It’s that time of the year when you get to set your 2023 goals and reflect on the past year. But if your resolutions are scattered between Notion, post-it notes, and a journal, it'll be hard for you to stay accountable and maintain clarity.
In fact, most people give up on their New Year resolutions halfway into January.
This is why we've created the New Year Resolutions Notion template. It’s an all-in-one template that covers everything you need to crush it this year. You will find:
- Exercises for reflection and goal-setting
- Automations for habit tracking
- 6 pre-built databases
In this article, you’ll get an overview of the template so you know how to take full advantage of it to achieve your 2023 goals.
Overview of New Year’s Resolution Notion template
To set your New Year’s resolutions right, you need more than just a pen and a piece of paper. You need a system to declutter your mind that covers different parts of your life.
The template consists of three main sections: Manifesting a life vision, Creating an action plan, and Staying on track.
Before we go through the individual parts of the template, duplicate the template to your Notion workspace. You can do this in the top-right corner of the window by clicking on Duplicate.
Feel free to edit the template as you see fit and add and remove sections.
Manifesting a life vision
“The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.”
—Neil Gaiman
2022 in review
We’re generally taught that it’s healthy to leave the past behind us and focus on the future (and present) instead. Although that is good most of the time, it can also lead us to repeat our mistakes and fall into the same cycles.
If you can look at your past with a healthy detachment, it can be a goldmine of wisdom and self-awareness. It can teach you lessons, highlight traps to avoid, and show you the way. This is why the template begins with 2022 In Review.
Like everyone else, you were given the same 12 months, 365 days, or 8760 hours. But, what made it special? What moments stood out? In which areas of your life did you triumph, and where do you need to improve?
The 2022 in review page has a collection of questions relating to Experiences, People, Yourself, Accomplishments, Learning, and Areas for Improvement.
Click on the toggle next to each question and type your answer. They can be quick bullet points or a long essay. It’s up to you!
Here is the really cool part! Just imagine how great it would be to come back to these answers a year or a decade later and see how your perspective has evolved!
Vision & life plan
Just meditating on the past isn’t going to help if you don’t use your lessons in the present. Now that you have a clear idea of how 2022 went for you, you’re ready to envision what 2023 can look like! This is where the vision & life plan page comes in! It consists of three sections:
- Purpose (lifetime): Purpose is the infinite thing that will guide your decisions and day-to-day actions. Whether you call it a mission statement, a calling, or a mantra, it’s about boiling down your life purpose into clear words.
- High Hard Goals (1-5 years): These are big and ambitious goals that really get you going but might not be achieved in 2023 itself.
- 2023 Goals: Since you’ve defined your overall life purpose and your big goals, in this section, you can break them into chunks and specify your 2023 goals!
As Bill Gates said, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” This page will help you gain perspective and break down long-term goals into achievable short-term goals.
Dreamlining
Most people don’t have a deadline for their dreams. Their dreams are usually lumped into that imaginary date of “someday.” This eliminates their motivation to take action, leading to wasted time.
After you’ve defined your 2023 goals, it’s important to keep them tethered down to reality. “Dreamlining” is a concept you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. It’s about creating a timeline for your goals so they feel real and achievable.
The dreams are clustered into three groups: Be, Do, and Have. Whether your goals consist of being something (like fluent in French or a bestselling novelist), doing something (like visiting Bali or paragliding), or having something (like a PC gaming setup or a sports car), you can add them to these categories.
Creating an action plan
“Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.”
—Joel A. Barker
Life dashboard
Even if you’re not making direct progress toward your goals, knowing where you stand can make all the difference. The reason why most people give up on their resolutions in January is that they don’t have visibility of their goals. Life gets in the way, and their goals fall by the wayside.
This is why we’ve created the Life dashboard. It ensures that you can keep an eye on where you are and where you want to go.
This page consists of a life progress bar widget by Indify and your 2023 goals. For easier access, you can add the Life Dashboard to your Notion sidebar or phone widget. Go to the top-right corner of the window, and click the star (⭐) icon.
Every time you open your sidebar, you’ll see it appear under Favorites.
Goals, projects, and tasks
Crack your knuckles; it’s time to get down to business!
Goals, projects, and tasks are three databases dedicated to organizing work and crushing your new year's resolutions. This structure allows you to know your big-picture intentions and get riled up for projects that are in the vicinity.
Goals are the larger scope intentions for the year, like “get into the best shape of my life.”
Goals consist of projects. Projects are very specific and are 1-3 months long. Your goals might be huge, but adding projects will give you a concrete idea of how you can accomplish them.
Finally, tasks are the smaller atopic units that projects consist of. Tasks are actionable, so you can knock them out and know that you are progressing towards the big yearly goal. Each task can be classified into Backlog, Ready, In progress, or Done.
You can add or remove items from any of the databases. We used the relationship property for all three of them so that you can create views and groups for clarity.
Overall, this provides you with a layered system for planning and managing your 2023 goals.
Staying on track
“It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.”
—Albert Einstein
Reflections & journaling
The end of a year generally has a positive vibe. Everyone is in a festive mood and looks forward to a prosperous year ahead. As the weeks pass, it’s easy to lose that that energy and perspective. This is where journaling can help.
Whether you do it every day or every week, it can help you stay accountable to yourself. That is where reflections & journaling database comes in.
Click on the New button, and you can start with a blank sheet or choose from many templates like Weekly Reflection, 5 Minute Journal, Morning Journal, Night Journal, and more. The templates include questions that you can answer to go deeper into your reflection.
Journaling is a fantastic practice, but it’s hard to turn it into a habit. This is where a Bardeen automation comes in. It will send you reminders with the link to a new Notion page for your reflection.
Bardeen is a free workflow automation browser extension for Notion and many other apps. If you haven’t yet tried it out and use Notion, you should give it a shot!
Analytical daily habits
As Jim Ryun said, “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” If you want to maintain your motivation for longer than the first few months of 2023, you need to develop habits.
For example, if one of your goals in 2023 is to read 52 books, you need to develop the habit of reading every day. The New Year Resolution Notion template includes an Analytical Daily Habits page. You can watch Red Gregory’s video on this.
The benefit of this habit tracker is that it’ll give you data about your habits and consistency.
You will be able to see on which days you’re more successful compared to others. As a result of this, you’ll be able to optimize your schedule and ensure that you squeeze in your positive habits every day. Remember, what gets measured, gets improved!
Free up time in 2023 by using automations!
While striving toward your goals, you will most likely stumble upon repetitive and mundane tasks. Unfortunately, these can take up your time and mind space.
Instead, you can use a workflow automation tool like Bardeen. Here are a few pre-built Notion automations that you can start leveraging right away.
If you scroll down to the end of the New Year Resolution Notion template, you’ll find many pre-built automations sorted into categories like Task Management, Personal Productivity, Sales and others.
You can browse the full catalog of pre-built automations and also create custom automations using the Builder.
Endnotes
No matter how ambitious and grand your goals may be, the right tools and systems will make it much easier to achieve them.
The New Year Resolution Notion template will help you set reflect, set goals the right way, and stay on top of your game throughout the year!
Even if you have a long road ahead of you, take the first step: duplicate the template and start using it.
If one of your goals for 2023 is to free up your time, you’ll love this article about how to automate Notion!
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