This year, I decided to try a new way to keep track of New Year’s resolutions. I noticed that in the past, I lacked a way to keep myself accountable throughout the year. I rarely tracked my progress of how I was doing. At the end of December, I learned of a few new ways to check in with myself and thought I would share them here.
The Wheel of Life
I found out about this method on YouTube. Although there are many variations, in this method, you draw a circle and split it into three categories: relationships, work, and health. Then, you split those larger categories into three subcategories each.
Relationships
- Friends
- Family
- Romance
Work
- Mission
- Money
- Growth
Health
- Mind
- Body
- Soul
Once you have split your circle into nine sections, you go through each category and rank yourself out of 10 on how aligned you feel in that realm of your life. The Youtuber who spoke about this, Ali Abdaal, also said you can create a 10th category outside of the wheel titled “Joy”. This was the first method I used to take an inventory in a way, of how I felt like things were going. It helped me visually understand where I was at. For example, I saw how I felt extremely aligned in the friends category, whereas I could put more effort into the money category. I circled the three categories I felt I could work on more.
The Quarter System
The second method I tried out was using a quarter system. I learned about this method from Tiktok. Essentially, instead of treating the year as 365 days, you look at it as four quarters. January through March is the first quarter, and every three months constitutes a subsequent quarter of the year. Rather than checking in with yourself once at the end of the year on how you did with your resolutions or goals, you check in quarterly.
Monthly Bingo Cards
This is perhaps my favorite method of the three I learned. After mapping out my wheel of life and picking goals to evaluate at each quarter, I created a bingo card for the month for the things I wanted to work on. The goal was just to see how many squares I could check off, rather than checking off the entire board. Some of the squares I had on my January card included catching up with a friend, meditating, and cooking a new dish. Some squares on my February card include going for a walk and trying a face mask. Canva has a lot of free templates that you can edit to make your own. This has been a fun way of holding myself accountable! I look forward to what 2024 has in store for us. š
Life of an Aloo 