A few months ago, I posted up my list of things to do. This week I took some time to really evaluate these projects and see which ones I want to tackle this year. By doing so, I’m basically coming up with a list of goals that I’d like to accomplish in the next 12 months. This will let me have something concrete to work towards.
My criteria:
- The three big areas that contribute to my happiness are friends & family, professional growth & financial security and personal growth. So I wanted these goals to reflect those areas.
- No more than 9 goals total, especially since each of these has sub goals. That makes for an even 3 goals per area described above. The danger here is for trying too much or too little. While too little is obviously bad, so is too much. It leads to feeling overwhelmed and not really making progress on any goal.
- The goals can be vague, but the subgoals must be concrete. They must be measurable and exact or else they’re not worth having. Essentially, the subgoals are just a way of measuring whether or not I achieved the big goal.
So, with no further ado, here are my goals for 2011:
Professional Growth & Financial Security
- Build a successful blogging business – I really enjoy blogging (I get to make money by talking a lot!) and want to continue building a successful side business with it.
- Subgoal 1 – Guest post on at least 3 A list blogs
- Subgoal 2 – Increase traffic to 1000 visits a day
- Subgoal 3 – Launch my His and Her blog, something I’ll tell you more about later
- Improve my overall financial situation
- Subgoal 1 – Payoff one school loan
- Subgoal 2 – increase money invested in stock market by 15k
- Subgoal 3 – Refinance townhouse. Tried to do this year but ran into a silly bank problem. Try again this year.
- Have a successful year at my work – I keep my work separate from this blog so I will not go into too much detail here.
- Subgoal 1 – Has to do with hiring
- Subgoal 2 – Has to do with overall delivery of projects by my team
- Subgoal 3 – Has to do with one specific project delivery
Personal Growth
- Improve Health – I’ve been steadily improving my health for the last 10 years. This year will continue that.
- Subgoal 1 – Go down to 180lbs
- Subgoal 2 – Run a marathon in under 5 hours
- Travel
- Subgoal 1 – 1 long vacation to a place I’ve never been to before
- Subgoal 2 – 2 short weekend trips to place I’ve never been to before
- Subgoal 3 – 1 long camping trip
- Learn something new
- Subgoal 1 – Take a painting workshop – Been thinking of trying painting for years!
- Subgoal 2 – Carpentry – Put together an actual piece of furniture. I’ve wanted to pick up a “physical” skill for years so we’ll see if I can get some of my handiwork past my girlfriend’s furniture criteria
Friends & Family
- Take my girlfriend to Israel to show her the places I grew up
- Jerusalem
- Haifa
- Nes Ziona
- Two trip with friends. This does not count as a trip towards my travel goal.
- One trip just with my best friend
- One trip with multiple friends
What are your goals for 2011?
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Thank you to Budgeting In The Fun Stuff for including my post about networking in their latest blog carnival and thank you to Writing As A Sacred Art for including my post about late night walks in their round up. Much appreciated.
