Blissipline: the combination of bliss and discipline. Being in the now, which is bliss, as we strive towards achieving our goals, which takes discipline. I love the play on words here. Finding the fun, being in the now. Especially with those things that can be tedious at times, that challenge us, that grow us, that require a little bit more perseverance and grit.

I used to do my annual goals in January, but it always felt like it was the end of January before I was kicking into it. And my cousin was home one Christmas. We're from a pretty cycling mad family, and he's a world champion; he's won Olympic medals.

He explained how leading into Christmas each year, Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins always trains on Christmas day because he feels like he's getting ahead of the game mentally. He feels like he's getting a bit ahead of the competition, and he's setting himself up for a successful start to the year.

For some reason this resonated with me. So I pulled my annual goals back from doing them January to December, it was now actually starting in October, November. I'm starting a little bit earlier to feel like I'm getting ahead of the game and getting a good run into things. I simply pull out an annual calendar and plot down all the dates that are known at that point in time. So MDRT, any weddings, etc. I've started pulling my wife into doing this. We started doing this two years ago. We do this jointly, which was helpful:

Career. I look at any career development that I want to do for that year. Could be new courses I want to go on, any compliance stuff, etc. Also, what do I need to do for the career of my staff in order to get them upskilled?

Financial. How's my financial revenue? Where are my different revenue streams going to come from? I look at my different investment properties, some other business interests that I have. I get really specific on about how my revenue is going to come in, and then I do a budget for when it's all going to go out as well.

Intellectual. Up until four years ago, I'd only ever read five books in my whole life. Partly because I always struggle with reading. My wife's a doctor, and she probably thinks I've got mild dyslexia, although I haven't actually been officially diagnosed. When you live with a doctor, you're always being diagnosed. After learning some new techniques and different ways to do things, I just got a thirst for knowledge, for reading now. With this year I set myself a goal of 30 books, and I'm already into my 32nd book.

Relationships. By bringing my wife into this, one thing we realized was we didn't have much time for us and for our daughters. We've got little twin girls who are coming up to seven. So this actually helped us get really clear on actually blocking out time for us. We didn't know what we were going to do, but this was going to be our time. We started actually being specific about taking time out for us.

Community. Giving back. We have recently given back to Free the Wild. It's a charity set up by Cher. It helps animals in captivity and also looking further into the future to enable new technologies to take them out of captivity.

Adventures. One of the adventures was my dad; he'd always wanted to go to Bathurst. Bathurst is a famous car racing race in Australia. So last year my brother and I took him over there for his 65th birthday. I'm into mountain biking and cycling, but also just like to do mountain biking adventures. Two, three-day adventures.

Spiritual. For me this is meditation. I try different meditation techniques and retreats.

Environment. How do you want your environment to look? Who are the people you're going to hang out with? What sort of food are you going to eat? I do a 90-day office cleanse. Every 90 days I have a real good clean-out of all my office. Taking time out constantly to see how your environments looking.

Quarterly preview. Here I'm looking back to look forward. What were my biggest wins for the quarter? How many did I get? What worked, what didn't? What will I keep doing? What will I improve on? What will I start doing, and what will I stop doing? I grill this into my weekly review as well.

And then full annual review. Revisit the annual goals and celebrate victories.