New Year. New You. Motivate Me Week 4 – Planning for a Perfect Year with @ShelleyWilson72 #wwwblogs

New Year. New You.

Let Shelley Wilson help you keep to your New Year Resolutions

Week 1 – Reviewing 2016 and looking forward to 2017 http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-9BO

Week 2: Power words for 2017 http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-9BX

Week 3: Setting 2017 Goals http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-9C0

Week Four: Motivational Guest Post – Planning for a Perfect Year

When I was planning out my resolution challenge for How I Changed My Life in a Year, I had a year to view wall-planner where I could plan out my challenges and assign a day/date for all the relevant blog posts. At a glance, I knew exactly what I was going to be working on that week. Any panic or anxiety about the content I needed for a particular blog post disappeared once I looked at my planner.

I received feedback from hundreds of women across the globe following the publication of How I Changed My Life in a Year, and among the emails I got were several readers who felt the urge to start their own blogs. Where possible, I followed their sites and commented on and shared the posts. Some of them are still going strong, but others have fallen away into the blogger-graveyard. Why? It’s down to planning. Blogging was new to me when I wrote that first post back in 2013, but the entire challenge, my goals, expectations, and basic content was prepared in advance.

To plan the perfect year I pictured my big goal – complete my list of twelve New Year resolutions by the end of the year and blog about it – then I broke it down into smaller, monthly chunks, then I reviewed and updated each theme as I moved through the year. You can’t trek up Machu Picchu without a plan!

Planning isn’t just key for blogging, but it’s an important personal development tool for life. The key to achieving success in anything we do is being organised. Every woman I know has a knack for multitasking in some way. Whether that’s juggling home and kids, or managing a career and lifestyle, or perhaps they deal with a mix of all of the above. Organising your life and your goals takes away that bubbling panic and scatty brain fog that accompanies your overwhelming thoughts. Have you ever wanted to do something but can’t quite verbalise your idea? Do you find there are too many thoughts whirling through your brain and you find it difficult to ground yourself? Organisational techniques are vital to helping us calm the nerves, and rationalise our feelings, allowing us to continue with our day, achieve our goals, and live a productive life.

Three of my favourite planning tools include:

Meal Planning – Writing out a week’s worth of meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner), so I don’t have the 6 o’clock panic of ‘what’s for dinner?’ is a life saver. Shopping online is another favourite tool for saving time (and money!).

Household Chore List – I have a chalkboard in my kitchen with daily household chores listed. The kids choose a chore every day from the list and do it to get their pocket money. The house gets cleaned, I get help, and the kids learn how to run a home.

De-Cluttering – My favourite hobby! I’ll take it a room at a time (or a shelf/drawer/cupboard if I need to break it down further), and fill three cardboard boxes with bin it, donate it, and keep it items.

Do you have a favourite planning tip to share? Add a comment below and share your thoughts on planning for success.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these guest posts and taken a little bit of inspiration and motivation for the year ahead. I’d like to say a huge thank you to Rosie for allowing me to invade her lovely blog and share my personal development tools.

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If you’d like to read more about Shelley’s work, then join her on her motivational blog http://myresolutionchallenge.blogspot.com

or author blog http://www.shelleywilsonauthor.com.

You’ll also find Shelley on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/ShelleyWilson72)

and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/MotivateMeBlog).

All Shelley’s books are available on Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shelley-Wilson/e/B00G5KPMJI