Setting Priorities vs. Goals for the New Year

I recently gave a talk on the topic of “Setting Priorities vs. Goals in 2023.” I focus on priorities for the year, because having clear priorities will simplify your goals, and ultimately makes money management much easier. For high achievers, or even moderate ones, the problem is less in setting good goals, as in finding the areas you can commit to that map to both the reality of your year ahead and the trajectory of your ambition. Priorities help. Below are a few of the take-aways on prioritizing from that talk.

• Why prioritize? Priorities let you simplify your goals. We tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a year. We tend to set more goals than we can meet. The more goals you have, the more you disperse your time and energy; the more trade-offs you make; and the more line items in your budget. Three goals, at least one of which will no doubt show up in a big way in your budget, is a great number. The only way to select the few top areas of focus, is by aggressively downgrading everything else. For women, values tend to drive priorities and financial behavior. Understanding personal values helps everyone with prioritization, but I find it really benefits women.

• Where do you need to fire yourself? A big priority this year was to support my kids with academic growth. I watched them grow last year, and wanted to see them thrive this year. Because I had less business revenue this past year, I economized by filling in with homework help and extra reading support myself. I am a great student, love reading, and genuinely enjoy helping my kids. However, when I did a reality check, I realized I was barely meeting the need for a couple of them. With four of them needing different levels of academic support (some more specialized), and realizing Glen and I would have even less time this year, it was clear I needed to fire myself. In theory, I was a great fit for the role. In reality, I was underperforming. 

• Be gracious about trade-offs. When I finally found a really great tutor for my kids, I realized I had to slow down our original goal to aggressively pay down our Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC). That goal was downgraded to meet this year’s priority. We can review that original goal in June, to determine when we’ll resume paying down on the HELOC. We have a “low/no debt” philosophy in our family, but the clear understanding of what the priority was this year, let us downgrade our original repayment goal with zero guilt. 

These take-aways are from my recent discussion for Journey On, in their Women Empower Women leadership community. You can catch the replay, and future leadership and money talks by joining the community here.

Photo by trevor walton