After I go through all the documents I’ve mentioned – I start planning my 2009 Calendar. We all need to schedule what our “ideal” year would look like. I really evaluate how I spent my year the year before and then I prioritize my year based on my findings. Here are some thing I make sure I plan:

I.e.: Your spouse may need a date night a week, a mini-honeymoon every six months, and a vacation. Book it . . . then move on to your children – same thing, then clients, etc. and go all the way down the line.

What do you do when you schedule your upcoming year? Any thoughts or suggestions?

The Second thing I do during my year end review is review these documents, evaluate where I am according to them, what I’ve accomplished, and what I need too change. What are they you ask? Here you go:

(If you’d like – leave me your e-mail address and I can send you my copies of these documents so you have a basic framework to work from)

Bucket List – This is a list of things I want to do to do before I die. Outrageous things like running a marathon, eating with the President of the US, specific places I want to visit, flying in an air force jet, etc.. I originally got this idea from this story about Lou Holtz. If you don’t have one of these – I highly recommend you make one – dream as big as you can!

My Life Plan – So i just started this a few months ago after reading this post from Michael Hyatt. It is where you take the 7 major areas of your life, prioritize them, get a scripture you’re going to stand on for each of them, write out a legacy statement of what you want to be remembered for in that area, write out where you are realistically right now on your way to accomplishing that goal, then write action steps you’re going to take to get to the goal.

Quarterly Goals: This one is pretty obvious – I set the majority of my goals in 90 day increments. I review them – see how I did – and rewrite them for the next quarter. (Note: A lot of my goals are mini-steps I need to take for the goals of my Life-Plan)

My Life’s Intentional Focus – This is basically an overview of my life… in it I include the following:

• My Vision Statement for My Life
• My Priorities
• My Values
• Principles I live my life By
• My Strengths
• My Weaknesses
• Mentors that I serve and how often I meet with them
• Potential Mentors
• My Current Growth Plan
• My Future Growth Plan - areas I need to study and get mentored in, in the future. (i.e. in 2009 I want to be mentored and study more on communication and writing – so I’m going to find books and hopefully some people that can mentor me on the subject)

More to come tomorrow – hope you’re able to take some of these things and implement them in your life!

I split my journal into several categories:

• Daily Highlights – what I did that day
• Funnies/Memories – any memories I don’t want to forget
• God - anything God spoke to me
• General - this is when I just want to write out my thoughts
• Scriptures – Any scriptures that really spoke to my heart
• Blessings – anything that God really blessed me with
• Prayer - things I’m praying about/for/ believing for/ etc.

I’ll read my entire journal from that year and make a “Year End Report” of Several Things:

• How I Spent my Time - how much time did I spend with mentors, friends, family,etc.
• Highlights: What were the biggest highlights from that year
• Lowlights: What bummers were there over the year
• Themes throughout the year – Usually God puts one or two themes on my heart for my life throughout a given year (I’ll explain this later)
• Biggest Nuggets Learned: What were the greatest lessons I’ve learned?
• Memories – I always type out ALL of the memories from that year so I have them
• Scriptures - I make note cards out of the scriptures and stack them and go through them on a consistent basis

How do you journal? Do you have any suggestions for me? Did this help you?