If you want to achieve big goals, one of the trickiest aspects is staying patient. When you’ve got your goal in sight you want it NOW! It’s easy to look at other people and believe in overnight success stories. But the truth is success doesn’t hit you like a bolt of lightning. Instead, success is the result of consistent daily action - because this strategy creates momentum. It takes a lot of effort to push a heavy boulder up a hill. But once the ball is rolling back down again, all you’ve got to do is keep up! It’s the same with your goals. You’ll face a lot of friction and resistance when you first begin, but the second you’re out of the starting blocks you can ride the flow. That’s why momentum makes everything feels easier. Instead of pushing you’re rolling and instead of procrastinating, you’re implementing [which also builds your confidence]. So how do you build momentum into your life so you can more easily achieve your goals? The simplest answer is the way you approach your day. Let me show you how… 1. Plan your day to master your time The self-help guru, Jim Rohn famously said, “either you run the day or the day runs you.” In other words, you’ve got to get a daily plan pinned down to ensure you don’t squander your time and your minutes are invested wisely. A tool such as the Self Journal will help you get granular with your day. Use the daily timeline to plan your day in 30 minute chunks [it’s a great for working on Pomodoros]. Plan in everything so you can eliminate decision fatigue and move smoothly from one prioritized task to another. When you know what you have to do, your daily implementation becomes seamless - allowing you to leverage flow and create that all important momentum. 2. Start with your morning routine There are only two parts of your day that you can control fully. That’s the way you wake up and the way you go to bed. While you may have robust plans for the space in between life can be unpredictable. You never know what else is going to come your way. Your morning routine is your time to set your day up right. It’s your opportunity to do things that light you up and put you in gear for your A game. During this time, eliminate all distractions so you don’t get thrown off course. Don’t look at your phone. Don’t check your email. Don’t jump onto social media. Instead, stay fully focused on you and your world. You can experiment with what gets you going and tailor a morning routine that’s perfected for your needs. For example, you may want to journal, fit in a workout, meditate, do some yoga, take a cold shower etc. There are no hard fast rules when creating a morning routine - it’s just what works for you. Regardless of what you do, the benefits are clear. With a morning routine getting you into a peak mental, physical, and emotional state, you can hit the day hard - and create maximum momentum and results. 3. Invest in good habits Take a moment right now to think about all the things you do in your day on autopilot. For example, clean your teeth, make your bed, eat your breakfast… Autopilot tasks take virtually zero bandwidth or motivation. Instead, you just do them. What’s more, you feel bad if you don’t do them! That’s why Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” If you want to build momentum and get more out of your day, your habits are the key. Imagine how much easier it would be to achieve your goals if you did all the actions necessary - without even having to think about them? For example, you habitually went on a run, made those sales calls, wrote 3 emails, published a blog… Whatever the small steps to your goal, just imagine if they became a habit. Habits build momentum, which is why the world’s top performers double down on theirs. You can do the same when you use a habit tracker. It’s not easy to embed new habits - especially in the early days. So hack it! Use a tool such as the Habit Roadmap to track a winning streak. Build a visual chain of daily wins and before long that chain will become so strong you won’t want to break it. As Warren Buffett says, “chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” 4. Get accountability The road to your goals is never going to be smooth! Ups and downs are inevitable when you’re trying something new and pushing out of your comfort zone. That’s where an accountability structure can make all the difference. It’s harder to back out of the things you said you were going to do when other people are watching. This is why accountability structures can make such a difference to your goal-inspired journey. When someone else is checking in and has the same ambition as you, you’re more likely to get stuff done. Accountability can take a number of forms. - You can use your daily planner to hold yourself to account by pinning down the deadlines and targets you want to achieve. - The Graduate Challenge inside the BestSelf Alliance helps to keep you accountable to your daily planning - it rewards you too! - And for something more robust, there are the Momentum Challenges - 30-day challenges that set you a task each day to help you build momentum and grow in different areas of your life. Momentum can be hard to build, but the pay off for sticking with it is clear. When you can ride the wave of action and implementation you can go further - and faster. So try out some of these techniques this week. Take the actions necessary to get you moving - because once you truly start, it’s a lot harder to stop. You’ve got this!

If you never have enough minutes in the day to do everything you want, then you’re far from alone! When you have to-dos to check off, meetings to attend, and personal commitments to see to, you can feel as though you’re constantly chasing your tail. Good news! You can replace busy for productive and you can carry more than you currently imagine. It’s all possible when you discover how to manage time. Truth is, time is not as limited as we think - even if it feels that way. Each new day, you’re gifted 1,440 minutes. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, you get the same amount as everyone else. It’s what makes time the great equalizer… and our most precious, non-renewable resource. You can’t stop the passage of time -- there is no pause or rewind button! But you can allocate and use your time in a way that makes your minutes stretch further. Here are five ways to do that. 1. Manage yourself - not your time The problem with feeling overwhelmed is it makes it hard to get started. Take today for example. I have a number of chunky tasks on my to-do list. I’ve got a team call to attend later and I’m also taking 90 minutes out to watch my daughter’s school show. When there’s so much on your plate, you can wonder where to start - and this decision becomes even harder when you’re handling tasks that will take a lot of you. If you’re not careful, you won’t start at all! Instead, you convince yourself that social media really is your top priority! It’s easy to squander time through distractions, procrastination, and overwhelm. Therefore, if you want to manage your time you can’t focus on the minutes alone. You also need to explore how you show up with your time. For sure, we all have off days and play days. Life shouldn’t be all work, work, work! But when you do need to be ‘on it’, it’s key you can cultivate the discipline needed to sit tight and get stuff done in a realistic timeframe. 2. Prioritize your tasks Not all tasks are created equally. Take a look at your to-do list now… What’s on that list, which can wait? Is there anything you can delegate? Better still, what items can you eliminate altogether? In addition, what’s not on the list that should be because you tell yourself there’s not time right now? It’s tempting to try and do everything and take on more than we can realistically handle, but we all have our capacity. Time management isn’t about quantity. It’s more about quality. There will be some items on your to-do list that will move the needle proportionally further than anything else. Make it your mission to constantly identify those tasks - and get them done first. Remember, that task won’t always be a work-related item. It could be clocking off early to spend time with your kids or making self care time so you can show up as your best. Focus on the significant stuff, and the smaller things often take care of themselves. 3. Use a timer to be mindful of your minutes What can you realistically achieve in 30-minutes? - The school run - Write a couple social posts - A workout or a yoga practice - A journaling session - A game with your kids - A sales call Often, we don’t get conscious of how much time individual tasks and activities need. It’s puts us on a collision course with Parkinson’s Law, which states that tasks will take as much time as you give them. That’s why a 2-hour blog post can take all day or a ½ day presentation can keep you up all night. How to manage time? Set time parameters for individual tasks. Work out how long you think each task will take to complete and pencil that timescale in. It’s good to stretch yourself so don’t give yourself too much wriggle room. But be realistic. If you make it too hard, your productivity will plummet (because you’ll get overwhelmed), and that pushes everything else behind. Then when you get to work, time yourself with a timer. This simple exercise helps you get more mindful of the passage of time. It will also increase your time awareness too as you tap in deeper to what you can realistically achieve in any given timeframe. 4. Set deadlines It’s good to be spontaneous and to go with the flow, but without accountability those precious minutes can float away. Deadlines help to keep you time focused - so less goes to waste. You can use deadlines to inspire you to figure out what you could do - and by when. With a finish line marked out, you have more incentive to keep going - regardless. Deadlines also encourage you to be more productive. They create accountability to yourself (and to those you’ve made promises to). When you feel you have to deliver by a set date or time, you can draw upon your reserves to make it happen. Too much stress can wreak havoc with your body. But a little bit of pressure can heighten your senses, draw out your best, and help you win the day. 5. Schedule your day Have you noticed that scheduled appointments rarely get overlooked? It’s hard to ignore that commitment in your diary, right? More than that, you also plan your day around those commitments - to ensure you can be where you need to be on time. Imagine what would happen if you applied this same principle to everything else on your to-do list. Instead of leaving tasks and activities to chance, you scheduled out committed time in your planner to get stuff done. Here’s a how to manage time example: - Write blog post: 12:30-2:30 - Power walk: 9:00-9:30 - Facebook live training: 11:00-11:30 This is one of the most powerful time management processes I know. It’s a practice that protects you from Parkinson’s law as well as leveraging the power of deadlines. It also allows you to set up your day to hit your priorities first - so you’re always moving the needle. When you can see how your day works on paper, it’s easier to get cracking. When your plan is out of your head and onto paper, you’re less likely to get distracted or procrastinate. Wondering how to manage time with a planner? We get it… There’s a lot you want to do and a lot you have to do! When you’re juggling so much, it’s always easier to plan it all on paper. With a realistic day mapped out, the stress and overwhelm almost melt away. It’s why you’ll love the Self Journal. Perfect for managing time, increasing productivity, and achieving goals. It will also keep you clear headed too - and that can make all the difference with a life that’s as busy as yours. So grab one today. You won’t regret it for a second.

A monthly, calendar view is a useful tool for planning your life and achieving your goals. With a monthly planner, you can keep dates, appointments, meetings, birthdays, deadlines, and reminders in one easy-to-see place. It’s a life hack! Instead of frantically trying to remember everything in your head (which let’s face it, is impossible!) Instead, you can use this ‘external brain’ to capture all the things you need to keep top of mind. No more double-booking. No more showing up late. And no more frantically trying to swap plans around at the last-minute because you forgot you said yes to your friend’s party invite! But what if your monthly planner could be more than a place to log your dates. What if you could use this powerful tool to help you achieve your goals too. Good news! You can, when you integrate monthly planning into your broader planning process. And if you keep reading, you’ll find out how. Sharpen your focus, get the needle moving It’s a fact that good planning is at the heart of your best life. When you identify all the parts and pieces and fit them into a bigger picture that works, you can be more productive and achieve your goals. Good planning makes you feel good too. When you’re organized with all your ducks in a row, you feel more confident and capable. You’re able to juggle more, take on more, and do more without burning out. Instead of feeling like a scatterbrain, you know exactly where you are and what you need to do. Good planning is a multi-dimensional process - especially when you’re planning a life you love. You don’t just want to stay afloat by checking through that do-do list alone. Instead, you want work-life harmony. You want to have time for fun, your relationships, your health, and your hobbies too. That’s why good planning - whether that’s your daily overview or your monthly planner - always starts with setting goals. What do you want to achieve? When planning to achieve goals, we recommend you work with a three monthly planner. Set yourself a three-month goal. That’s long enough to achieve something significant, but short enough to prevent overwhelm and keep the finish line in sight. It’s a strategy that will inspire you to keep moving - and when you’re trying to hit big goals, you need all the motivation you can get! Even a three-month, achievable goal can feel like a stretch at the very beginning. The nature of goals mean they’ll push your out of your comfort zone and require you to take difficult decisions. Although there’s gold at the end, if can feel very uncomfortable getting there. That’s why different level planning is key. Step 1: Plan your three month goal using a tool such as the Self Journal What do you want to achieve by the end of three months? Will you lose weight, launch a product, increase your revenue, or double your personal savings. Set a goal that’s Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound and you’ll give yourself the focus you need to achieve. With the finish line laid out, you can focus your attention on planning how to cross it. You’ll need your monthly planner for this. Step 2: Map out your monthly milestones using a monthly planner. Your monthly planner can be used for a variety of purposes. 1. Use your monthly planner to keep track of deadlines and commitments On your monthly planner, mark out all your key dates for the month. Use this planning view to capture things such as appointments, deadlines, days out, and vacations. Get all these dates out of your head and onto paper and you’ll be able to see where the white spaces are. This step will help you achieve your goals in a number of ways: - With a monthly overview, you won’t double-book yourself - It’s easy to check days off - like a countdown to keep you motivated and moving - You can figure out realistic deadlines. Can you really hit that first milestone by the date you’ve set? 2. Use your monthly planner to achieve work-life harmony Life shouldn’t be all work, work, work. You need to have downtime too. Your monthly planner can help you do this by showing you what non-work things you’ve got coming up. - Have you got enough social dates built into your month? - Where are you making time for your health and wellbeing - What plans do you have for weekends? - What bucket list items and personal goals can you check off over the next four weeks. Create the bigger picture for your month and you can see where you’re falling short. When you know, you can take action to improve the balance. Use your monthly planner to track your habits Let’s say you want to get into the habit of writing every single day. Here’s how easy it is to turn your monthly planner into a motivational boost that inspires you to keep going: - Choose your success mark - it might be a line, a dot, or a star - anything goes - For every day that you hit your habit, put your success mark - Before long, those success marks will turn into a chain or winning streak - Eventually, it will become more painful to do the habit rather than break the chain - And before you know it, that success habit is now part of who you are Remember, you can track more than one habit using your monthly planner. Simply use a different success mark for different targets. Step 3: Plan your week With your monthly view sorted, you can move to your weekly view using a tool such as the Weekly Action Pad. Your goals should be to identify everything you need to complete over the next 7 days. - Start by taking dates and deadlines from your monthly planner - Next, add on any additional to-dos and tasks - Jot down due dates so you can build up your deadline pattern for the week - Estimate how much time you need for each task - Keep your weekly view somewhere close so you can check off completed tasks and monitor your progress Step 4: Plan your days With your weekly view complete, you can now plan your days - something the Self Journal will help you do. - Set your priorities for the day (taking a guide from your weekly planning view) - Optimize your time by allocating every task a time slot on your daily schedule. Give each task a fixed amount of time, and you’ll be motivated to hit your goals and get everything done. - Reflect on your wins and identify your learnings - Rinse and repeat! Plan your life and become the person you know you can be Planning is key to a productive, successful life. But you’ll get better results when you plan at multiple levels. Used alongside quarterly, weekly, and daily pages, a monthly planner is a powerful tool that will help you achieve your goals. So if you big things you want to achieve, set yourself up for success with tools that help you master your time so you can do it all. With quality planning, you can match tasks with time slots and get yourself ahead of the game. It’s a powerful way to move the needle, hit your goals, and become the person you always wanted to be.

As an entrepreneur, does the following scenario sound familiar? You start the day bright and early, coffee in hand and a list of tasks spread out before you. You’re feeling unstoppable, ready to crush your to-do list. But then, the phone rings. It’s a client, asking if they can add a few new things to the project you agreed upon. That call runs for an hour, and by then it’s already 10 am, practically lunch, so there’s no harm in taking a few minutes to read your favorite productivity blog (because, hey, if you’re reading about productivity it’s not procrastinating, right?). Lunch comes and goes, and then you decide to check your email just to make sure you haven’t missed any important messages. You then look up a couple hours later, realize it’s already 4 pm, and you haven’t even started work on the client project you promised you’d deliver tomorrow. You spend the next few hours hammering that out, and by then it’s already time for bed. You glance at your to-do list, realize you barely accomplished your most important tasks --, and hope that tomorrow will be better. If this sounds like you, then you need to take control of your days. You need a tool that will help you not just stay on top of your current tasks, but also help you make the strategic changes necessary to propel your business forward. You need a productivity planner. What Is a Productivity Planner? For our purposes, a productivity planner is a physical notebook that you use to set, track, and review your goals and habits. Productivity planners often exist to help you implement a particular productivity system, but they can also be a simple as a notebook with a blank calendar. Usually, however, they aim to provide a bit more direction, and they’re also designed to help you with goal setting and habit change (as opposed to a normal daily calendar, which helps you keep track of events, meetings, and other commitments). Why Use a Productivity Planner? Why should you bother using a productivity planner at all? Can’t you accomplish the same goals with just a digital calendar and to-do list software? You can get the same results without a productivity planner, in theory. But in practice, a calendar and a to-do program alone may lead you to focus only on keeping up with your current commitments and maintaining the status quo, while missing the bigger picture. You may be surviving, but you’re not progressing. A productivity planner, in contrast, exists to help you make progress by breaking down ambitious goals into smaller, more manageable steps, as well as building new habits that push you out of your comfort zone. A productivity planner combines a calendar with daily pages, checklists, and other aspects of time management tools to help you reach a place of unprecedented momentum and productivity that you never thought possible. If you want to be productive, move forward in your business, and make big things happen, then you need a tool that does more than just help keep you in the same spot. You need a planner that will help you perform the time management necessary to reach new heights. But how do you use a productivity planner? How do you prevent it from becoming just another dusty book on your shelf that you bought and never opened? How to Use a Productivity Planner Successful people understand that the best productivity planner (or system) is the one you use. So don’t obsess over the choice; here is no “best” productivity planner. There are many good options, some of which will work better for you than others. It’s a mistake to think that the right productivity problem will solve all your problems without any effort on your part. The planner exists to guide you and keep you accountable, but it can’t replace the time you need to spend doing the work. The best productivity planners give you just enough help to get more done without getting in your way or becoming a chore to use. If using your productivity planner becomes just another difficult, unpleasant task on your to-do list, then you’re not going to use it, defeating the point of getting one to begin with. Here are our tips for getting the most out of whatever productivity planner you choose: 1. Commit to the System Once you’ve picked a productivity planner, stick with it. It’s easy to give up on a system after a couple days because you’re not seeing immediate results, but you need to give it time. Productivity is a habit, and habits aren’t something you can build overnight (or even in a couple weeks). If you spend time transitioning to a new productivity planner every time you run into trouble with your current one, then you’re distracting yourself from the ultimate productivity goals. We suggest that you stick with a productivity planner for at least a month before considering a new one, and ideally even longer. This will ensure that you’re judging the quality of the system objectively, instead of just letting frustration or boredom direct your decisions. 2. Use It Daily Committing to the system is a high-level goal that won’t succeed unless you use the productivity planner every day. How much you’re required to do each day will depend on the productivity planner you choose (some let you do less on the weekends, for example). But you should accomplish something in your planner each day, even if it’s just making some notes or sketches of ideas. This is how you get into the habit of using your planner, ensuring that it will be worth the money you paid for it. 3. Review Regularly The only way to tell if you’re accomplishing your goals (and to evaluate the effectiveness of your system) is to perform regular reviews. Most productivity planners will have space for you to stop and perform weekly, monthly, quarterly, or even yearly assessments of what you wanted to achieve, what you did achieve, and how you can close the gap between the two with your future actions. As Socrates famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Regular reviews of your productivity planner will help you make sure that you are examining your life, that you are continuing to make progress. 4. Plan at Different Levels The best planners help you focus on what you can most directly control (today) while also helping you set ambitious, yet realistic, goals for the future. Specifically, your productivity planner will help you plan (and review) at daily, weekly, and monthly levels. Let’s look at each of these levels in more detail: Daily - Daily planning makes sure you're reaching the daily productivity that will adds up to help you achieve your bigger goals. Planning each day (ideally the night before) helps you work with greater purpose and achieve your important daily tasks (while resisting unimportant distractions). Weekly - Weekly planning helps you figure out how to break up larger projects or tasks over the course of the week, as well as how you’ll fit in your work sessions amid other commitments such as meetings, calls, and business admin tasks. This level also includes a weekly review where you examine what went well with the week and how you can improve in the future. Monthly - Monthly productivity planning takes things an additional step up, looking at how your larger projects fit into your overall business and personal development goals, as well as considering how commitments such as travel or the start of new projects will dictate what you focus on in a particular week. Beyond each of these levels, you can also plan in quarterly or annual increments. However, these are such large increments (and so much can change within them) that we recommend you worry about them less than you do daily, weekly, and monthly planning. By keeping your scope a bit closer, you can make sure that your goals remain realistic and your good habits are accumulating. Don’t Just Set Goals, Achieve Them We hope you now see how powerful a productivity planner can be in helping you accomplish your goals and build powerful habits. The right planner will keep you on track at all levels, help you reflect and evaluate your progress, and ultimately lead to a life where you’re exceeding the status quo, not just maintaining it. If you’re looking for a productivity planner to help you accomplish these goals, then we recommend the Self Journal. It’s a powerful yet simple daily planner to help you structure your day, enjoy life, and reach your goals quicker than you thought possible. 

Is your calendar planning just holidays and appointments? Calendar planning is just a long term to-do list that's probably going to change anyway, why bother. Sure there's a few things that have to be on there, but planning a whole year is crazy! Nobody can predict what's going to happen, what a waste of time. Sound familiar? If so, beware! This is the moment indifference steps out of the shadows and into your life. A looming presence that stretches out into the entire span of your year: waiting and watching to moderate your excitement for living. If you've ever felt numb during joyous times for no reason you could discern, then you've experienced the influence of indifference. But don't worry, it's not hopeless. When what's on your calendar is more than a glorified to-do list of externally enforced responsibilities indifference is forced to slink back to the shadows. How can you use calendar planning to push indifference back?   A Steady Drip Eventually Floods Every year starts of the same. A boost of excitement and idealism for the future. A few months in we stand strong, there might have been a few set backs but overall we are still excited. Halfway through the year all the excitement we felt at the start of the year has vanished. It's easy for us to point towards different events in life that have assaulted our optimism for what we could accomplish. Most are things far outside of our sphere of control. We resort to doing what we did the year before and the year before that. Looking forward to the holidays, vacations, and weekends. All the general escapes from our daily lives. As we near the end a growing despair turns to hope once more, and the cycle continues. But here's the question. What traps us in this perception prison of ultimate mediocrity? The answer is the slow and steady drip of indifference. When the year starts we have a singular event that drives decisive action, we are encouraged by society to become engaged in our lives like at no other time in the year. In the months leading up to the 1st, January becomes filled with new and exciting initiatives for your life. Perhaps these initiatives even go so far as to expand into February and March. That's where things usually end. By this time your days have taken on a sameness, especially if you've been consistent. As far as you can see into the next nine months it's more of the same. The drip begins. As the year progresses, so the drip steadily falls and surrounds you like a flood until you become hindered by it. Even if great things start happening around you. There is a disconnect from the events, life seems to move by you faster than you keep up until the drip is so high you are up to your neck, and it's all you can do to just float. Indifference has now overwhelmed every facet of your life. As the new year returns the goodwill overwhelms indifference, the drip disappears, along with it the flood is drained, and once again you dare to hope. Intentional Calendar Planning for a Year of Your Life To stop the drip and cut off indifference at the pass you need to imbue your calendar throughout the year with the same kind of push that you receive at the start of it. More than that, these pushes need to be things that you are excited by, things that you can look forward to. Most importantly, they need to be related to supporting your overall goal and intent for the year. The big one! The one thing that when you accomplish it, your life will change drastically. The Basic Calendar: Shared Social Holidays Birthday Celebrations Meetings and Appointments The Intentional Calendar Planning Additions: Two "Big One" Related Events One Monthly "Big One" Related Meetups One Weekly Check In with a "Big One" Related Group or Individual With these new types of events filling up your calendar it won't be just tasks to get done, it will be experiences to look forward to! A feeling that alone could change your whole year!   Connected Through Experiences When we surround ourselves in activity with people of like mind and purpose it amplifies everything we're striving for. Our capacity expands because when we are together the sum total of all our experience can be utilized by everyone. So, we have to ask. When was your last big event, meetup, or group/individual check in? What was it about? How has it expanded you? Inspire others to be intentional with their calendar planning! Who knows, maybe even make some connections here!  

How often has setting a New Year's Resolution worked for you? A new year's resolution is one of the most popular forms of reflection and visualization practices in the world. It's a noble endeavor that can be healthy to embrace. We imagine ourselves stronger, better, more complete. Visualization makes us feel mighty, like we can accomplish anything! The problem with a resolution is the same as any form of visualization practice-- without backing it up with action a resolution amounts to little more than wishful thinking. How can you stop your resolution from fading away and finally make real change happen in your life?  The Moment a New Year's Resolution Fails The failing of a resolution doesn't happen all at once. It's thwarted over time by some of the most insidious actors we face in our lives. It all starts with existing vicious cycles that are already part of our lives, the kind of existing habits and actions that don't serve to help us achieve but continuously throw us off the new track we've chosen to follow. The more we are thrown off track the more we are struck by indecision, this  diminishes our sense of confidence and leads us to a loop of unproductive questioning. The questions by their nature form a haze in our intent. From there all it take is us strike a hazard that we didn't prepare for, the feeling that life is working against us takes over. A deepening loss of control makes us resentful of anything we can point to in our lives as holding us back. The feeling that nothing we do will make a difference causes us to stop wanting to try. Inaction follows and becomes an inescapable weight pressing down on us. That's when we stop taking any action... when the only thing left to us is to defend what we have. All momentum is lost and we stagnate. Stuck in place, our lives begin to flood in around us, and then comes overwhelm. It rips away any hope from us of finding our way again. With the path now unclear, and no actions left to take we fall into despair of ever making the progress we seek. This is the moment a resolution fails. It doesn't end there though. This moment of failure goes on to become a subconscious feature of the year, even if we think we forget about it and move past it. Somewhere in the back of our minds we know we gave up and it spreads.   If we allow it, failure will become all consuming. Our resolutions reflect the highest aspirations we have for our lives, and giving up on them means that feeling of failure permeates through every facet of the year. It weakens our resolve and so our confidence. When life hits us with a big or even small challenge our resilience is minimal: a short temper, thoughtless reactions, anger with no discernible cause, or a sense of hopelessness are all contributed to by this perceived massive failure. The good new is, there's a way we can achieve our resolution and just as failing spreads through our lives so will success!  We use the momentum to build one win onto another, skyrocketing our confidence and resilience! It's not that nothing happens in our year. There are still roadblocks that get in our way, we just feel like we can handle them better, and so we do!   Start with a Resolution, Move Forward with a Plan The start of the year gives us a massive boost in self-esteem, motivation, and hope. Use this boost not just to say what your going to do in the next year, but to craft a step-by-step plan that will keep you on track throughout year! A plan that will help you stand tall in the storm with confidence when the challenges of life come crashing down.   Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you'll land among the stars.   To turn your new year's resolution into a plan follow these 10 steps: Reflect - on your past year. Visualize - what your next year will look like. Prioritize & Organize - the tasks you need to complete, to achieve. Define your Why - about your resolutions, and what the changes will mean for your life. Big Picture Overview - who you'll be as a new person, what your year, month, and day-to-day will look like. Deconstruct - the resolutions into smaller progressive milestones that are less overwhelming. Create 13 Week Road Maps - a months view to make sure you see all the major markers along the way. Plan High Performing Weeks - a weeks view keeps you focused and on target to reach your markers. Create Powerful Days - a day view allows you to find consistency in taking the small steps that create success. Reflect, Review, Adjust - when life throws you off course, re-plot your course to weather the storm.   Inspire Action When faced with hardship nothing can stop the person who continues moving forward. Even if it's done in desperation or fear-- continued forward motion is a super signal to your mind and body that what you want is worth breaking free of your comfort zone. If you've ever achieved a resolution, you're familiar with the moment when you break free of your perceived limits. It's an incredible feeling that requires massive action.

A sneak peek into the journey we travelled when designing the customer experience for the Self Journal. From the packaging design, to the mailing box to everything in between. When developing BestSelf from a Kickstarter-funded company into a business and e-commerce store, Allen, myself and the BestSelf team were very conscious about crafting every piece of the customer experience. From the design of the store to the product packaging to the mailing box it was delivered in. How could we make every step of the journey a pleasurable experience? Don’t underestimate how much these things matter. Think of a company that has an excellent customer experience. Apple. Nothing is too small to be beautiful. Every inch of the packaging is thoughtfully crafted enough that many of us even save the box because it seems a shame to throw out. (Essentially since I’m living in New York City I pay a portion of rent for my Macbook Pro box.) When designing the Self Journal, our flagship product, we knew we wanted to create a similar experience to Apple from the moment our product arrived at a customers door to actually opening the package. Some questions we asked: - How can we build anticipation before the Self Journal box is opened?- How do we create an experience to remember?- Can we tell a story through the packaging? Why Packaging Was So Important: Over the past several years I’ve dealt with the postal service enough through my another e-commerce venture to know that sending books, or in this case, beautiful journals in a package without external protection would only end in disaster. Additionally, with the 13 Week dry-erase wall calendar we included with each Self journal it seemed the only answer was a box. While the box was a practical answer for these problems, it could also serve a greater purpose - it was an opportunity to create an experience and tell a story. The Box Design Creating Packaging with Purpose Our mission was to design a beautiful box that people would keep, but we didn’t want it stored in the back of a closet somewhere gathering dust, it should still serve a purpose.The Self Journal chronicles your goals and serves as a physical representation of your achievements. These goals should be celebrated and put on display which is why we designed the box the way we did. On each side of the box is a visual representation of the book that sits within. It was minimalist yet tells you what you need to know. Some rough original sketches: We used this water image from Unsplash by Kate Chikina to serve as the base of the book texture on each side of the box. This water theme distills a sense of focused calm. The Design: By using a spot-gloss coating on the side of the box it could be used to label the journal box for your own records, which becomes a way to chronicle your goals. The Final Product: The Box Outside The Box The beautiful Self Journal box would need to be sent within another box to avoid damage. We had a two options; - a standard box (boring)- designing custom boxes with our branding on the outside (fun!) We liked the idea of designing a custom box, however, due to the economies of scale, this didn’t seem very sensible. With a few different product offerings, we’d be paying for high costs low minimums for different sizes of boxes. What if someone purchased a bulk order that needed a larger box? Essentially this is a valued customer, yet we would need to use a regular box, and so they would not get the same experience as someone who bought less. Every customer should receive the same care, consideration, and buying experience - without breaking the bank. Then I got an Amazon package through the mail and had my a-ha moment. Custom kraft packing tape that could be taped on any shape of any box, mailing tube etc. We got to work, sourced a supplier close to our fulfillment center in Minnesota and got a template. The template was 14“ x 3” wide so the key was creating a design that looked good in a repeating pattern. While our logo made sense for branding purposes, I wanted to make it more than just a promotional design. Much like our other design elements, it could and should serve a dual and greater purpose. Could we somehow positively affect someone who’s not even the intended recipient? That’s where the idea for quotes on the packing tape came from: The End result: Hand-Lettered by a founder Getting postcards or promotional material inside a product case isn’t anything new, we knew this. However, we wanted to create something with high touch that showed how grateful and thankful we were to our supporters and customers. A design element that couldn't be re-created easily by just anyone. I had been playing around with some hand letting for a while and decided to see what I could come up with for Best Self so in the weeks after the Kickstarter ended I started sketching and brainstorming ideas. The Pencil Sketch & Inked Letters; After digitizing the original sketch and cleaning it up, this was the final result: Composition: The last piece was working on a composition and how everything fit together. While designing the interior insert to go within the box I created some small sketches to show the manufacturer how each journal should be placed within the box with the calendar and the insert. The yellow bookmark serving with a secondary function so as to easily lift the book from the box. The Final Product: Customer Experience: We knew we were onto something when within minutes of people receiving the product we were getting tweets, Instagrams and emails from Kickstarter backers and pre-order supporters: