Creating homestead goals can quickly turn into an overwhelming list of projects! But there’s a better way to set goals that will be realistic and achievable! Use this three-step process and free planning worksheet to plan your homestead goals for the new year!
Raise your hand if you set yearly goals for your homestead. Now, raise your hand if those goals usually end up turning into one giant to-do list!
Yep, I’m certainly guilty!
Each year, I sit down and write out everything I want to accomplish over the upcoming year. It turns into a giant list that I couldn’t achieve even if there were two of me – and seriously, if someone could work on developing a clone for me, that would be fab!
I love planning, especially for my homestead. And to do lists are great. Honestly, they are my best friends. But there’s a problem: Writing a list of projects is not the same thing as establishing a clear vision for the direction you want your homestead to move toward.
Why your homestead goals shouldn’t be to-do lists:
A goal is much bigger than a list of projects. In fact, our goals should be directing our projects! Making a project list without first setting goals can actually result in a lot of “busy work” that doesn’t always support our ultimate end goal for what we truly want to accomplish.
The solution is to set one or two major goals for our homesteads each year. Then, we can create our to-do lists based on what we need to accomplish in order to reach our goals. This way, we are continually working on projects that lead us towards our dreams, one project at a time.
It may seem overwhelming to establish a major goal to work towards over the next year, but it’s one of the best ways to move our homestead dreams forward! We will break the process down into three steps to make it even easier.
By the time we are done planning, we will have generated a list of goal-driven projects to work on throughout the year to ensure we meet our homestead goals in 2019!
Three Steps to Setting Better Homestead Goals:
CLICK HERE to download the printable Goal Planning Worksheet.
Now, let’s discuss each of the three steps to planning our clear, concise and achievable homestead goals for the year:
Step One: Establish a PRIMARY GOAL for the year.
If there was only one thing that you could accomplish on your homestead this year – one thing that would make you feel like the year was a success – what would it be? Even if nothing else happened except this one thing, what would you be satisfied with at the end of the year? What is your big goal for the year?
It’s okay to have more than one goal, but ultimately, we need to prioritize! Depending on how big your main goal is, you may only need one goal for the entire year! Or, if you feel that you can take on a bit more, you can add a few other goals as well.
If you do decide to set more than one goal, establish which goal is the main priority and which ones are of lesser importance. This way, if life gets busy and you find that you can’t accomplish everything, you will have already established which goals are the most vital to your homesteading success.
And, just because we are setting a major goal for the year, it doesn’t mean that other projects and problems won’t pop up. There will always be things that you must accomplish that are not directly related to your goal, and that’s okay. But keeping a clear goal in mind for the year will help you stay focused. Life gets busy and crazy – knowing where to invest your time, money and resources can be the key to success! Making the goal as specific and measurable as possible will also give you a clearer idea of what you need to accomplish.
Here are some examples of primary goals:
- Cut homestead operating costs by 10% for the year
- Preserve at least 50% of the garden produce to use over the winter
- Begin raising meat chickens for personal use and for profit
Step Two: Plan STRATEGIES that will allow you to accomplish your primary goal(s)
Now, it’s time to figure out exactly how we will accomplish our goal. We do this by establishing strategies. Ask yourself, “how will I accomplish my goal?”. Each goal will most likely have multiple strategies.
Here are some example strategies for one of the example goals we discussed in step one:
Goal: Cut homestead operating costs by 10% for the year.
Strategies:
- Understand and evaluate current homestead expenses
- Reduce feed costs for the goat herd
- Lower feed costs for chickens
- Reduce garden costs
Step Three: Decide what PROJECTS need to be completed for each of your strategies.
Now it’s time to think about the nitty-gritty details and make our to-do list of projects! For each strategy that you listed, make a list of projects that you will need to complete in order to accomplish your goal. Be as specific as possible and list everything that you need to do – even the little things! This allows us to use our time efficiently and ensures that we complete all the projects that are important to the success of our homestead goals.
Here’s an example of some projects for one of the strategies listed in step two:
Strategy: Reduce feed costs for the goat herd
Projects to make it happen:
- Reduce goat herd, keeping only our top milk producers
- Overseed pasture in March
- Fence pasture to create rotational grazing pens
- Buy new feed bins to avoid loss of grain due to moisture and pests
Pulling it all together:
Now that we’ve established the basics, let’s use the example above to see what it looks like to establish our goal, plan our strategies and then decide which projects to accomplish. Here is what our goal planning worksheet looks like once it’s completed:
You did it! You have planned your major homestead goals for an entire year! Now it’s time to get to work and make those dreams become a reality! Remember, dreams only work if you do!
Leave us a comment below and let us know what your primary homestead goal is for 2019!
