Dear First name / Sunday Sparker
Ok, so you
agree with me.
You want to start planning your new year now, in November.
You are all in.
How to start doing that?
Become friends with your calendar.
One of the things that changed in my goal setting over the last few years is becoming friends with my calendar. I consult it and check it before I make any commitment, well, most of them. I am trying to get better at that. I used to have planning sessions on paper calendars and sometimes
a whiteboard for my monthly planning. This year, I started relying more and more on my Google Calendar, and the motivation was sharing my availability with my 1:1 clients, whom I coach on goal-setting, mastering focus, and designing lasting habits, so they can book their sessions with me.
Most of us think that planning that far ahead is something unrealistic and that it is something other people do, not us. Today, I am going to show you how we can all do it.
This methodology is what helped me book 10 meetings throughout the year at the start of the year for group coaching sessions with my All-Year-Goals group over three years with minimal changes to the scheduled sessions! Isn’t that amazing? (BTW, the number of sessions is about to be doubled in 2026, but stay tuned for that).
Are you ready to become friends with your calendar?
You become friends with your calendar when you can depend on it to tell you the truth about your time and you do that with the first step:
First: Populate your calendar:
You need to see how much time you really have to work on your goals.
Your work calendar may be full of meetings planned for months ahead but what about your personal life and goals. I suspect many of you only use the calendar for birthday and anniversary reminders. Today we will fill the calendar with events that are happening for sure and I will suggest different sources for you.
The first source I use is my kids' school calendar. Someone else did the work for me and I am going to gratefully just build on that. School calendars share the days off throughout the school year. Because who are we kidding? When our kids are off, our whole routine changes. The same thing happens during Eid holidays. I let these natural stops in routine be the boundaries of my habit trackers, remember this sentence because we will come back to it in this goal-setting.
What if you don’t have kids or a school calendar to rely on?
Next, you go to your Google Calendar or your favorite digital calendar or my 2026 calendar, which you will receive soon, and plug these holidays into your calendar.
Oh, now I see that my kids are taking a 2-week spring break in April.
Oh, now I know when the next parents' meetings are, and I can plan a fun day for each of my kids who will be off that day (lesson learned from this semester’s meetings).
Now that I know Jordan Independence Day Holiday will precede the Eid al-Adha holiday, I may consider taking one day off to take a longer vacation.
You've probably heard about those people who book vacations months in advance? You can become one of those annoying people now by doing this practice.
Now that you have populated your calendar with school and public holidays, can you see where you might take days off from work for a family trip?
Can you see busy exam days and how they might impact your evening gym routine that you want to stick to in the new year?
But wait, we did not finish.
After you've plugged in public and school holidays and events such as parent-teacher meetings, proceed to the second step:
Second: Book personal fixed dates on your calendar.
Add family anniversaries and birthdays if they aren't already listed. This year, I learned to book the weekends before big family occasions, as that’s when we usually celebrate them.
Add recurring appointments, such as car license renewal and regular beauty appointments.
How can you book monthly beauty appointments in advance?
I have a habit of scheduling the next appointment in four weeks after finishing each of my Nail Gellish and eyelashes appointments. This way, I book my appointments for months in advance on my calendar; however, I book them with my salon on a month-by-month basis after each appointment is completed, as sometimes life just happens and I need to shift things around, and my beauty salon doesn't have to go through that with me. Additionally, one thing you probably don't know about me is that I hate making calls to book or change appointments. Someday soon, I will have a virtual assistant who will handle these tasks for me.
Third: Add your cycle's expected dates (hopefully, it is regular). This will help you manage your expected energy levels for the tasks you plan to do. That social gathering that feels like a burden in your fall? Do it in your summer.
I promise you this: Completing this calendar planning exercise will instantly make you feel so good. You will have a clear picture of how much time you have to work on your goals and can identify potential windows to push hard.
In fact, doing this exercise made me realize (which you will also realize when you do it) that Ramadan will start on February 19 (ish), which means we have about fifty days at the start of the year to achieve our first win!
What will you do in the first 50 days?
What is the first win you want to have in 2026?
Set a time this week to do the calendar exercise. I want you to experience the delicious taste of clarity as you see the calendar filling up with important events. I want you to have an instant confidence that you are doing something different this time. When you do this exercise, you've already started the goal-setting process!
Stay tuned for the next steps in your goal-setting process. More helpful tips are on the way.
