How I set my monthly goals

So, a few months ago, I decided to do monthly goal setting. It was around the time that I read The Happiness Project, and I was listening to Gretchen Rubin’s Happier podcast. The first ever episode I listened to dealt with the Essential Seven. She and her sister, who co-hosts the podcast with her, talked about the fact that there are 7 types of habit that we most want to foster in order to lead a happy and productive life.These are:

1. Eat and drink more healthfully
2. Exercise regularly
3. Save and spend wisely
4. Rest, relax and enjoy
5. Stop procrastinating, make consistent progress
6. Simplify, clear and organise
7. Engage more deeply

For some reason, this really stuck with me. Most of my new year resolutions were around not losing my mind with a newborn, so having successfully accomplished that (well, I suppose the jury’s still out, but I FEEL sane, which is either a good sign or a sign I’ve definitely lost it), I decided that I would start setting myself a mini goal in each area as the year progressed. The days pass by so quickly right now, and using this framework means I don’t get to the end of each month feeling as though I’ve accomplished nothing (well, apart from those times when I don’t really get any of my goals accomplished!).

In August, my goals are:

1.  Aim for another week of meal prep and planning. Last month I did 2 weeks of this and it was brilliant. I always do a bit of planning, but I planned out every meal and cooking felt so effortless as a result of the meal prep I’d done.
2. Do 3 yoga sessions. Yes I am STILL working through the 30 days of yoga series. At this post I’ll be finished by the end of the year.
3. Continue to use the Moneybox app. This app is so cool. It rounds up your spending and then deposits the remainder into a high interest sticks and shares ISA. You have to select which payments you want to include, but seems like a no brainier to me.
4. Take a bath with my giant bath teabag, a gift I was given over a month ago and hadn’t made time to use. (TICK I did this over the weekend)
5. Make a plan to sell or donate the boxes in our bedroom. Every now and again I do a declutter, but then don’t do anything with the declutterage. So it piles up and becomes yet more clutter. I need to go through the boxes, see what can be sold, what to give away on Olio and what to take to charity. Then I need to do it.
6. KonMari the wardrobe again. Most of my clothes don’t get worn. They definitely don’t bring me joy. I need to rationalise what I should keep just in case, what I actually wear, and what I can add to the boxes above.
7. Make a plan with friends that doesn’t involve children. With Theo still taking an age to fall asleep at night, and needing me there with him all the time, this might be tricky to do at night, but hoping I can organise something.

I do all of my planning in my trusty bullet journal, and then try to refer back to it each week to make sure I’m actually keeping the goals in mind. Where it’s something I want to do daily or weekly, I put it on to my habit tracker (I’ve written a bit more about how I use my bullet journal here).

What are your goals for this month? Do you think a framework like this makes sense to you, or is it too much to do each month?