Planning,  Productivity

Translating Yearly Goals into Monthly and Weekly Goals – An Example

Mondays are productivity days at SimpleProductivity blog.


Photo by paul bica

Last week I talked about how setting yearly goals, then generating monthly, weekly and daily goals and tasks can bring you to completion quickly. Today I wanted to give you a concrete example.

The Yearly Goal

I don’t like reading non-fiction much. Unfortunately, there is a lot of non-fiction I need to read in order to expand my skills to help me reach other goals, like marketing my e-courses.

My yearly goal is to read 12 non-fiction books that are related to my profession or blog. This quite handily breaks down into 1 per month. Yes, I picked that number because I thought I could read a book a month. Other than that, it is pretty much a random number.

Next up was to decide what books I want to read. I took a look through my Kindle, and found all sorts of stuff I wanted to read. But not all of these books are created equal. Some of them are monsters in size. Some require doing programming exercises. Some require other exercises that require input from another person. Some of the books are technical books in paper binding that are so large I cannot comfortably carry them around with me.

Breaking Them Down

In order to make this work well, I can’t just say that I am going to do a book a month. One programming book, on WordPress, is probably going to take me 2 months to get through because of its complexity and the exercises. One book, Un-procrastination, is fairly small, and will probably take less than two weeks.

For each of the books that I want to read, I listed how many pages were involved, if there were (and what type) of exercises, and if it required me to be in a certain place to read. Then I estimated how long I thought it would take to get through each book.

Here is my list and the estimates:

  1. Mini Missions for Simplicity – 85 pages plus small exercises – 4 weeks
  2. The Information Diet – 150 pages – 2 weeks
  3. Margin – 236 pages – 3 weeks
  4. Unclutter Your Life In 1 Week – 227 pages plus exercises (which I probably won’t do) – 3 weeks
  5. Un-Procrastination – 62 pages – 1 week
  6. Goal Setting – 47 pages – 1 week
  7. 18 minutes – 263 pages – 3 weeks
  8. Grammar Girls Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing – 240 pages – 4 weeks
  9. Technique for Producing Ideas – 38 pages – 1 week
  10. Double Double – 220 pages – 3 weeks
  11. APE – 410 pages – 4 weeks
  12. Smashing WordPress Themes – 368 pages plus computer exercises – 8 weeks

How To Set Monthly Goals

Now it is up to me to choose what order I am going to read in. I chose to go for a couple of easy wins first, so Un-Procrastination, Goal Setting and Technique For Producing Ideas will be read in January. Next I want to get moving on the blog redesign, so the WordPress Theme book comes for the February and March. The rest I slotted in based on what is coming up. The writing books would be helpful right before National Novel Writing Month, for example. The final order ends up like this:

  1. Un-Procrastination – 62 pages – 1 week (Jan)
  2. Goal Setting – 47 pages – 1 week (Jan)
  3. Technique for Producing Ideas – 38 pages – 1 week (Jan)
  4. Smashing WordPress Themes – 368 pages plus computer exercises – 8 weeks (Feb-Mar)
  5. Margin – 236 pages – 3 weeks (Apr)
  6. 18 minutes – 263 pages – 3 weeks (May)
  7. The Information Diet – 150 pages – 2 weeks (Jun)
  8. Double Double – 220 pages – 3 weeks (Jul)
  9. APE – 410 pages – 4 weeks (Aug)
  10. Grammar Girls Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing – 240 pages – 4 weeks (Sept)
  11. Mini Missions for Simplicity – 85 pages plus small exercises – 4 weeks (Oct)
  12. Unclutter Your Life In 1 Weeks – 227 pages plus exercises (which I probably won’t do) – 3 weeks (Dec)

Why are there no books in November? Because I traditionally spend that month frantically writing for National Novel Writing Month. 🙂

How To Set Weekly Goals

So now I have the goals set up for the months, and I can figure out the target deadlines based on my estimates. I have three books set for January, so for the first week I would read Un-Procrastination. The second and third weeks are laid out as well.

In February and March, I will have to break the book down by chapter, and decide which chapters I am going to do per week. This will be based on how long each chapter is, as well as the complexity of the computer exercises that go along with them.

Finding The Daily Tasks

Once I have a weekly plan, I can figure out what, if any, daily tasks I want to put on my lists.

The Un-Procrastination book, with 62 pages, means roughly 9 pages per day. I have the choice of spelling out these tasks in my task list, or I could put a repeating task in to read 9 pages of the book, repeating 7 times. That way I can account for changes in my schedule, and allow myself to read ahead.


I hope you have found this exercise useful in how to break down a yearly goal into more manageable pieces.

Do you have a method to get your goals done? Share below.


Photo by paul bica. Licensed under Creative Commons.