How to Use Your LifeTracker Planner

Goal-Setting

Dec 10

Episode 287 | Author: Emilie Aries

UPDATE: 2023 Planners are now for sale!

You might know our fan-favorite planner, The LifeTracker Planner, for its cult following and for selling out every year. But today I want to explain the hype by taking a look inside the planner and walking you through its origin story to help explain why it’s so effective at helping ambitious women slay their goals.

How We Started

I first started developing the LifeTracker methodology way back in 2013, in close collaboration with an early supporter and Advisory Board Member of Bossed Up, Dr. Anastasia Pochepstsova Ghosh. You can actually hear Anastasia and I talking all about our humble beginnings on an earlier episode of the Bossed Up podcast, episode 84, if you want to learn more about her research in the field of cognitive science and behavioral economics. Anastasia studied gender and decision-making, ultimately earning her PhD from Yale, before serving as an economics profession at the University of Maryland’s business school when we first met.

Anastasia introduced me to some of her fascinating research that found women tend to multi-task and generalize more than our singularly-focused male counterparts and together we reviewed and read a variety of research papers that studied how women experienced more guilt and role overload when it came to pursuing our wildest ambitions. This is a problem we’ve both pursued in our own ways over the years, and I’m so proud of the work Anastasia continues to this day, now as an associate professor at The Eller School of Management at the University of Arizona.

I synthesized all this research into a singular, simple, one-page worksheet, The LifeTracker, back in 2013 in advance of our first-ever Bossed Up Bootcamp training program. Anastasia and I developed a training module together that reviewed the various goal attainment principles that went into the LifeTracker’s design, and then gave it our attendees to try and make some use of it as we rounded out the weekend setting them up to pursue their wildest personal and professional ambitions.

Over the next 3 years, at approximately 50 Bossed Up Bootcamps, we walked hundreds of women through the process, gaining and integrating feedback along the way. We sent them a blank one-page LifeTracker worksheet and encouraged them to use it on a monthly basis to stay focused on their goals but didn’t really follow up closely beyond that. I happen to know some women took to it right away, printed off 12 copies of the LifeTracker and put them in a binder to start creating basically their own LifeTracker Planner even before I had the capacity to think about such an endeavor.

But once the fundamentals of the Bossed Up community were steady, I worked with Ellie - our now Creative Director who was part of a partnership, ENLY, that we contracted with for graphic design needs - to develop a prototype of our first-ever year-long LifeTracker Planner, which we released back in 2018! The first prototype was solid, but we’ve made so many improvements over the years by listening to our customers and adding new features - like this year’s new monthly tabs - to make this a product that is now so much more than just another planner.

So let’s take a closer look instead the LifeTracker Planner to understand what really makes this product so special:

1. The LifeTracker Worksheet

At the start of every single month, we set aside a few pages for big picture planning. This helps break up the year-long pursuit of progress into 12 incremental steps, which is really just the concept of cognitive chunking - or breaking down big goals into small steps. First you’ve got a brain dump page where I encourage free-wheeling brainstorming. That way you can just get all the ideas that floating around in your head at any given time out on the page so you take a step back, breathe, and then organize them strategically.

That’s where the LifeTracker worksheet comes into play. On the left side of the worksheet, you articulate almost a verbal vision board that sums up what it is you’re driving towards this month. It might say “New job” in the professional goals section or “Promotion” or “Write the damn book!” It sums up whatever it is that you’re really striving towards long-term. And mind you, there’s 4 different rows in the LifeTracker itself - one for work, relationships, wellness, and other goals you’re pursuing. So on the left-hand column, you summarize what your ultimate goals are.

Then, in the right column, you organize all those action items that you identified in the brain dump section into 3 concrete next steps you need to take to pursue that goal. So for a goal like getting a new job, you might write down these three action steps: redo resume, reconnect with former colleague Sarah, and rewrite my LinkedIn profile. You plot out 3 concrete action items for each and every goal you’re pursuing across work, relationships, wellness, and other, so your roadmap is clear. You know exactly what you need to do next to pursue your most unwieldy ambitions.

2. Highlighting: Temporary Prioritization

Once you’ve plotted out your action steps, you need to decide where to start. Clarifying your plan of action is helpful, sure, but staring at all 12 of those action steps can feel overwhelming without structure and prioritization. That’s why I’m a huge believer in highlighting, a term that describes temporarily prioritizing one area of your life over another.

At the top of each month, we challenge our LifeTracker Planner users to decide proactively which area of their life - and in turn, which goal - they’re going to focus on that month. What will it be - work, love, wellness, or other? You can only pick ONE.

Now, this can be stressful at first for the chronic multi-tasker, but it’s temporary! And that’s what makes it effective. If you’re really trying to exercise more but you also hate your job and desperately need to find a new one, only you can consciously decide which should take precedent for now. What will it be this month? Job search or exercise plan? By deciding up front which will be your priority, you head off the inevitable guilt that sets in when life happens, and your limited time and energy are by default strained by trying to do it all.

And hey, if you get all 3 action steps done on your priority goal, then you can pivot to focusing on the other action items on your list.

Highlighting is nice because it’s temporary. You’re not saying that exercising more isn’t important. You’re just saying to yourself, it’s not the most important goal I’m pursuing this month. Next month you can change your focus if need be.

By forcing proactive decision, you prevent the reactive defaulting to whatever’s most convenient.

3. Rewards!

Now, to be honest, the goal attainment research is still split when it comes to rewards. Some researchers will say that extrinsic rewards - like prizes you give yourself for achieving your goals - are self-defeating. Others will say that celebrating your wins matters a lot.

I’m in camp Rewards Work! Because, frankly, most of the hardworking women I know could be a little nicer to ourselves. We’ve been conditioned our whole lives to be nice, caring, and compassionate to others. When do we celebrate self-compassion in the same way?

I’m a big believer in aiming high and then enjoying the climb. The women who use this planner have big, audacious goals. But that doesn’t mean we should suffer our way to success, does it? That’s why the final step of the LifeTracker worksheet asks you to list out one nice thing you’re going to do for yourself for completing all 3 of your highlighted action items that month. If you highlighted your job search goal, you get to treat yourself once you’ve taken those 3 action steps you plotted out on your LifeTracker that month!

Some examples of rewards I’ve set for myself this year include: getting a facial, a massage, buying a new pair of jeans, and booking a local mini-getaway!

Were these all nice things I probably was going to do for myself anyway? Sure! But by tying them to my achievements, I motivate myself to get things done.

4. Communal Accountability

Hands-down, the most special component to the LifeTracker Planner is the community that comes with it. We know the science shows that sharing your goals with an accountability buddy makes you more likely to achieve them. And furthermore, I think we all know how helpful it can be to talk things through with a friend when the going gets tough. That’s why we get together as a community on quarterly accountability calls all year long to keep up our motivation and support one another on the journey to achieving our wildest ambitions.

Plus, I start every January off with 3 LIVE master classes, at which time I walk you through all the science and psychology that informs the LifeTracker Planner’s design, so you’re set up for success from month 1 on!

The LifeTracker Planner is truly a development that grew out of the incredible community of Bossed Up women across the globe who come together online to support and champion one another. So if you’ve never our planner - or never used any planner - before, I want to warmly invite you to join us. Your goals and ambitions matter. You matter. If you believe your goals are worth working towards, you’re going to love the ways this planner can support you.