Setting new goals is a popular thing to do this time of year. Even though I like to evaluate my progress and make new goals throughout the year, there’s something more exciting about making New Year’s resolutions. So much so that I’ve never understood why some people hate making resolutions. Perhaps those folks suffer from passiveness and the inability to commit to change, or struggle at setting realistic and achievable goals. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. If you personally dislike making resolutions please enlighten me in the comments, I’d love hear your perspective!
Even though there are always resolutions that I fail to complete each year, there are plenty that I do achieve and I can’t deny that it feels great. I’m a firm believer that we are never too old to stop learning and challenging ourselves! I’m publicly announcing my resolutions for the first time in my life and it’s bit intimidating! But I hoping that publishing my list will get me extra motivated to work on everything throughout the whole year.
For the past 6 years now I’ve made large lists of resolutions in several different categories. For my 2012 goals I’m going to focus on 4 main areas. It will be a challenge to keep up with every goal I’ve set for myself, but I think I’ve set realistic targets based on my anticipated work hours, ongoing to-do list, and schedule. I’m sure there will be unexpected events that eat up chunks of my time, but I’m not going to let that stop me from having a large list of goals! Some of these may seem like petty goals to you but they touch on my weaknesses in one way or another and I’m always looking for ways I can grow and improve. 🙂
Here are my 2012 goals:
Health & Fitness
- Eat 2 or more servings of raw fruits, vegetables, or nuts each day
- Drink at least 5 cups of water a day on the weekends when I tend to forget to stay hydrated
- Make 1 or more meal a week from only fresh ingredients, not processed or frozen
- Switch to a vegetarian or vegan multivitamin
- Stretch at least every other day and do a full yoga or ballet workout 2-3 times a month
- Take Bollywood classes 3-4 times a month
Organization & Awareness
- Clean 2-3x a week in small 10 minute increments instead of letting everything pile up
- Make more of an effort to remember people’s names & improve my memory skills
- Continue my obsessive minimalism journey, donate 10-15 bags from my place and my parents
- Work on improving my focus, block out distractions, get more done in less time
- Archive my old data CDs/DVDs onto my external hard drive & ditch the loose copies
Travel & Adventure
- Learn 5 new skills in Photoshop or Aperture & apply them to my travel photos
- See at least 5 new places either local or foreign
- Reteach myself geography. As much as I love travel, it’s embarrassing how much I’ve forgotten since school
- Learn a few phrases in Hindi and Thai, 2 languages I know very little about (my dream is to be a polyglot someday)
Social Outreach & Communication
- Aim to meet & build meaningful relationships with 5-6 new local and online friends
- Quit mumbling when I speak and enunciate clearly so I’m easier to understand
- Get better at small talk and having engaging conversations
- Better utilize social platforms like Twitter and FB
- Learn at least 3 new technical things about SEO and blogging each month
- Publish 115-130 articles (2-2.5 times/week) in 2012 on Untemplater!
I’ve got a lot to keep me busy in 2012!
Check out my progress: 1st Quarter 2012
Untemplaters, what are some of your 2012 goals? How many goals do you typically set for yourself each year? If you dislike making New Year’s resolutions, why is that?
I need to continue improving my Mandarin and continue to build up side income. I also need to increase my reader engagement as I find the comments are a bit lighter than they used to be.
I think Mandarin is such a neat language too. I’ve learned some phrases but have a hard time remembering which tones to use so I’m always embarrassed to say something for fear of getting the tones wrong and saying something totally off. 🙂 Since I’m typing I’ll wish you, jia you!
Pretty impressive set of goals, Sydney. I especially like the one about Hindi and Thai. A few words at a time, and soon enough they become embedded somewhere in the frontal lobe.
One of my mini-goals last year was to learn more Portuguese. It languished until the last quarter, when I become more involved in operations down in Sao Pauo. By using Google Translate to write emails, I’ve sort of picked up more words here and there.
Thanks! Portuguese is such a beautiful language. I have a friend who speaks it fluently and I always love hearing her talk to her family. That’s really cool you’re learning the language and getting involved with work in Sao Paulo!
Awesome goals Sydney. I always forget to drink water too. I am using outlook now to remind me (yeah I am lame 🙂 ) I am planning to join toastmasters this year to improve my non-existent communication skills. Photoshop is in my list too, I signed up for lynda.com hopefully I will make use of it well 🙂
There is nothing lame about outlook reminders! You should see how many calendar reminders I have lol. I even have one to remind me to blink every so often since I’m on the computer so much and my eyes get really dry. I didn’t realize how little we blink when we’re staring at the computer until my eye doc told me. Nice one on toastmasters and good call on signing up for lynda.com. I’ve got a bunch of photoshop video podcasts I should finally get around to watching.
Eating more Veggies is a good resolution. I’m going to join you on this one too.
Nice Tushar! I went to a new lunch place today and raided the salad bar. I loaded up on mushrooms, avocado, spinach, beets, and green beans!
Great goals, but it seems like there maybe too many things to do. They will keep you busy, that’s for sure. Good luck!!! I’ll try to do yoga twice a week as well.
It’s a big list for sure but a year is a long time! I’ve never felt bad about doing too much, but I have felt disappointed in myself when I’ve done too little. I’m hoping that improving my focus will keep my momentum going and prevent me from getting frustrated on extra busy days.
I like the goals, and I wish you the best of luck on them and a great new year! The articles one seems huge up front, but if we continually write then it’s not so bad.
You too! Yeah, when I calculated out how many posts it could be I was a bit shocked by the size of the number too. I’m always impressed with how some bloggers publish full articles every day.
Wow, pretty specific (no one can accuse you of being vague!). I wish you luck – I’m going to try to donate a fair amount of stuff this year as well. I wouldn’t call myself obsessively minimalist, but there is definitely stuff we have that would be more useful to others, heh.
Thanks! I’m looking forward to helping my parents declutter their houses this year. I still have some of my old things there that I really have no use for anymore so I should be able to give away a lot of books and old clothes. It feels so good getting rid of things that are just hogging up space!
Those are excellent, very detailed goals Sydney! How did you do on your 2011 goals? Here’s to wishing you the very best and a very happy new year!
Thanks Moneycone! 2011 turned out pretty well for me. I didn’t get as much consistent exercising in as I wanted though, so that’s why I put in several fitness goals for 2012. I’m having so much fun with my Bollywood classes that I think I should be able to get an hour a week of exercise in each week which is a lot better than I did in 2011!
Those are some great goals. I have some similar nutritional goals, trying to eat more raw foods and make some meals with unprocessed items. Good nutrition can often make us feel remarkably good. So far so good for today – all nutritious meals, with no money spent 🙂
Nice job starting off the year healthy Squirrelers and a nice bonus that you didn’t spend any money too! I remember I had more energy when I went vegan for 7 days so I’m hoping incorporating more raw foods into my diet and getting exercise more regularly will boost my overall energy level.
You are much braver than me with so many resolutions/goals for 2012. We incorporate at least one vegetarian meal a week. Have a Happy and healthy New Year.
I hope I can do well this year since I put them all out there! 🙂 One vegetarian meal a week is a great call. SF tried to get all restaurants to only serve vegetarian meals one day a week but it wasn’t passed. More and more restaurants have vegetarian and vegan sections on their menus now though which makes it really easy to order healthy options. Happy New Year to you too KC!
Nice specific goals Sydney! I like how you broke them down into different categories.
I’m going to join you on eating more vegetarian and learning some new skills on the ol computer.
Maintain this site for another 12 months and I’m sure you’ll grow tremendously!
HNY!
Sam
Thanks Sam! I find making goals in categories helps me stay balanced. Exercise has always been my least successful category so I’m hoping to have better luck there this year. Nice one on eating more vegetarian meals and computer skills. I just upgraded my Mac to OS Lion today and am loving it so far. Here’s to another exciting 12 months, Happy New Year!
I don’t like setting New Year’s Resolutions (and so I don’t do that) just because I think they are too vague. They’re typically more like good intentions (“I’m going to exercise more this year”) than actual goals. I like to ACHIEVE the things I set out to do, so for me that means making goals instead.
Ah I see, yeah vagueness makes it hard to monitor progress and measure success. Including details like time makes a big difference. I tried to make my 2012 goals specific so that I have clear targets that I’ll aim to hit. Achieving goals feels so good. 🙂