How to Start Digital Planning for Success

Choosing to explore digital planning says something about you. You are someone who wants success in life, whether it be your career, relationships, community, or yourself. You want to grow and see achievements. Well, you are off to a good first start! Digital planning is a great step toward success, and I’m going to outline how you can use digital planning for success in 2020, and beyond.

I often ask people why we plan in the first place. Will dumb luck eventually work in our favor? Won’t there just be a day when all my tasks are done for me or my calendar just clears itself? If any of that were true, then none of us would be here in the first place. So, let’s agree that success starts with a plan!

New to Digital Planning? For those that are familiar with the story of the KEY2SUCCESS™ Planner, please hang out for a second so I can update those who are not.

My life has been a series of dreams and ideas. My passion has been setting goals and creating plans to achieve them. I found some of my biggest successes when I used a paper planner, however as times changed, my passion for carrying around a planner, plus all of my digital devices was not appealing.

Over the course of five years, I went back and forth with paper planning and digital planning. My struggle was simple: I wanted all of the benefits of a paper planner…but that I could have digitally with me at all times. As I struggled with this dilemma, I lost track of my goals and didn’t feel the same level of success that I had previously experienced. This lead me to making a digital planner that encompassed the tools needed for success.

A planner is only as good as the plans developed.

There are a lot of options for digital planners. I know, because I struggled to find one that worked for me. My hope is this will work for you. There is one theme to the planner: achieving success through goal planning and daily focus on the Three Keys.

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How to Goal-Plan when Digital Planning for Success

Much like how you start every year with new goals and aspirations, we start the planner with developing those dreams into what we call your “Annual Keys.” These are meant to be big ideas, top of the funnel kind of stuff. These Keys will be your signature on the year – where you will hang your hat.

I am someone who believes that success goes beyond a plan for one area in your life. Success will come easily to those who have found balance in their life. For this reason, I established Four Key Development areas: Self, Relationship, Career, and Community.

As you work through each quarter, it’s important to assess your balance. At times, you may find yourself putting more effort into 1 or 2 key development areas. That is just fine, as long as it aligns with your annual keys.

Four Keys to Digital Planning for Success:

Annual Keys – Reaching your Goals:

On the annual Keys page you will recognize the 4Key Development Areas. You will notice a brainstorming space. Use this space to draft your ideas. My suggestion is you develop this area over a few days. Take a day or two in between thinking about what will define your year.

Commit Yourself – when you are ready, commit yourself by making a statement of which goals you are going to pursue and explain the motivation behind the goal.

Key #1 – Self:

I know this one can be a struggle for many, simply due to the fact that you are everything here. You need to commit, do the work, be your own cheerleader, and hold yourself accountable. You need to put effort into developing what keys will make you yourself feel successful. True happiness starts with you.

For me, self success looks like a lot of things, such as fitness goals, expanding my education, checking off a few things on my bucket list, and simply finding time to enjoy the things in life that define who you are.

Key #2 – Relationships:

Relationships are a dynamic key to success. They say “It’s not what you know, but who you know” is a prime example of how relationships can impact your goals.

I find that my relationship goals will become the pillars of many of the other goals in my year.

You will want to validate not only which relationships are key to your success, but how you go about the means of enriching them. I often find that relationships that impact my career and community goals often require additional resources connecting with people.

Also, when brainstorming your annual key relationship goals, consider if relationships should expand by considering building networks. This can be something such as joining a book club, fitness group, or parents network. These types of relationships will excel your ability to network and grow in the year.

Key #3 – Career:

Most people want to jump right to their career goals. When establishing the annual keys worksheet, I had every intention of not making this the final section of your attention.

I like to believe that our career is bigger than your job – it’s the portfolio. As you start to brainstorm your goals in the coming year, I want you to think about the key accomplishments that will gain yourself worth. Where should you invest most of your time and expect the largest returns? Answer that and you are on the path to success.

Key #4 – Community:

The annual community keys that you reach for will be the goals that move you to the next level. Each day, we put effort into growing, but have you considered how you grow everyone around you? What happens when you achieve your goals? Do you have the community to support you at the next level?

As you look at this section, look at the people around you. What do they need for you to accomplish success, and how are you going to contribute? It doesn’t matter if you are a CEO, an independent realtor, a high school coach, or a homemaker – to make everything easier, establish goals that will grow your community.

One single page that will guide you through your year. Don’t feel you have to fill this page out in one day, but over several days think through the Annual Keys that matter most to your success.

This is just the beginning to learning how to make the most out of the KEY2SUCCESS™ Planner. Take a moment and subscribe to our channel and follow us.

In upcoming videos, we will break down these keys, learn how to build out the goal planner pages, and establish traction in our daily planning.