January 6, 2021
How to smash your New Year goals with Ayoa
With many of us associating new years with fresh starts, now is the perfect time to reflect on everything you achieved in 2020 and start clarifying your aims for the year ahead. But instead of optimistically setting New Year’s resolutions that will be forgotten come March, make 2021 your most productive year yet by using Ayoa to help you devise realistic and achievable goals and track your progress as you work towards them.
With 2020 being filled with plenty of twists and turns, it’s safe to say that this New Year is a little different from past ones. With none of us quite being sure of what’s in store in 2021 and beyond, it can be easy to feel demotivated and as though you shouldn’t make any concrete plans or set overly ambitious goals – especially considering the fact that in a regular year, 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail.
However, setting achievable goals is still important for helping to keep you motivated in a time when so many things seem out of your control. By having a series of specific aims to focus on throughout the year, you can get 2021 off to the best possible start by ensuring you maintain a positive mindset.
Ready to smash these goals out of the park no matter what 2021 brings? Discover how to use Ayoa to plan your goals and stay motivated to achieve them.
Start with the right canvas
As with any task or project, creating a detailed plan of what you want to achieve will set you up for success by helping you to determine exactly what you need to do to reach your goals and whether your aims are realistic. This is why we have specifically designed our new whiteboards to make it easy for you to brainstorm ideas and turn them into manageable tasks in the app, so you can monitor your progress and keep yourself on track.
We have a number of templates to choose from to help you set your New Year goals, such as a dedicated Goal Setting template. This radial map is ideal if you already know what your aims are and simply want to keep track of them. However, if you still need to determine your 2012 goals, we’d recommend using our SMART Goals template to help you ensure that they are realistic and measurable.
To use this template in Ayoa, simply navigate to the homepage and select the option to create a whiteboard, then choose the ‘SMART Goals Canvas’ template. When creating a new whiteboard, make sure you choose the option to create a corresponding task board at the same time, so you can drag and drop your ideas into it when you’re ready to put them into action. We have a number of task board templates available with categories already set up for you to organize your goals into – so you’re sure to find one that suits your needs.
Devise realistic, measurable aims
The reason we recommend using our SMART Goals template is due to the fact that if you want to reach your aims, you should follow this popular and effective framework to ensure that they are Sspecific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. This means that when you’re setting your goals for 2021, ask yourself the following questions:
- What exactly do you want to achieve and why?
- How are you going to determine if your goal has been achieved?
- Is your target realistic and achievable?
- Will setting this goal help you to achieve other overarching goals?
- When do you want to have achieved your goal?
If your goals aren’t realistic with specified deadlines, you will only set yourself up for failure. It’s as simple as that. By ensuring that they’re relevant to other aspects of your life (such as your career) and other overarching aims you want to achieve, it’s easier to stay motivated as you will be able to keep the bigger picture firmly in your mind. Having clear dates of when you want to have achieved your aims will also help you stay on track.
Our dedicated SMART goals template is already set out into the sections you need to write your goals and determine if they reach these criteria – all you need to do is add your answers to each question to the template in the form of sticky notes and checklists. The template also includes a section for you to write the solution your planning will help you to create.
Schedule them in and set deadlines
Now that you know exactly what your goals are, it’s time to start making them a reality. Thanks to Ayoa’s intuitive task management capabilities, you can quickly and easily turn your ideas into actionable tasks and add reminders and other details to help you keep track of what you need to do to achieve them, as well as their deadlines as they approach. These tasks can then be easily managed in the dedicated task board you created earlier alongside your whiteboard, acting as a resource for you to continuously refer back to when needed.
Simply click on the ‘Task Bar’ button in the bottom left of the app to display your accompanying task board and its categories along the bottom of your whiteboard. When you’ve done that, hover over a sticky note that you want to action, then click on the third icon that appears to drag it into the relevant category. This will turn your idea into a task and ensure that it appears within this category in your task board.
You can also now begin to start adding intricate detail to your task in the form of start dates, due dates, reminders, files, notes, comments, checklists, and importance and urgency indicators. This will enable you to make a note of any resources or information that can help you to achieve your goals, such as the metric you need to reach. You can also use a task’s checklist to write the steps you need to take to achieve your aim and tick them off as you complete them. This will give you the same satisfaction as crossing items off a physical to-do list!
Keep track of your progress
Once all your goals have been added to your task board, make sure you keep referring back to it to keep your aims at the forefront of your mind and ensure that they don’t fall to the wayside like the vast majority of resolutions people set at the beginning of each year! In fact, you might find it useful to also add these tasks to your personal planner in Ayoa, so they don’t get lost. To do this, click on a task in your board to open the side panel. In the ‘Info’ tab, scroll down to ‘My Planner’ and use the drop-down menu to choose which category of your planner you want to organize it into: Now, Next or Soon.
Every task you’re working on will also have a visual progress indicator that you can drag along as you move closer to achieving your aim. Appearing as a circle directly on the task, you can see at a glance how far away you are from completion – whether you’re viewing your list of goals in your dedicated task board or your personal planner.
Once you have reached your goal, you will also get the satisfaction of dragging the bar all the way to 100, automatically crossing it off your list!
Here’s to making 2021 your most productive year yet! Sign up for free for access to our template library and idea generation and task management features – so you can instantly start making your goals a reality. To unlock unlimited boards and additional features, check out our pricing options to find the perfect plan for you.
Louise Cunnah
Louise Cunnah has always had a passion for the written word, leading to her studying English, Media and Journalism at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Since graduating in 2014, she has held a number of different roles in marketing, both agency-side and in-house for brands like Ayoa. She loves taking on a challenge and has written content on a diverse range of subjects over the years, including horticulture, business management, telecommunications, health and safety, productivity, neurodiversity, and personal finance (to name but a few!).