Monthly Reset Routine: How To Prepare for a New Month
Ever feel like another month—or year—has flown by and you don’t have much to show for it? Wishing you could complete your goals and take control of your life? You might be in need of a monthly reset.
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A new month for me always feels like New Year’s. A chance to make new goals and keep striving for better…but it didn’t used to feel that way. I used to feel like the year was passing me and I’d just try to do better next year. A monthly reset completely changed everything!
I’m going to walk you through my process so you can start feeling more successful, accomplish your goals and set intentions that will improve every area of your life!
What Is A Monthly Reset
A monthly reset is a habit you can start at the very end of each month (usually the 29th or 30th works best for me) so that you can plan for the upcoming month and set achievable goals for yourself. You’re going to be reevaluating different areas of your life including health and fitness, lifestyle and professional development.
If you’d like to add another category like finance, relationships, spirituality, etc. you certainly can but I personally like keeping it to a minimum of 3 categories since the goals I’m aiming to achieve should be done within the next 30 days.
Benefits of Doing a Monthly Reset
Monthly resets are the perfect way to reflect on the previous month and set bite-sized goals and intentions.
Since starting this habit I’ve noticed an improvement in many areas of my life including:
Increased productivity
Committing to my workouts
Eating healthier and gaining more knowledge about the food I choose
More positive mindset with less effort
Reducing stress
Aligning my actions with my priorities
Living my life with intention
What You’ll Need
Setting goals is great but the saying “out of sight, out of mind” rings true for positive elements of life just as much as the negatives. I’m big on keeping my goals in front of me at all times so I utilize both physical notebooks along with my electronics.
Notebook // Pens // Highlighters // Wall Calendar // To-Do List // Journal
If you want to do everything on your phone, tablet or computer then please feel free, but in my opinion there’s something about writing things down on paper that just makes them feel more real.
How To Do A Monthly Reset
1. Review Last Month’s Goals
The first step is always reflecting on how you spent the previous month. No matter what you’re looking to change in your life—whether it’s taking charge of your fitness, finances, home environment, or a monthly reset—you need to know what has or hasn’t been working for you.
What goals did you accomplish? What were your intentions? Did you set these at all or were you more focused on trying to keep up with the day to day tasks of every day life?
Don’t worry if that’s how you spent your time. It’s easy to get caught up in the small stuff. Especially nowadays when the world around us is moving so quickly and costing so much. It’s hard to stop and focus on yourself when you feel like you’re just trying to keep your head above water.
Doing a monthly reset is going to help you from feeling this way. I know they say life happens when you’re planning, but that’s only if you take forever to finish planning. A monthly reset should only take about 2o-30 minutes. You can create it in less time than it takes to rewatch a Friends episode.
Taking a half hour out of your day to create goals for each month will help you focus on what you really want and help you achieve your biggest goals and dreams. These are the stepping stones that move you closer to the finish line and make your big goals feel bite sized and easier to achieve.
2. Journal Prompts
When I’m reviewing last month and planning for the next one, it’s easiest to use quick and simple journal prompts. Getting straight to the point is the best way to acknowledge your accomplishments, how you were feeling, get honest about what really helped or hurt you and be able to properly plan for the next 30 days.
Here are the journal prompts I use for each monthly reset:
What did I accomplish this month?
How was I feeling this month? Why?
What didn’t work this month?
What can I do better next month?
3. Highs & Lows
Reflecting on your highs and lows is a great way to celebrate your wins and learn from your mistakes. I know it’s not fun reliving the lows but if you want to make the next month’s highs outweigh the lows, this is an important step to your reset. Don’t be too hard on yourself if there were more lows than you’d like from the past month, though. It’s completely normal to have tougher times but picking yourself up and working towards better is what makes you stronger.
4. Brain Dump
Grab your notebook and let all your thoughts free! Write down everything that’s on your mind. What is making you feel happy? What do you want to change? What do you envision when you see yourself succeeding? Waking up earlier? Getting outside more each day? Have you read any books from that pile you keep adding to? Is your home a total mess or what can you do make it feel like a safe haven? What needs to get done next month? What do you need to buy or what would you like to save? What needs to be scheduled?
Highlight your top three priorities for 3-4 categories (health & fitness, lifestyle, work, financial). The others can be goals you can tackle later.
5. Set New Goals & Intentions
Now that you’ve narrowed down your top priorities from your brain dump let them guide you as you make new goals and intentions for the month.
These goals should be connected to your yearly goals. For example, if your yearly goal is to lose 20 pounds then your monthly goals can include working out 3x a week, eating healthy home cooked meals and getting 5-10k steps in each day. These small steps will get you closer to your year’s goal. Same goes for financial goals. Maybe you want to save $1,000 in a year. Your monthly goals could include only eating out 2 times a month for less than $30, saving $20 a week (that’s all it takes to reach $1,000 a year), and making your own coffee at home or preparing lunch each night before work.
Small steps and goals compound quickly and make your big goals bite-sized and attainable. Categorizing them also helps you stay organized so you don’t feel overwhelmed by a bunch of goals you’re trying to juggle. As I mentioned above, choose 3-4 categories such as health & fitness, lifestyle, work and finances, so that you can place 3 goals in each each one.
6. Make a Vision or Mood Board
Who doesn’t love a beautiful vision board? I always make one for the month and the year to keep in sight. I like to use them as my phone and iPad background so I always keep my goals right in front of me as a constant reminder. You can also print them out and frame them so that when you get out of bed they’re the first thing you see. Start your day with positivity that encourages you to keep working towards what you want.
I also create one specifically for business to keep on my computer since that’s where I do most of my work. My phone is always giving me “that girl” vibes while my computer and laptop channels a “boss babe” persona.
Pinterest and Canva are great places for creating vision boards. If you don’t feel comfortable creating one from scratch you can always search for ones others have created. Not all of us feel like we can create something from an empty page and that’s okay. The world needs people with the ability to create and those with the ability to see.
7. Set A Finance Budget
Tracking your money is never as much fun as spending it, I know. Especially when you look back and realize just how much you did spend. My mother and friends always told me I shop like my life depends on it so going back to look at what I did in a month could sometimes make me feel terrible about my choices and super stressed. Adulting, however, has plenty of downsides and budgeting is just one of them. Finding a way to take charge of those downsides is something you’ll never regret doing.
Tracking your money is never as much fun as spending it, I know. Especially when you look back and realize just how much you did spend. My mother and friends always told me I shop like my life depends on it so going back to look at what I did in a month could sometimes make me feel terrible about my choices and super stressed. Adulting, however, has plenty of downsides and budgeting is just one of them. Finding a way to take charge of those downsides is something you’ll never regret doing.
If you struggle with setting a budget or finance goals you can use an app to help you take control. Your banking app probably offers a budgeting feature but I never felt like mine was user friendly. Rocket Money is my favorite budgeting app! It’s marketed as an app to cancel subscriptions you forgot about but honestly that’s just a nice feature to me. It’s free (you tell them what you want to pay, even if that’s $0) and allows you to track recurring charges, create a monthly budget and tell you how much you can spend daily to achieve it. You can also set a savings target that will automatically save the amount you choose so you don’t have to think about setting money aside. Plus, you can keep an eye on your credit score and see what’s really affecting it.
8. Update Your Calendar
Let’s run through your calendar and make sure everything is set up for you to succeed. A wall calendar is great for you to mark down appointments, birthdays, and important dates as a visual reminder. I put absolutely everything into my phone’s calendar though. I schedule my work day and special events but it doesn’t stop there. I have my morning and evening routines in there, bills and subscriptions with a reminder the week before so they don’t sneak up on me, anticipated income, workouts and 10-15 minute walking reminders, even when I plan to go to bed and wake up so I can get a solid night’s sleep.
Utilize your calendars! I have another calendar for my desk that’s dedicated to work tasks so I make the most of my days and hit my daily work goals.
9. Deep Clean Your Space
Oh, how I love a deep clean! I usually schedule a 3 hour deep clean each week during my Sunday Reset that includes doing laundry, clearing out things I no longer use, cleaning my sheets, countertops, floors and once a month cleaning my windows. I also have a daily goal in my habit tracker of Focused Home Organizing that’s only three easy tasks: clean counters, put everything away I used, organize one small area.
Living in a clean home helps you combat stress and truly love the space you call home. Creating small cleaning habits for each day, week and month keeps your home from getting too dirty so you don’t feel swamped by a massive cleaning day.
10. Digital Declutter
This is something that is often overlooked but immensely helps with anxiety and improves your productivity, and your phone’s as well. My phone used to have random freezes or would lose battery fast and I realized that it was because my storage space was being crushed by duplicate photos and apps I never use. The same thing was happening with my email and I had 40,oo0 junk emails coming through.
Delete all the unnecessary stuff: screenshots, duplicate photos or ones you don’t need anymore; clear out your inbox, unsubscribe to email lists you don’t care about; organize your apps into folders (a godsend feature to have an organized home screen). Your phone will look so much more organized and simple so that you won’t feel so stressed trying to find what you’re looking for.
Tips for Success
~ Don’t Go Overboard: As mentioned before, I like to focus on 3 categories for my monthly resets. Burnout can creep in very easily so start off small and see what you’re comfortable adding into your routine
~ Reminders: I love ticking off my checklists! Create reminders on your phone or habit tracking app to complete daily tasks that will accumulate towards reaching your weekly and monthly goals
~ Schedule Your Resets: I like to schedule my monthly reset during the last Sunday Reset of the month. For example, the last Sunday of this month is the 27th so I’ll be doing my August Monthly Reset that day. It’s the calmest day of the week for me and I’m already focused on resetting for the week so an extra 20-30 minutes of planning doesn’t feel like a task that gets in the way of anything important during the work week
