I think it was in early 2020 when my wife listened to an episode about couples goal-setting retreats on Bigger Pockets. I wasn’t big into setting goals at the time, but I was immediately on board with this. As a married couple, we’re on the same team. That means we should be working towards the same things. So it makes perfect sense that we should set goals together. I’ve also wanted to go on a retreat for a while now. I’ve heard of CGP Grey’s “greycations” and Myke Hurley’s “Hurley Day” on Cortex as well as the personal retreat from Faith-Based Productivity and sabbaticals from Sean McCabe (which was also discussed on Focused).
We went on a couples goal-setting retreat near the beginning of 2020 (thankfully after COVID-19, so we didn’t have to change all our plans). And this last December, we set goals for 2021.
It’s so valuable to get on the same page as a couple and I think it’s more important than a personal goal-setting retreat because your spouse is your most important relationship.
Both times, we went to a fancy hotel so that we were away from the distractions of our own home. We followed the schedule from The One Thing’s blog post and we use their PDF to guide us. Last year I used MindNode to make a mindmap of our answers. This year I used Roam Research, but then switched to MindNode for goal-setting. Most of the time is devoted to answering questions, but there is also plenty of time to rest and spend time together as a couple.
After going through the questions. We come up with our goals together. Then we plan on reviewing them during our date nights every other week throughout the year. The other thing we do is plan out our camping trips and vacations throughout the year. This has been hard with COVID-19, but we can at least plan camping trips.