Your Best Year Ever - Michael Hyatt
Jumping into something with no experience is really scary. I am going to be posting a blog post every Friday (hopefully). The posts will be based on books and papers I have read which have given me insights into personal development, as well as some potentially helpful business-related insights from my readings. The aim of these blogs is to share my insights from the books and how I have interpreted the information—which might not be 100% right, but c'est la vie. In Ireland, we are all focused on what others think of us. I am going to take this opportunity, stemming from my Project Management Module, to think of myself and not others.
I was never a reader for 23 years of my life, until early December 2024, when I decided to pick up a book called "Your Best Year Ever" by Michael Hyatt. I bought this book when I was in fourth year in school, thinking I was going places, but never ended up reading more than 5 pages! So I said this would be a great place to start.
This was a really easy book to get into as a starting point, and it gave me some structure through the lessons taught in the book. At first, the book enables you to take the LifeScore Assessment, which is a short survey that will help you spot areas of improvement and measure potential growth.
My main takeaway from the book was the 7-step "SMARTER" goal-setting technique. Everyone has probably heard of SMART goals: "Specific, Measurable, Action-Orientated, Realistic, and Time-bound." But Hyatt developed a system aiming to create the best goal achievement. "SMARTER" goals are: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Risky, Time-Keyed, Exciting, and Relevant. I am going to use the "SMARTER" system now to create my goals for this blog as an example of how it works.
The Review Blog "SMARTER" Goals
Specific: A goal cannot be vague; you must identify exactly what you want to achieve. For me, I want to write a blog based on my experiences and learnings, which may help others want to grow also.
Measurable: Saying I want to write blog posts isn't enough. For me, I want to write a weekly blog; this is measurable as I know the criteria.
Actionable: Similarly to measurable, saying that I want to post a blog doesn't work, as that could mean I want to post once. But saying that I want to post a weekly blog based on my experiences is more actionable.
Risky: Risky goals can be different for everyone. For me, a risky goal is putting myself out there and posting something like this for the first time.
Time-Keyed: Time-keyed goals refer to having an amount of the goal completed by a certain time. For me, this will be having 12 blog posts completed by the end of this semester of college, which is the last week of April.
Exciting: The goal must be honestly exciting. This is honestly exciting for me as I have a keen interest in personal development, and when I am tempted to quit or not write a post, I will have to remember why I am doing this.
Relevant: The goal must align with our lives. For me, this is an extension of my college assignment, but I am not just writing it because of that—I am writing it to maybe help others who need a kickstart or might find it useful in their lives.
I would recommend this book to anyone who needs a helping hand with goals in their lives. The book comes with various templates which will enable the goal setting to be easier.
Quote of the Book
"Don't overthink the outcome, just do the next thing right." I found this really insightful as I am the kind of person who would ignore the short term just thinking of the long-term goal, but baby steps do really help you to get the job done.