2009 Goals
I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions. This year, however, I’ve decided to set some goals for myself. I chose the word goals because that’s what they are. I’m treating this more like a performance review, and I got the idea after reading a post on How to Conduct Your Own Annual Review by Chris Guillebeau. I downloaded his Excel template and gave it a shot.
I’ve set some measurable, achievable goals in 7 categories:
- Financial
- Earn $5K from sources outside my primary income
- Give more to charity this year than I did last year
- Finish building and maintain a 6-month emergency fund
- Save $10K for our 2010 trip to Africa
- Limit spending on dining out
- Travel
- Plan our trip to the UK (already paid for airfare in 2008)
- Organize the Africa trip for 2010
- Visit Mom & Dad in Chicago
- Friends & Family
- Call someone I haven’t spoken to in a while once a week
- Work
- Re-assess my career goals at my current employer
- Re-establish discipline in day-to-day task management
- Health & Fitness
- Learning
- Read 12 books
- Catch up on, and stay current with, my magazine subscriptions
- Photography
- Take one photography-specific trip (could be anywhere)
- Sell 5 stock photos
I haven’t just made a list and called it done. I’ve also written down a next step for each goal as well as a deadline. So now I’ve set my targets and know what the next steps are. Once I mark of one step as complete, I can queue up another one. And repeat. I also reserve the right to add, remove, or modify the list throughout the year as long as I keep track of what I did and why.
I’ve probably set the bar too low on some of these, and too high on others. Since this is the first year I’ve really done something like this for myself (not counting the performance planning we do at work), it’ll be a learning experience. Over time, I’ll get better at learning what I can do and be able to set 'better’ goals.
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