Resolutions

This is the time of year where most people create New Year Resolutions, and promptly give up on them after a few weeks. Resolutions and goals made at this time of year are always doomed to fail because they tend to be generated by guilt from the holidays, usually aren’t particularly well thought out, or something that people tend to stick with for the long haul.

My preference is to work on already established goals then review and revise them as the year goes on. At the moment I have a list of goals I created throughout the last couple of years that I’m trying to progress towards their next milestones, and at the end of January I’ll sit down and review them all to see which ones I need to do more work on. My take on the specific “New Year Resolution” is to take something from my list of long term goals and give it a little extra focus. For example, this year I’m going to focus on writing every single day. Not necessarily on the site, but to write something each and every day this year. It’s something I should already be doing, and is in fact a major item on my list of goals, but last year I had points where I knew I should have been writing, but did something else instead. I don’t want that to happen this year, and if I’m to reach the milestone I’ve set for six months into this year, writing every day is a must.

The list of goals I created throughout last year contain items from the many facets of my life, and are categorised under various heading such as “Career”, “Health”, “Finances”, etc. I currently have one of two items under each category, and then break those items down to various milestones that make sense for each of them. Those milestones cover six months, a year, three years, and one or two have a five year milestone. Even though I’ve set these goals out in detail, it doesn’t mean I won’t change them as the year goes on. The key, I’ve found, to successfully working with long term goals, is to write them down, and then review them every month or two. That lets you know how far away from your target you are, and whether you need to revise any specific goal for whatever reason. You need to have a solid overview, but also stay flexible with a lot of the details and willing to change them to make others work. In the past there have been goals I’ve completely changed, and others that were completely removed because they were no longer in the direction I wanted to go. It’s all about balance and knowing what you want from life.

I decided to refocus on writing every day, because writing is very important to me but at some point throughout last year other things began intruding into that part of my life. I picked up a few new hobbies, I got a promotion in my day job, and I had a lot of other things going on all at the same time. I stretched myself a little too thin and spent a lot of time last year feeling completely over run and burnt out. I lost my focus and because of that I missed several milestones I had set for the end of the year, and had to rework them. When I reviewed my goals at the end of the year and saw how many targets I had missed, I have to admit it bothered me.

2010 is the year I increase my productivity by working smarter, and make sure I get to exactly where I want to be in my life.