our Annual Feedback Survey also in the show notes and to apply for relocation support with me. If you're thinking of moving abroad in the next three months to three years, you can do that at TravelingwithKristin.com/relocation. Have a great morning, afternoon, or evening wherever you are in the world, and see you here again next week.