Hop Into 2023!
The best way to start the new year is with a strong plan. We've got you covered!
Planning for a new year isn’t for everybody. But I am a big believer in New Year Resolutions as a way to continually make changes and improve.
If you don’t quite know where to start, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Today we’ll give a brief overview of the HOP New Year Planner, which is what I have developed and used for my annual planning.
I released this template back in 2022 and got some good feedback, so I’ve taken that and improved the template a bit for 2023 and to use some of the newer Notion features that have come out over the past year.
The Template
The template is streamlined for 2023: all of the interactions occur on the main page by going through the four database views shown here:
Set Lift Areas - set the areas of your life that you want to evaluate. We start with 10, but you can add or remove as many as you’d like.
Evaluate - go through each life area and review your year and brainstorm what you’d like to do in 2023. Don’t hold back! We’ll prioritize later.
Prioritize - here we’ll show all the ideas that you came up with across all life areas and you’ll have to decide which ones to actually focus on in 2023.
Checklist - this is your leave behind! Check things off from this list as you go through 2023 to see all the progress you’ve made.
And that’s it! Again, it’s simple, but it will guide you through evaluating each life area. And that’s where the real work is done: you have to be willing to set aside some time to review each life area and come up with some ideas for next year.
Ideas
Speaking of, here are a few ideas to get you started:
Start a side hustle
Run 30 miles each month
Start meditating
Try one new thing every month
Reduce my alcohol consumption
Learn a new skill
Start saving for a new house or car
Send birthday notes to family and close friends
Reduce sugar intake
Journal once a week
Sign up for a marathon or half marathon
We could keep going on, but hopefully that gives you some kind of start. Generally, just look at the areas of your life and think about where you’d like to be a year from now. Be sure to think a little outside the box too! Don’t restrict yourself too much at this phase.
Prioritize
Now you’ve got to be realistic!
Depending on what you came up with, you may have to discriminate more, but be sure to limit your list of “Yes” commitments down to what you feel you can safely accomplish in the coming year… and then cut back a bit further.
The reality of life is that we’re all busy, so go easy on yourself… you can always add more items back into the list later. Set other items to “Maybe” or “No” and you can revisit them if you knock every “Yes” out.
Check In Regularly
Last but not least: if you want to actually accomplish these things in 2023, you are going to have to check in regularly!
For my part, I’ll setup a recurring task in my task tracker (also in Notion) to check in on my progress each month, and that task will have a view of the checklist so that I can check anything off and make plans for the coming month (More about that setup will be coming up soon on our Productivity in Notion series).
And that should be it! Guaranteeing you to have a great 2023!
Get The Template!
If you want the template, you can get it here! I do ask for an e-mail address through Gumroad, but it is completely free, so please do check it out!
Feel free to share your thoughts on the template, ideas for 2023, or anything else here in the comments as well.