What You Must Do So 2011 Doesn’t Suck

Happy 2011 everyone!!  I hope everyone had a great holiday season and is ready to get back to work.  If you are anything like me, I ate way too much, stayed up way to late, and worked out way to little.  Today is a new day though and it is time to get back on track and make 2011 the best year yet!

How do we do that?

Goals of course!

If you haven’t came up with your goals for this year, now is the time.  Every year I take the last week of the year and lay out the goals I want to accomplish for the coming year.  This year was no exception, and in the spirit of being more transparent, I will share them with you in this post.  But before I do, I want to give you a refresher on what it take to set meaningful and achievable goals.

Written

If your goals are not written, they are not goals, they are dreams.  Let me say that again, if your goals are not written, they are not goals, they are dreams.  I cannot stress this enough, you MUST write your goals down.  After you write them down, make sure you put them somewhere that you can see them EVERYDAY.  I always tape mine to my mirror in the bathroom so I see them and review them every morning while I am getting ready.  Why do you think resolutions never get accomplished?  Because people forget about them!  So write them down and review them everyday.

Attainable

You goals also must be attainable.  Now I am not saying don’t set high goals for yourself, just make sure they are possible to achieve.  If you are 5′ 5″ and 300lbs, you should not set the goal to play in the NBA All-Star game at the end of the year.  I have set some pretty ambitious goals over the years, some I have achieved and some I have not, but I always make sure it was at least possible.  So make your goals huge, but make them possible!

Measurable

Your goals have to be measurable.  What this means is you don’t want to set a goal such as “I want to lose weight”.  What does that mean? One pound? Two-hundred pounds?  As you can see it is not measurable.  A better goal would read “I will lose 20 pounds of fat.” Whatever the goal, it needs to be measurable so you will know exactly when you achieve it.

So just remember the acronym W. A. M. when it comes to setting your goals and you will have a great 2011!

*Bonus Tips*

The above are the minimum when it comes to setting your goals for the New Year, but who wants to just do the minimum?  Because no one wants to just do the minimum, I decided to add a couple of bonus tips that will supercharge your goals this year.

Baby Steps

Each of your goals should be broken down, if possible, into baby goals.  These should be small enough that you will see some type of progress as often as practicable.  Using our 20 pounds of fat weight loss example, you might break it down into the following goals:

• Join a gym
• Get my body fat measured
• Get a personal trainer
• Walk a mile on the treadmill
• Run a mile on the treadmill
• Put a nutrition plan together
• Run 5k
• Etc,

By breaking your goals down into smaller bite size chunks, you will see progress which will motivate you to keep on going.  There is nothing like the feeling of crossing something off of your list!

Commitment

One thing that will be a huge motivator for some people is knowing that other people know you are trying to achieve your goal.  Sometimes just knowing this will make you want to reach your goal so you aren’t embarrassed by not reaching it.  There are many different ways to do this, you could tell a close friend, maybe even make it a contest to see who can achieve their goals first.  There are also several sites on the Internet where you can join up with others trying to reach the same goal and help motivate each other.  Whatever you do, make sure it will help your commitment to the goal.

So following on my last tip, I have decided that this year I am going to post my top ten goals for the year and update everyone throughout the year on my progress, and the specific steps I am going to take to reach my goals.

1. Max out my retirement accounts
   I almost made it this year, but some miscalculations prevented me from completely maxing it out.  This year I am making some adjustments and should be able to hit this one pretty easily.
2. Spend three weeks on vacation in Australia
   We actually lived in Sydney for a few months and still have good friends over there.  We are planning on spending a month over there this summer (US) while the kids are out of school.  This will take some planning and saving though, so I will keep you posted on the plans.
3. Get my body fat to 12%
   This is going to be a bit of a challenge because I love to eat and drink.  I just took measurements at the beginning of the year (first baby goal achieved) and rang in at a whopping 24%, so I am going to have to lose half of my body fat over the year.  Just as a point of reference, I am 6′ 4″ and 234lbs.  I will also update everyone on my progress here.  Another baby goal related to this one is I want to run the NYC Marathon this year.  I have registered for it, but I won’t know until April if I have been chosen, but as soon as I know, you will know.
4. Become conversationally fluent in Spanish
   I live in Texas, so speaking Spanish will really come in handy.  While I can get by in a Spanish speaking country as far as finding the bathroom and ordering a meal, I want to be able to strike up a conversation and understand what people are saying around me.  My main tool for this is going to be the Rosetta Stone products.  My eight year old daughter is going to be learning with me, so I know I can’t let her down!
5. Learn to play piano
   Yes, before you say anything, I know this is not really a measurable goal.  However, I have smaller goals that will be very measurable, and I really see this as an ongoing goal since when you play an instrument you don’t ever really finish learning.  I do want to learn well enough by the end of the year that I can sit down and entertain guests on the piano at our Christmas party.  This means one of my baby goals is actually getting a piano.
6. Finish 50 Best Pictures
   One of my lifetime goals is to watch all of the Best Picture Academy Award winners.  Last year my goal was to have finished half of them, which I did.  As a point of reference, after this years award ceremonies there will have been 83 winners.  By the end of the year I want to have finished at least 50 of them.  This means I need to finish watching 9 movies this year.
7. Have 5000 subscribers to Find Your Peak
   Here is where you can help.   If you are reading this, please sign up for my mailing list or my RSS feed.  I am going to measure this using my RSS feed which includes my mailing list subscribers.  I would recommend the mailing list.  I have some special things in mind for this year for my mailing list subscribers, so if you are not signed up, you will be left out.  Also, I won’t inundate your inbox with a ton of emails.  You will get a notice when I post something on this blog, and maybe an email or two extra and that is it.  If it gets to be too much you can always just hit the unsubscribe button!
8. Break 90 in golf
   This also might be a bit difficult, but if it gets me on the course more have I really failed?  As a point of reference, I shoot around 110 now, and I played golf maybe 5 times last year.  I have already joined a golf club, so I either get out there and play, or my money goes to waste since I committed to a year contract.
9. Travel to South America
   This is probably a slam dunk since I am slated to go to Brazil for business.  One of my lifetime goals is to visit every continent, and I still have South America, Africa, and Antarctica left so this will knock one more off of the list!
10. Double my income and net worth from 2010
    This is one of my stretch goals, but I think it is possible if everything goes the way I want it to this year.  I have some other projects I am working on which I will talk about in another post that if they work out could get me pretty close to achieving this one.  Wish me luck!

So there are my goals for 2011, now it is your turn.  Let me know some of your top goals in the comments below!

Let’s have a great and prosperous 2011!

Image credit: I, Luca Galuzzi [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

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