I am going to create a mind map of the areas of my life that I want to create goals for in 2023.

Each area of my life I will create a separate mind map for. Creating a single mind map for my entire life is a possibility. If I were to do this, I would make sure I have a pen or marker in enough different colors so that each area could have its own color. Or I might use markers to circle or somehow delineate which area of life what task or goal goes to and matches with.

If you need something already formatted for you in order to create a mind map, Passion Planner offers a free PDF (here) of their road map that appears in the front of their planners. I think it is in every one of their planners, but I am not one hundred percent about that.

What I am planning to do is a process. It will not be short nor will it be quick. I will probably do it over a few days, if not longer.

I personally am going to use a notebook and a black pen to start out with. I plan to write different central ideas in the middle of the page.

My main topics that I am starting with are: goals, ideas, and dreams.

I will take one topic at a time. (So, I will begin with, say, goals first and complete the entire process before I move on to, say, ideas.)

I am going to let myself go for it. I will let my pen glide and my brain turn off while it spits things out onto the page. I will allow that process to take as long as it takes for each topic. I will also permit it to take as many pages as it takes. There will be no editing myself. There will be no holding myself back. This is the ‘rough draft’ phase so anything goes.

After I have scraped everything out of my brain that I can scrape, down to the dreggiest of dregs, I will turn to a clean page…and start writing about every idea or whatever hit that mind map. I plan to journal whatever I need to journal about in regards to what I put into the mind map.

Is this a good thing for right now? Will it be something I can do or something I can work on in 2023? Would it work better in one quarter or the other? Is this something I need to push back to 2024 or beyond that? Is it something that I need to work on this week? Or next month? Before the end of the next quarter? Fourth quarter? Whatever.

Next comes taking what I wrote down and what I created in the mind map and putting them together.

For example, I’ll take idea 427 that seems to want to happen in the midst of January 2023.

I have decided that this is something I do want to do.

The next mind map or breakdown comes in as I create an action plan. This is where I create more of a ladder map. It’s not quite outline format because frequently there are arrows pointing to tons of offshoot comments and whatnot.

I keep repeating this until I completely exhaust myself.

That’s when I pull out either a different notebook or planner and start adding in tasks.

I do expect that my desire to do any of the things will change before it is time to do these things. I do expect to pull things forward to do sooner, as well as push things back to do later. I expect new items and agendas to crop and pop up. I expect to drop random bits and pieces by the wayside at any point.

I refuse to feel guilt about any of that at any point or time.

I will keep everything generated during this time, all maps and writings, just in case I need to go back and re-access anything, revamp tasks or steps, whatever.

So, that is what I am looking forward to in the next few days. What about you? What are your plans? Or have you made them all already?

Let me know in the comments below.