[0:00]So, today is March 25th of 2026, and my goal in this session is to plan the next three months of the year. So, what we're going to do today is plan the goals for April, May, and June, and I'm going to set up my planner, create my weekly schedule, develop my goals right here in front of you. So, we're going to do this where we work backwards from eternity down to the day level. That's sort of the way we approach us at redeeming productivity. You begin with what we call a Well Done Statement. This is a Christ-honoring vision statement for your life, written from the perspective of what you hope Christ will say to you when you meet Him after you die. And it's taken from uh, the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. The idea here is that you take the passage, Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant, you have been faithful, and he finishes it in the passage. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. All we're doing here is trying to define the little over which God has called us to steward from the perspective of when Christ looks at my life at the end of time. What would it look like for him to say I was faithful with the spiritual domain that I've been given to steward, my intellectual domain, my physical health, my relationships, my rest and recreation, my job, and even my money and just managing my own household? Because what happens if you set goals without some sort of long-term vision of where you're headed, they end up being arbitrary. You're like, Oh, I think I want to lose ten pounds. No, we got to be laser-focused on this is what I'm aiming at. So, what I do is at the start of every new quarter, I look back at my last quarter uh, Waypoints planner, and I look at what I wrote for my Well Done Statement, and I copy it over to the new planner, and sometimes I'll make some updates to it. So, for example, spiritual, I already wrote here. The way I'm defining Well Done from God's perspective is if I was faithful to walk with him daily, reading his word and seeking him in prayer. So, I'm going to do the rest of these. Okay, I've written my Well Done Statement. If you want examples of a Well Done Statement, I'll have a link in the description uh, to an article on this practice, if you're interested. This is also something we do very early on in the Waypoints to Well Done curriculum if you're part of our Redeeming Productivity Academy membership. But now, we've got this Well Done defined. We're saying, okay, this is the big thing we're aiming at. This is what a life of faithfulness would look like. And one of the things I'll note here is that you really want to do this in one shot. What I mean is this whole planning process I'm doing here is best done if you set aside an hour or two and do it all at once. Because getting this Well Done Statement sort of salient in your mind and this next thing, the Five Year Aspirations, that's going to help inform the goals that you choose for the quarter. You want to be in this sort of eternally minded mode of thinking as you're planning your goals. Otherwise you're just going to be thinking temporarily, you're just going to be thinking about, Oh, I want to make more money, or I want to grow my business. Now, you got to think eternally, and then you work backwards towards the goals you're going to have for the quarter. So, we've got the Well Done Statement. The next step here is we call Five Year Aspirations. The idea with the Five Year Aspiration is it's just one step removed from eternity. You're saying, okay, this is what I want my life to look like at the end. What about something a little bit nearer term, but still far off? What would I like my life to look like in the next five years? So, you notice it has the same categories, the same domains of stewardship. But, uh, the goal here is different. What you're actually saying is what you want to see in these areas. It's not, obviously, I'd love if all the areas of my life looked like this Well Done statement the next five years. No, here we're doing something slightly different. We're being very specific about what we want these areas to look like. They're aspirations. And you say, well, what if what I want is sinful or whatever? All the more reason to write it down. Write down honestly what you want each of these areas of your life to look like in the next five years. And then once it's on paper, wow, you can submit it to scrutiny. You can say, Lord, is this really a godly ambition? Is this really what I should be pursuing? That sounds self-motivated. That doesn't sound like something you'd want for me. But you got to actually say it. You actually, God already knows what you really want. So, just write it down on paper and then you can critique it and be much more intentional about the goals you set. All right, so I'm going to fill in these uh, Five Year Aspirations for these different categories. And once again, I'm going to look back at the ones that I listed last quarter uh, to give me some idea because obviously, these don't shift that often, but the whole reason of rewriting them is to get them all back into your head before you set the goals, and also, you can critique them over time. You can say, this is no longer something I'm aspiring to. So, just by way of example, I'll tell you about a couple of these, so you can get some ideas and inspiration for your own aspirations. So, in the uh, spiritual category, one of the things I aspire to is highlighting the entire Bible. If you've watched my videos and my method for highlighting the Bible, I'm working my way through the entire Bible, and that's going to take multiple years. I think I can do it in less than five years, but it's it's a pretty deep study of the word. And so, I have to stay consistent on that. Keeping this as an aspiration lets me create my goals for each quarter, where I can turn around and say, okay, I know I need to do this these books this quarter to stay on track for that. So, that's an aspiration, something I want to see happen the next five years in the spiritual domain. Uh, intellectual, reading 25 to 50 books per year to stay on track with that. I need to read roughly ten books a quarter. That equals 40 books if I do that, and so I plan that into my goals for each quarter is making sure that I'm reading each week and staying on track with that goal. I have that in five years, I want to still be strong enough to lift the kids, wrestle, and do manual labor. Here's how this informs my day-to-day. The type of exercise I do is informed by this aspiration. It's it's not this vague sense of, oh, I want to like weigh less, or I want to look a certain way. My aspiration is that I want to be functionally strong, which informs the health goals that I set in the meantime. That is why I work out with kettlebells. That's why I do rocking with weight on my back, because these are functional strength activities, because that's what I'm aiming for. And some of these are things you just have to slowly work towards, right? I have one of these for recreational. I have that I want to be on screens less than 15 hours per week. That's kind of hard when you run an online business, but it's actually not impossible. And so, that's what I'm slowly working towards. How do I outsource some of the day-to-day stuff so that I can I can sit down and record videos, I can write stuff? But my whole work day isn't consisting of me staring at a computer, so that's what I'm working towards, because that's something I want to reach, but it's going to take time, it's going to take lots of little goals over the next several years if I want to make that a reality. We're just trying to create clarity. We're going from Well Done, this is what I'd like the Lord to say to me when I meet him, to the domains of stewardship in the next five years, here's where I would really like to be in the next five years in each of these, and then we get to goals. All of this is preamble to setting goals. Why? Because I don't want to be setting goals arbitrarily. I want to have my my goals are in pursuit of a larger goal. I always say the goal of goals is the glory of God. The goal of whatever goals I set for this quarter is I want to more glorify God. And I think one of the ways to do that is by striving to be more faithful in these different areas. What I've done here is I've defined with a Well Done Statement what faithfulness looks like, and I've defined with the Five Year Aspirations some of the things I would like to see happen in my life. Hopefully, these are in line with the faithfulness I'd like to see on the long-term. You get it? So, let's go to the goal setting part. I'm going to do one more exercise that's going to help you set goals and make them less arbitrary. Now that we've got Well Done and the Five Year Aspirations in our brain, because we just did them, now we're going to grade ourselves. So, the thing here is you look at the Seven Domains of Stewardship and you give yourself a grade between one and five. One being, I'm not being very faithful in this area right now. Five being consistently faithful, and be honest here. Don't be so humble that you're lying. Be honest. If you're you're on track, it's a five. If you're not doing the things you ought to be doing to be on track, it's a one. So, just to clarify, this is not a five as I've reached this. A five is I'm doing the things in line with being walking with the Lord faithfully. I'm reading the word daily, I'm in prayer. This is, I mean, you talk to me a couple years ago, this was a one on when I was doing this. This is a five right now. That's me being honest. This is not boasting. It's saying, I'm doing the stuff that is in line with uh, walking with the Lord daily, reading his word and seeking him in prayer. So, that's really awesome. And this is going to inform my goal setting because I'm probably not going to have a specific spiritual goal this quarter. I'm going to stick with what I've already been doing. I'm going to follow my Bible reading and highlighting plan, I'm going to keep praying, and but there could be a time where I'm facing a specific sin in a certain season that I want to mortify. And then maybe the spiritual area, I'm not doing so good in, and so I give myself a lower grade and I say, hey, that's going to inform. I think I should have a goal to mortify this sin this quarter, to really be proactive in attacking this area of life. Now, uh, intellectual. Let me compare this to last year, actually. I mean, last quarter. Yeah, so this is cool. It's it's also really fun to do this quarter of a quarter because you start to see improvement. Like, look, I was a four last year in spiritual. I think I am on track. I'm going to keep, I'm hopefully I'll be able to keep these habits going this quarter. Uh, intellectual, that one was a three because I hadn't been reading if I remember this right, I had not been reading books. I've sort of fallen off the wagon, but since I've removed social media from my life and limited that, I've been really deliberate this past quarter about reading more, and that I am on track with this.
[11:14]I read ten books past quarter, that's on track with 40 a year. So, I'm doing good there. I'm just going to keep that habit going. I'm probably not going to do a deliberate goal on this area of intellectual. Physical, this is another one. You're going to be like, are these all going to be five, Reagan? No, they're not, but this one is a five. I have not attained this physical peak perfection, though you might uh, beg to differ. Now, I I have a lot more weight I need to lose. I need to be more consistent on this stuff, but man, the last two quarters, I have really been hitting it hard with the rocking with nutrition with uh, exercise with the kettlebells. I just want to stay the course. I don't need anything different than the programs I'm already doing. I just need time and consistency. So, I'm probably not going to set a goal in the physical domain, because that's a five. Relational, however, I was a five last uh, quarter. I'm actually going to mark this down to a four. There are some things I want to be doing that I'm not currently factoring into my schedule and my goals. Namely, this stuff about discipling men regularly and daily devotions with the kids. I kind of have fallen off on both of those. Well, I the daily the discipleship with men, I just haven't been doing. I've been last several years, I've been so busy that I've kind of pushed that to the side and said, I'm going to focus on building Redeeming Productivity. But now I'm entering into a season where I have a little bit more time, so I'm being very deliberate about being hospitable, having people over to our house, about meeting men for coffee to try to pour into their lives. That I'm trying to be more deliberate in, but I'm not where I need to be. That's a four. The devotions with the kids, I've haven't been as consistent as I need to be. I want to mark that as a four, and I'm actually going to note right here in the Goal Brainstorming area. Uh, that a potential goal is daily devotions with kids. And another one might be, meet two plus men per month for discipleship, because I want to make I want to have something I can quantify a goal that I can actually aim at. So, those are potential goals. Don't know if I'm going to do them, but those are ones I might do. All right, what about recreational? Uh, remember, this is the one that has to do with your rest, uh, with enjoying the good things God's given you. This is often gets kicked to the side sometimes for us. You need rest, and rest doesn't just mean sleeping, and it doesn't just mean sitting in front of a screen. It means enjoying things, recreating, you're kind of reinvigorating yourself with this. And so, I am doing pretty good on this, but I'm actually, I said a five last time, I'm going to do a four here. This is another area where I want to spend more time doing stuff that isn't work, where I have like hobbies and things like that. I don't know what a goal might look like there, but I'm giving myself this lower grade so that I um, can be a bit smarter about how I uh, attack it with a goal. Vocational, uh, vocational has to do with your job or your main calling. I my vocation is Redeeming Productivity, and so I things are going really well with Redeeming Productivity, but there are areas I need to be really focusing up on. And so, vocational was a three last time. I'm actually going to upgrade it to a four. I'm doing quite quite well here, but there's some stuff I've let slip. So, I'm going to give that to myself as a clue. I actually have a bunch of um, potential projects and goals and stuff I have for Redeeming Productivity that I jotted down uh, earlier today.
[14:54]But, tends to be that if you set multiple goals, vocation is going to tend to dominate, because if if you're working full-time, that is your life's work. If you're an entrepreneur or in full-time ministry, vocation's going to dominate your life, too. It's just you're going to have more goals, more projects there because that's your main life's work. It's your calling. Vocation. Uh, economical, I had a three last time. I'm actually going to keep that as a three. Economical has to do with the stewardship of your home and finances, your money and possessions. So, it's not just how am I doing with my finances or giving, that's part of it, but also am I taking care of my home uh, or my apartment or my stuff, my cars, things like that. I'm I'm leaving that as a three, because I need some work here. I have to do some stuff that I've sort of neglected on the home, and I need to take care of that this quarter, I think, while it's spring. Um, also, uh, we've kind of fallen off the wagon with doing monthly budgeting for as a family, and I want to get back on that. We were doing really good for years, but it's just it's been a really busy season and we haven't been doing that. And when we don't track our expending through our budget, we tend to spend too much. That's poor stewardship. So, I'm going to put a potential goal is revamp family budget. Some of our expenses and stuff has changed, too, in the last um six months. So, we need to adjust accordingly. Okay, once you fill out this little self-evaluation, you use it just how I sort of have been, is you use this to inform what goals you're going to do. Now, I always say that the purpose of having goals is it's closing the gap between right now and Well Done. So, you have this definition of here's what Well Done looks like. You're sort of grading the gap here. So, the ones that have the lower score, there's a gap. You're not on track for Well Done. You're not doing the things consistent with how you see faithfulness in those areas uh, of life. So, what do I need to do? I need to make some adjustments. The goal is your plan to make an adjustment in that area. So, I always start with the lower grades. Um, and so I have these three fives, intellectual, physical, and spiritual, which, by the way, these categorise what I call the grow zone layer. These tend to get handled during a morning routine. And since my morning routine's pretty dialed in with my power mornings, uh, that one's doing good, so I'm not going to I'm not going to change anything. I'm just going to keep doing power mornings and I know that those will pretty much stay on track. But these bottom four, they need some work, especially economical. And so, I'm I want to really note the lower grade ones. Now, if this is your first time doing it, yours is going to look like, I don't have all my old planners here, I don't think. But if you look back a year ago, year and a half ago, a lot of these were ones for me. And so, don't be discouraged, uh, by saying, oh, look, like these are all high. You you go through yours and you're like, these are all like ones and twos and threes. That's okay. Start with where you are. Start with the lower ones. If there's, uh, I'll just make this caveat, if your spiritual domain is specifically low, you really should begin there. Make sure you have at least one goal consistent with growing spiritually, because that the reason it's at the center of this is because everything flows from that, right? Christ is the true vine. If I'm abiding in him, I will bear much fruit. Apart from him, I can do nothing. So, if you don't have this one right, you're not really going to be fruitful in a way that honors God in these other ones. So, make sure the spiritual's dialed in, if it's not. Get those habits in place. All right, I think the main like lever I need to pull here is the weekly stats tracking. So, I'm going to star that one and say that's going to be the thing I track with strokes. All right, last few things I wanted to show you. After we got the goals planned out, now, um, I want to set up the calendars. So, I have this 12-month view, so it's 12 months ahead of the the quarter that you're in. So, I got April, May, June, that's Q2 that I'm planning for right now. But then I have July through March of 2027. It's not a full calendar, but for example, if I'm speaking at a conference or I have a vacation, any sort of big milestones, I can drop them here. I only have three months of calendars, like full calendars in here just for the quarter. So, this gives me a spot to drop stuff that um, might be coming in the future, uh, that I don't have a page for yet. So, then I planned out April through June. I used colors, uh, this is the same highlighters and pens that I use in my um, how I highlight the Bible video. So, if you haven't seen that, I'll I'll link to that in the card above, if you want to check that out. I already have all these colored pens, why not use them here, too. I color code it according to personal stuff, family stuff, holidays, and uh, like work stuff. So, I have different colors for each of those. For stuff that's longer, I use a corresponding highlighter color to show um that. I also have priorities at the top here. I haven't filled these out yet. Usually, I fill out the priorities for the month at the beginning of that month, so I've left those blank right now.
[21:02]Did the same for May and June, and these will fill up as stuff progresses, but I have the the major things on there already. Then, uh, I create a weekly schedule. This looks like a child drew it. Uh, so this is, uh, if you've done my workshop on weekly scheduling, I'll link to that, too. I just did a live stream last week on how to plan out an ideal weekly schedule for yourself and the four types of time, grow time, goal time, grit time, and gift time. Watch that workshop if you want a whole breakdown of how this works. This is basically the major chunks of time I want to have each day, and with themes for each day. So, I map my energy levels on the left, uh, kind of when I'm at my best, when I'm at my worst throughout the day, and then I slot in grow time, so that's going to be my morning routine, that's my habits, my exercise, my time in the word and prayer. Goal time, that's going to be my most focused deep work, so I'm going to reserve that mostly for writing or any sort of projects that need my full energy on them. I want to do those at the best time of day. Grit time is everything else, it's all the admin stuff, and I do this when my energy is at its lowest and sort of like middle as well. Because I don't want to be doing email or meetings when I should be writing, because like my my focus is really high at that moment. So, I schedule my time around that, and gift time is just me acknowledging that all the free time is actually a gift from God, so I hold it with an open hand, ready to give it to others uh, if they need it, and not sort of jealously guarding it as if it's mine, mine own, because all time is actually God's time, right? And I'm just a steward of it, even my free time. So, that maps everything out, and that completes my plan for Q2, 2026. With the rest of the planner, basically, you it's split up between these weekly review and planning pages, where you go back, you look at your goals, you try to make progress on them. You update the strokes on them, you're making sure you're you're on track with the goals, and there's stuff within these these um, weekly planning pages for that. You set your priorities for the week, and then you're able to sort of look and say, okay, this is a goal. I'm going to plug this in on Monday, and I already know from my weekly schedule that that's going to fit in my goal time. If there was, for example, I wrote a weekly newsletter, and uh, on Wednesday is typically I'm going to write that. When on Wednesday am I going to write it? Typically, I'm going to do it from 8 to 10:00 AM, because that's my uh, my goal time. That's when my energy is at its highest, my focus is its best, that's the best time for me to write. So, there's little check boxes here, review once a week your Well Done Statement, review your goal plans, review your calendar. This is all part of it, and I checkbox it that yes, I've looked over each of those things. That keeps those goals present in your mind so that when you actually go to make the plan for the week, you're not forgetting to actually allocate time for those on different days throughout the week. And then daily, you have some time boxing here on the right. So, you can I don't reproduce the whole goal time grit time thing here. I just kind of have that in my mind, and then I plan out the day, any meetings, anything like that. It's boxed in here. Uh, priorities, what I'd prayed about, uh, what I read in the word, what I did for exercise, what I did for reading, all that stuff here, and that just repeats. You have seven of these and then another weekly review and weekly planning page, and after 13 weeks of that, hopefully all of those goals that I have planned out and made uh, my best effort at, hopefully, all of those will be done, and I will have grown a little bit in faithfulness. And actually, at the very end of this planner, I do um, a little sort of postmortem, yeah, quarterly review. So, this is just at the very end, I look back on the quarter and I record how things went, what I learned, what progress I made, what goals I reached, what goals I didn't, what I can change for next time. And then I give myself uh, a grade again on how that quarter went for each of those domains, and that's going to inform the next planner I use when I I do this again. So, I I just think this really works well for me, so, you know, I don't have to use this system if you're interested, uh, you can get this plan at redeemingproductivity.com in our store, but you could hopefully apply some of these principles in whatever planning system you use, whether that's digital tools or any kind of paper planner, or even bullet journaling. Well, I'm hoping for a productive and God-honoring quarter this year, and I pray that uh, you have a productive and God-honoring quarter, as well. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next one.
