2008 Groundhog Day Resolutions
Ahhh. 2008.
The new year… broken in a little bit but still with that new year smell.
We’ve rounded the corner to February and its first holiday: Groundhog Day! Hey… that means it’s time to set some resolutions!
As my regular readers know, I’ve been following a scheme created by David Seah where I set resolutions on February 2nd, Groundhog Day, and review these goals on each month/day combination through the year (e.g. 3/3, 4/4, 5/5).
One of the most interesting concepts that emerges from this pattern happens during the holiday season. The last goal review day is in December (i.e. 12/12), and no goal review happens on 1/1. The theory is that no goals should be set on 12/12 either. That leaves a month and a half (give or take) to enjoy and recover from the holidays.
For me, that’s been great! Despite the craziness of moving to a new state, buying a house and trying to sell our old one, I really made sure to appreciate the time spent with friends and family… something I took for granted, I think, over previous holidays.
In January we moved our belongings from Wisconsin to Indiana. By purposefully not setting goals on New Year’s Day, I was free to concentrate on those things rather than the resolutions I wouldn’t be able to follow anyway. That took off a lot of pressure.
I also found having an extra month to think about resolutions to be a great benefit. Dave hit it on the head:
The timing of New Year’s Resolutions are out of sync with the realities of our daily routine. While it makes sense to make New Year’s Resolutions on January 1st as to maximize the time to act on them, the beginning of the year is also the time when you are most mentally exhausted. Think about it: you’ve just survived another massive holiday season of eating, traveling, drinking, gift buying, and celebration. On top of that, there’s all the stuff that you were hurrying to finish last year that got put off until now. The first month of the year is so packed with catch-up activities, who has the time to think about resolutions?
I figure you need at least a few weeks to settle into the year before you even have the big picture necessary to target a few things to do.
I put those few weeks to good use, and started listing out some general goals I would like will accomplish this year.
Priority Categories
As I began to assemble these goals, I wanted to see what I would come up with for priorities and the categories into which they fall. The way I see it, they fall into six main categories, conveniently all starting with the letter “F”.
The Six Fs
- Faith
- Of utmost priority should be my relationship with God. For those readers who aren’t Christians, this may seem silly, but in my experience having a right relationship with Him sets a good tone for the rest of the categories.
- Family
- The Wife and our two young men are the next highest priority. I’m to be the head of the household, and to lead well. Mostly that will happen through time spent. In the past, I’ve seen interacitons with the family as a hindrance to work or other things I’m trying to do. But they are the second in priority over work.
- Friends
- I need to keep in contact with my current friends and meet new friends as we settle in. Because I work from home, this will be a challenge as my interactions with the outside world consist mostly of the barista at the local coffee shop.
- Finances
- This category, for me, is actually less about specific dollar and cents as it is about my business (i.e. work). Keeping the business up and running over the next year will be a major challenge. Again because I work from home, my interactions in the business world are something I need to be deliberate about.
- Fitness
- Last April, I started getting up in the mornings and exercising six days a week. I combined this with improving my diet and saw some great results. Unfortunately, I lost steam on the exercise front in September, and with all that went down in Q4, my diet was shot as well. I need to watch my health again.
- Fun
- Everybody needs a little fun. Ok, not really, but I want to make sure to keep a focus on having a bit of relaxation. This will keep other things in balance. This category may also cover some of the other categories, like family or fitness (read: Dance Dance Revolution for the PS2).
When it comes down to a choice between one of two priorities, one higher in the list should (in most cases) take priority over the other.
The Goals
- Daily Devotions. Spend at least 7 minutes on prayer and Bible study each day. Going to church does not count as part of this. (Faith)
- Weekly Family Devotions. As a family spend one evening doing a devotional or Bible study. Help the kids memorize a Bible verse they can apply to their lives. (Faith, Family)
- Take two hours, on separate days, to do something individually with each of the boys. Some examples might be playing video games, building Lego or Geocaching. Playing music or reading is also an option. Most importantly, I should not try to wait until Sunday to do this. (Family)
- Have a date night out of the house once per month with The Wife (e.g. theater, movies). (Family)
- Spend Saturday nights with The Wife doing something together (e.g. watching a movie, playing Scrabble). (Family)
- Contact one friend from Wisconsin each week to touch base and keep our relationship going. (Friends).
- Connect with a small group and attend regularly. I’m setting a completion date of 4/4 because finding the right small group can take some time. (Faith, Friends)
- Work out 6 days a week for a minimum of 20 minutes. (Fitness)
- Floss at least once a day. This seems like a stupid goal, but I think it helps build self discipline. And it’s good for me too. (Fitness)
- Read 4 fiction books this year. That’s one per quarter, and can mostly be done in the evenings right before bed. I’m not setting any goal for non-fiction or total books this year. Four books will be twice as many books as I read last year. (Fun).
- Redesign uhri.com. I’m setting a date of 6/6 for this one as it’s definitely not a high priority. (Fun).
- Write one 1000 word blog post per week. That isn’t much, in terms of posts, but I think it is a reasonable goal to start with. (Finance, Fun)
- Practice guitar 10 minutes a day. I used to play guitar, but haven’t played in years. With one definitely musical son, and one potentially interested one, my practicing may encourage them to pick up a musical instrument as well. (Fun, Family)
- Unpack 5 boxes a week. If I don’t make this a goal, I’m not going to get around to making headway with getting completely settled in. (Family?)
My business goals are important too, but as they occur in a different “time box” as the rest of my goals (at least for the most part), I am breaking them out into their own list.
- Increase work hours to 25 hours per week by the week ending 2/23. I haven’t been focusing in on billable hours with everything going on on the personal side of things. Since having billable hours is pretty much the lifeblood of a business, it’s something I need to concentrate on. Understandably, I am responsible for more family-oriented tasks than in the past, but this should be a reasonable goal.
- Redesign Red Bit Blue Bit by 4/4. My website is basically a placeholder. It needs to be redesigned in a major bad way as it’s my primary way of communicating with potential clients.
- Read and do the homework for one chapter of Book Yourself Solid
every two weeks. I have a great client right now who has been my lifeblood, but I need to make sure that I have a pipeline available should that project not continue. Michael Port’s book outlines his strategies to ensure a solid inflow of work.
Implementation
Thinking about these goals has led me to two think about two areas I need to work on: self-discipline and spending less time thinking about things and more time actually doing them.
There’s almost 20 goals listed (including some implementation goals below). That’s a lot of goals. It’s many tasks with little time, so focus is going to be a huge issue for me. One of my biggest personality flaws is my unquenchable penchant for useless trivia. This wasn’t so bad until 1994 when I discovered the internet, the ubiquitous, always-on source of useless trivia. The net makes it easy for me to learn a lot of completely irrelevant things and waste a lot of time doing it. I’m going to need a lot of self-discipline to keep to task.
I’ve talked about tiny discipline in the past: doing one small thing that, cumulatively, results in success over time. There’s a few things I can do that will help keep me disciplined, or at least aware of when I’m not being disciplined.
- In his post How to Get Any Project Up and Running, Mark Forster suggests the following mantra for getting stale projects moving:
- Take some action
- First thing
- Every Day
Starting each day by working on one of my many projects will allow me to keep momentum going.
- Use a timer: When I’m at the computer, I especially need to make sure I’m doing the things I need to. In the past, I’ve used an online timer, i.e., nTimer, a Google gadget to bring my focus back to where it needs to be. Setting the timer for an interval like 10 minutes allows me to work, but if I’ve gotten distracted and the timer goes off, I can reset and focus back where I should be.
- Use the Groundhog Day Resolution Tracking worksheet. Like Dave and other productivity fans, I’ve created my own form for tracking my GHDRs. It’s not production ready (it’s only in “alpha” stage). I plan to use it to check off daily those tasks I’ve accomplished.
Implementation Goals
My implementation goals are really meta-goals. They are goals that don’t fit into the priority categories, but help me accomplish my goals. Not meeting these goals may result in the failure to accomplish the goals as a whole.
- Limit television time to 4 hours per week, not including movies. Nothing sucks up the time more than mindless TV. I’m not counting movie time because that’s usually done in the context of a family event.
- Daily review. I’ve created a Groundhog Day Resolution Tracker to check off whether or not I’m meeting my goals. Doing a daily review allows me to see and track where I am in meeting my goals.
- GTD Weekly Review. The weekly review gives an opportunity to better plan a week’s activities and ensure that goals are met in a timely fashion. As a higher level, the weekly review gives me the chance to make sure the goals are going well and are still relevant.
Other Groundhoggers
I hope to have a very successful year and get a lot of things done by December 12. If you’re down with the Groundhog Day Resolutions, send me a note (John at this domain) and I’ll link to your resolutions as well. Good luck.
Deo Volente
3 Comments
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