krumpit

January is almost over and it seems perhaps a little late to talk about resolutions for the New Year. Before last year, I was always quite sceptical about New Year’s resolutions. They seemed a “set and forget” kind of thing. People would make them, but the required change to underlying habits always seemed too hard.

But last year I did something slightly different. A friend had mentioned the idea of setting “half-year resolutions”… and this sounded pretty good to me, as there were two areas I wanted to concentrate on: drawing and writing. I’ll save a review of those for later, but, in summary, I set out last year to work on those and I’m pretty pleased with what I managed to achieve.

So basically, I’m very much in the “yay resolutions” camp now. I think resolutions and goals help you review your priorities, re-focus, re-balance and challenge yourself, and generally achieve more in life.

Get in line, please

Looking back, I think being able to concentrate on one at a time was crucial to the success, given that the scope of my resolutions was so similar—both were creative endeavours, requiring a chunk of uninterrupted time for creative focus and fighting for the same evening and weekend timeslots. When you’re picking your goals, I think it’s important to be aware of clashes for your time.

Countability and Accountability

I also think more concrete resolutions (such as “draw for one hour each week”) would have helped me reach higher goals. One great thing about countable goals is that you can track your progress. Tracking your goals gives you immediate feedback, reminds and motivates you if you’re lagging, and gives you a sense of achievement. My progress graph for NaNoWriMo kept me obsessively checking and updating my progress, and pushing for those last few words to meet my daily target.

As a more relevant, admirable and inspiring example, @m_fitzpatrick set himself some very clear and (ac)countable goals for the year and has been tracking his progress on his blog, This Geek’s Goals. If only there was a website for everyone to do this kind of thing—I assume there isn’t? Someone really needs to get onto that!

Tracking your goals in a public space and talking about them to other people also seems to help. If your friends and family aren’t interested, perhaps you can find a group of like-minded people online. The Saucy Wenches Forums gang has been a great motivation for my writing, and DeviantArt has served as a pretty good source of inspiration.

Getting Serious

I think one of the more important things I’ve realised is that, if you really want to get serious about meeting your goals, then you need to change your day-to-day habits. And that this is a bigger hurdle than actually fulfilling the new goal. (The habit is the process, the goal is the outcome?)

I think people’s habits evolve over the years towards an optimum balance of time for each activity according to their priorities. If you take an extra hour out of the day to fit in (or emphasise) an activity, everything else has to shuffle around. Something is going to lose out, so you need to look at your habits and decide what you can change. Do you need to watch TV for two hours every night? Maybe you do, maybe it’s your bonding time with your partner, or maybe it’s your relaxation time. But it is worth analysing yourself a little—for instance, maybe your new hobby will also be relaxing, so that time isn’t as crucial as you thought.

If you can’t change anything, then maybe the goal just isn’t possible and you need to decide to downgrade or postpone. Or maybe you need to up the stakes, to make it a higher priority than another activity. (Why do you want to achieve this goal? What happens if you don’t? Write that down in your copy book now.)

Even if the goal isn’t practical this year, you could set yourself a meta-goal with the aim of setting you up for the next year—for example, if you want to take art classes but don’t have enough money for the fees, maybe you can aim to set aside enough money in time for next year. (As an aside, I wish real life had achievements and meta-achievements like in World of Warcraft, Xbox games and similar.)

Last year, my new goals luckily coincided with a declining interest in World of Warcraft. Cancelling my account instantly freed up many evening and weekend hours. (Actually, maybe I’m not giving myself enough credit there—I think my decline in interest was due my decision to prioritise other things.) But my priorities are more difficult to weigh up this year, as I don’t have a big time-sink that I can push aside.

In Summary

These are what I’m going to try and keep in mind when setting my goals this year:

0. These aren’t just new goals, they’re new habits to achieve these goals.

1. Specify my goals
Make them as concrete as possible. Be realistic, but aim high.

2. Plan to keep the goals
How much time do I need to set aside to make my goal happen? What do I need to give up? (And can I do it?) Look ahead for problems and plan how to avoid them.

3. Track my progress
Find a way to track progress: a website or blog, an app, a diary, a calendar, so I can look at what you have achieved. (I found the Don’t Break the Chain method pretty interesting.)

So, what do you do to achieve your goals? Please share!

Edit: Daytum (web/iOS) and Dayta (iOS) look like they could be good options. Thanks @jasedepuit!