Passion Planning 101: A Step by Step Guide
Passion Planner 101: A Step by Step Guide
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On January 1st each year, many of us make a New Year’s Resolution. By mid-January, we’ve either broken our resolutions or forgotten about them completely. In 2016, I stopped making New Year’s resolutions
Resolutions are often super vague or require way too much change upfront and too fast. Our resolutions become too big for us to process, too overbearing to achieve. We like the idea of what we want, but how do we get there?
The Passion Planner
I was just scrollin’ on the Book one day and I saw a post about a Kickstarter for a new product called a Passion Planner. I thought the concept was cool and I needed a new annual planner, so I purchased one. Passion Planner? Yeah, the name sounded a bit strange.
Funny story. When my Passion Planner arrived, my Mom was actually visiting me and offered to get my mail one afternoon. She came back inside with a package that had Passion Planner stamped on it. She said, “Christine, is this something I want to know about or should I just forget I ever saw it”? No Mom, it’s not a sex planner, it’s just an agenda.
Using a Passion Planner is an easy way for beginner planners to get started. All the instructions, examples, and maps are right there in front of you in your planner to help you get started. You can Amazon Prime yourself one in just two days, easy peasy.
However, Passion Planner is so well, um, passionate about helping people, that they’ll even give you an entire PDF of their planner, FREE to you. Also, you have to do is share about Passion Planner on any social media platform and they’ll give you a free download. Instructions for free PDF download here.
Step 1: Passion Roadmap
What’s a Passion Roadmap? For a non-touchy-feely person like myself, it sounds well, a little touchy-feely. Stay with me, it’s really not bad at all. In non-touchy-feely terms, it’s basically short, mid, and long-term goal planning, but with a twist.
“If I could be anything, do anything, or have anything, what would it be?” – Angelia Trinidad, creator of Passion Planner
You’ve got five minutes. Set a timer. No, seriously, get out your phone and set the timer for five minutes. Scribble down anything that comes to your mind. You don’t’ even have to be realistic, go ahead and dream big, just try to be specific in your goals. Think about them in terms of 3 months, one year, 3 years, and a lifetime. Below is an example of what I did one year.
Step 2: Prioritize
Five minutes is up! You should have a ton of really awesome goals scribbled down. Now set your timer for one more minute. During this minute, look at everything you just wrote. For each timeframe (3 months, 1 year, 3 years, lifetime) choose the goal that would have the most impact on your life.
Step 3: Create a Passion Plan
Now you’ve chosen four super impressive goals that are going to have a HUGE positive impact on your life. Next, choose one of the goals that you really want to focus on, the one that’s going to be a “game changer” for your life. If you can’t decide between the four goals, just choose your short-term, three-month goal for starters.
Write your “game changer” down, draw a box around it. From that box, draw a line and write out all the major steps needed to achieve your game changer. Go back to each of these steps and get specific.
- How much, with whom, or when/where will you carry out these steps
- Give each of these steps a timeline. Are they things that can be scheduled in your calendar?
- What can you work on daily, weekly, monthly?
Step 4: Goal Accomplished!
Just kidding. Just writing down goals with fancy pens don’t get you to the finish line. You actually have to go out and do what you wrote down. Sorry, tons of hard work, dedication, and habit will have to be accomplished. However, now you’ve got a plan. When you get lost or have a setback, go back to your Passion Plan and see what needs to be done.
*If colorful pens make it more fun for you (it does for me) these are my favorite and they come in a case so you can always keep them together!
Boring Resolutions – Be Banished!
My biggest love of the Passion Planning mindset is that you can discover goals and passions that you didn’t even know you had. New Year’s resolutions can be so boring. Eat better, save money, lose weight, watch less TV…all ok-ish goals, but they can be better. Is your passion in life, really to watch less TV? Or, is it to learn a new language and then travel to that country? Saving more money is always a good thing, but what if you got more specific about it?
I decided that I wanted to pay off the mortgage for the little ranch house my husband purchased from his first duty station. I chose it from my list of one-year goals. Once I had a goal with real steps and actionable items to do each week, the idea of paying off the mortgage in under a year became very realistic. It actually became a (healthy) obsession. While my husband was deployed it was something I worked. Every month I plotted against that debt. By the time he came home from deployment, our mortgage was paid off.
What’s Your Passion?
It doesn’t matter how far into the new year we are, you can create your wishlist of goals. Goals that will help you invest in your best life. Choose one that you feel passionate about completing. Map out your plan to achieve it. If you slip up, go back to your plan. Figure out what went wrong and try again. After you achieve your goal, go back to your wishlist of goals, choose a new, rinse, and repeat.
