I look forward to reading more of yours. Thanks!

I’m growing my fledgling business. After 6 months, I have half a dozen clients and am in the black, though I’m not drawing a salary.

Connecting with out-of-town family and friends on a regular basis — planning to talk to someone on the list once a week.

Clean out more clutter. The house still has too much stuff in it.

Read more books. (Read: make more time to read more books.)

Get my 5K back under 30 minutes. I don’t know if this will physically be possible (heart issues as a result of chemo), but there’s only one way to find out…

A longer list than I usually make (many years, I haven’t had a list at all), but they’re all do-able…

Cheers

My “one problem” was lack of exercise so I’ve been doing simple body weight exercises for a few weeks just to get in the habit. I plan on starting to lift weights as soon as I find a good used set on Craigslist. It worked for me years ago (went from 190 to 165), so I’m going to try it again. I also want to continue learning how to cook simple, healthy meals.

Here’s the outline I came up with in my head while driving a kid around this morning:

Main Goal: Decrease stress/anxiety

(Where does my stress come from? I’ll ponder that as well, but I think it’s mostly my brain/style, which has worsened with the addition of kids and age! Also, tend to work better under semi-stress, motivate myself by imagining deadlines or the bad consequences of not doing somethin, etc. )

I annihilated the main part of it by resigning from an untenable job. That relieved a WHOLE lot of stress, but of course, adds a few complications too!

Here’s what I’ve brainstormed as steps to achieve my goal (it’s a hard one to measure, I’m afraid, though these smaller steps are more measurable):

– decrease caffeine and sugar intake
– daily exercise, even if it’s as simple as 15 minutes of dancing/jumping around the house or walking to errands more often
– carve out daily time for designated quiet leisure (reading) and stick to it
– set up more times to get together with friends and do same for youngest child
– actually stick to some sort of quick relaxation routine that can be practiced anywhere
– work on decluttering
– control the web use
– work on choosing three top, not huge, things to get done a day (from zen habits?)
– make the call, write the quick email or note when I think of it rather than planning to do it and then thinking about it for days.

There, that’s nine…say 5 weeks on each to cement it in? Though a couple of the first few should probably go together all at once. Will ponder!

Thanks for the idea!

I think 132 minutes a day of anything might be a bit excessive. Take a look at The Four Hour Body to see what’s possible in much less time. Imagine having all that extra time each day available for comic books…

Darren

I have two goals for 2011:

1. Health – I’m currently weaning myself off two drugs I take and focusing on getting up and exercising at the same time every day. (The trials of the self-employed – no structure in your day! )

2. Earning a specific minimum for FY2011, so that I can wave my healthy earnings at the banks and buy an apartment in July. I already have the deposit.

Hooray for a new year and a new beginning!

As it happens, my 2011 goals post will be going live tomorrow morning, and it covers more than just finance and getting in shape, and I answer the question of whether it makes sense to tackle a number of goals…

Congrats on the weight loss JD. Heck of an accomplishment!

I have been trying to get away from my overdependence on my to-do list for the past month. In a week I’ll let myself go back to it, with one over-arching goal: meaningful progress, on a monthly basis, in each area of interest.

In 2009, I did the 100 push-up challenge (day 1 – 1 pushup, day 2 – 2 pushups… etc). I even added a 100 situp challenge to it. I finished it, but after the first 100 days of the year, I had nothing left to aim for and just stopped.

This year, I came up with 4 fitness goals. Run 365km, bike 1000km, swim 365 laps, and climb 52 hours. As this year comes to a close, I will just finish my running goal (am just under 9km away at the moment), I have climbed for over 80 hours, biked 835 and swam 249. Yes – two of those goals were not completed. However, when I added up all the time I spent exercising this year – walking, hiking, climbing, swimming, biking, curling, running, step class, etc I’ve worked out for over 245 hours or about 41 minutes a day! I can’t complain now about missing those two goals.

Right now, I’m thinking of biking, running and climbing goals for 2011. However, I agree with @Chris Parsons – I’m not sure about setting just this one goal. I’m a PhD student and I think I need to come up with some goals for that area of my life as well.

@Ally – I feel I could be you on a bunch of your points. I give a HUGE thumbs up for C25K. I started it in 2007 which was the same year I ran my first 10k. I ran a half the next year, and am now just running more for fun and fitness.

The goal of having a goal is self improvement, and the satisfaction when fulfilled, so don’t make goals you *know* you’re not going to do.

My typical yearly goals look something like this:

- See Lady Gaga in concert
- Improve my 3rd language
- Learn a new dance
- Read more books
- take professional engineering exam (and licensure) or some other equivalent post college career related education.
- Mexico City, Paris or Puerto Rico (travel goals)
-skydiving (or something equally daring)

Everytime I see a good opportunity, or extra time, I don’t hesitate or contemplate what to do because I already know what I want and how much I’m willing to pay for the cost, and I pretty much wait for the right moment. Its like sniping. This means if I see a Groupon for skydiving or a dance lesson, I am ready to go.

I check my list every couple of months and modify accordingly.

When you make goals with varying degrees of difficulty, obtaining the smaller goal is often a boost or motivator to achieve a larger goal.

You do not necessarily have to have only one goal for 2011. You can have a handful of goals, but focus on one at a time. Get one done, out of the way, and then move unto the next. If one goal takes you the whole year, others simply have to roll over

It is very tempting to multitask, and get nothing done well. Thank you for the reminder

I like this goal system, I may have to re-blog this before the end of the day.

Also, I think it’s great advice. I’ve never been very food at multi-tasking, so I almost work on one thing at a time for a lack of ability to focus otherwise. It works for me, even if each thing takes more or less time than one year.

http://thenonconsumeradvocate.com/2010/12/happy-new-year-youre-fat-and-unorganized/

Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without”

I do intend to make changes for 2011 – my #1 goal is to have the credit cards paid off. Assuming my house refi goes through within the month of January, I should have enough money leftover to pay off the cards – for good! Then, on to the student loans.