Ditch the Year-Long Goals and Adopt a 90-Day Mindset

I've never been a fan of New Year's resolutions. All of my best-laid plans seem to fall by the wayside and by February, I've lost steam. My goals begin to feel unachievable,, like an impossible mountain to climb.

Earlier this year, I heard a podcast guest talk about setting goals based on a 90-day plan instead of a year-long plan. This really resonated with me. Instead of setting a goal based on 365 days, I needed to think about what I could achieve in three months.

I tested a 90-day goal-setting plan and, turns out, it's very effective.

If you feel like your big goals are always out of reach, or you struggle to fit new goals into your existing routine, you might want to try a 90-day plan.

What are 90-day goals?

A 90-day goal is something you want to accomplish in one quarter, or about 12 weeks. You can plan to complete an entire project in a 90-day sprint, or treat the 90 days as one step toward a bigger goal.

The shorter timeframe makes progress easier to track, and every three months, you get a natural point to reset. A 90-day plan is the set of milestones and weekly tasks that gets you to that goal.

Your goals are more manageable

There are two ways of approaching 90-day goals. You can condense a full year's plans into 90 days, or you can look at your 90-day goal as one slice of a larger pie.

A 90-day year

You'll use a full-year approach if you want to achieve something specific by the end. Let's say you want to increase your water intake. You're giving yourself 90 days to form that habit.

This can also be used for larger goals, if you want to approach your quarter as a 90-day sprint. During those 90 days, you would really push yourself. It's a way to hit a specific goal or metric faster, rather than dragging it out over an entire year. This only works if you have the time and energy to put into your goal. But the results can be very rewarding: you did something big, in a short timeframe.

A 90-day year also works well for personal projects, like a writing goal or learning a foreign language.

One Step in a Larger Goal

The second approach is to take a larger goal and break it into smaller chunks. You'll decide what you can accomplish in 90 days,, and that becomes your goal.

If you take this approach, it's important not to plan too far ahead into subsequent quarters. If you end up falling behind in the first quarter, it has a cascade effect. Instead, you want to focus only on the current 90-day goals and then set a new goal for the second quarter in the next 90 days.

This is a really helpful approach if your bigger goal has a compounding effect. Maybe your year-long goal is to run a marathon. Your first quarter goal might be to run a 5k. Your second-quarter goal builds on the first quarter.

I'm self-employed and have a goal to grow my audience across different platforms. I know that this type of growth eventually hits a compounding effect. The growth rate I saw in Q1 might be completely different than Q3. Therefore, it makes more sense to start with a 90-day goal and set my goal higher in subsequent quarters as I start to gain momentum.

Your tracking is easier

Most goals have some type of incremental progress.

It's easier to review your progress when you're working with a smaller amount of data. Over the course of a year, you might have a lot of variation — at some points,, you're more focused than others. Or your progress isn't substantial each week, so it's harder to stay motivated.

If your goal is to "run a marathon" by the end of the year, you need to track consistent progress over a long period of time. You might get behind early, and then it's harder to catch up and meet your goal. But "run a 10k" by the end of a quarter, and you're tracking your progress over just 12 weeks.

I created a dashboard in Notion to track my 90-day goals. I also created a tracker to show the progress of the 90 days as a percentage. This is a simple formula: if we are 7 days into the 90 days, the calculation is 7 / 90 or 7.8%. I like to see this because if we're 50% into the 90 days, I want to be 50% of the way to my goal.

Other goals are simply a checklist. They don't have any hard numbers tied to them, but they are things I want to get done within the quarter. I'll create subtasks for the larger project within the 90-day timeframe.

You might push yourself more

Condensing your goals into a shorter timeframe can have a huge impact on how your approach the goal. I found myself checking my Notion dashboard frequently and thinking, "Ok, I only have X weeks left to reach this goal. What else can I do?"

With a 90-day goal, I found that I put a little bit of time into my goal each day. Whenever I set goals over a longer timeframe, it was easy to skip a day. I could tell myself that I had time to catch up later. That wasn't true with a 90-day goal. I knew that skipping a few days would throw me off track — possibly making the goal unattainable.

On the flip side, you should also give yourself some grace. It can be hard to know how to break a longer-term goal down into smaller chunks — especially with a goal that builds momentum. If you're working toward a marathon, you'll be slower the first time you set a 90-day goal. Each time you set a new 90-day goal, you'll improve. You can't think of a year-long marathon goal as "take the final output of 26.2 miles and divide by four." Each quarter, you can be more aggressive.

I had to reframe my thinking around my own goals. Some are completely standalone goals: I want to achieve something in 90 days, and then that project is done. But others (like growing an audience for my business) are like a marathon: the progress will gain momentum all the time. It was hard to judge what I could realistically accomplish in 90 days.

I realized within a few weeks that I'd set my sights too high. I scaled back my goal. I still gave myself room to push myself, but not at a pace that felt overwhelming.

How to get started with 90-day goals

If you want to give 90-day goals a try, here's what you should do.

1. Choose one clear, focused goal.

Pick something that's meaningful, but achievable in 90 days. Ask yourself: What would feel like real progress if I met this goal in the next three months?

Once you're comfortable with 90-day goals, you can set multiple goals within your 3-month timeframe. I typically set multiple personal and business goals, but that's because I'm used to breaking the goals down into small increments and knowingunachievable what's feasible in 90 days.

2. Break the goal into milestones

Divide your goal into smaller chunks over the course of 90 days.

Let's say you want to launch your website in 3 months. What tasks do you need to get done? And how much should you work on the tasks each week?

You might want to set either weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly milestones within your 90-day goal. This will reduce overwhelm and will give you some natural checkpoints.

3. Set up a simple tracking system

Whatever tool you use — like Notion, Google Sheets, or pen and paper — you'll want a tracking system.

In your tracking system, keep track of two things:

• Progress toward your goal (like workouts completed, pages written, etc.)
• Time elapsed (e.g. you're 30% through the 90 days)

4. Build in weekly reviews

Each week, reflect briefly: What worked? What didn't work? This helps you stay focused on your goal.

If something isn't working, you can course-correct, but don't feel like you have to. You can also keep going for the entire 90 days. The data will help you set a more reasonable goal for the next 90 days. The whole point is to find a goal that forces you to push yourself, but in a sustainable way.

You can build on your progress

After you finish your first 90-day goal, you can set a slightly more aggressive goal for your second set of 90 days. Because now you know what you're capable of accomplishing.

And if you didn't meet the goal, ask yourself why. In some cases, you might need to change your routine more to make time in your day to work on your goals. You need to give yourself time to adapt to a new routine. I find that it often takes 90 days to adjust to any type of change in a routine.

Give yourself some grace if you need time to settle into any changes you want to make. Every 90 days, you have the opportunity to reset, reflect, and decide how you want to move forward.

Need to review the health of your business? Check out my quarterly planning checklist for solopreneurs and small business owners.

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