I am a big fan of the passion planner, and I believe that if you just manage to stick to what you set out to do, it works. I had my first one last year, and I started off really well, but then it fizzled out somehow. This year I vow to do better.

The idea in brief is an agenda/planner where you can not only write down your daily appointments, meetings, what have you, but also make mind maps based on your dreams and passions and break them down into small, attainable and concrete pieces, with due dates for each step to try to hold yourself accountable. To assist you there’s also plenty of free writing space, a monthly reflection section, inspirational quotes, weekly focus and tasks, work and personal priority lists and a section to write down all the good things that happened in a week. It’s really a great idea.

You may find it weird to plan your passions, but if you’re like me and sort of passionate about a lot of things and partly therefore end up doing not much with one thing or the other, it can be quite helpful. It helps you narrow your focus and plan some concrete actions towards your goals.

I still find it really tricky to set specific goals and due dates on my passions and dreams, because it’s hard for me to make them concrete enough to make a proper plan. But I’ve made a start and filled out my passion roadmap for the goals I’d like to achieve in 3 months, 1 year, 3 years and lifetime. Now the next step is to pick the most important one and break it down.

A few items from my list in random order:

• Write this blog consistently
• Develop a consistent meditation practice
• Write a novel
• Live by the sea
• Run a marathon

So, you can see that where for instance it would be relatively easy to set up a plan for running a marathon (here I think the problem is more sticking to the plan), it’s a bit harder to plan how to live by the sea.

But I’ve started, I’m on my way, the sea is calling me.

And since Boyfriend also got a passion planner this year, we went stationery shopping earlier today so we could plan our passions with panache! Since I am a bit of a stationery addict, I’ve been walking around with a big grin on my face, and it’s definitely going on my list of good things that happened this week.

If you could achieve one goal this year, what would it be?

Love, Sarah