Posted by Amir Lehrer on December 31, 2008
Everyone loves to make New Year’s resolutions. It’s a new year and time for a fresh star so we load ourselves up with all sorts of goals or resolutions. Lose weight, exercise, quit smoking, get a raise, start a business, start a blog, read more, and the list can go on and on.
I find that there are so many things that I want to accomplish or start doing and my list is a mile long. If you have too many things to think and worry about or to try and change, you will not accomplish any of them. That is why I am introducing and following my new goal accomplishing system for 2009 and encouraging you to do the same.
The 2009 New Year’s Resolution Goal System
The system is very easy and makes you wonder why you never tried something like it before. Here are the steps for the 2009 New Year’s resolution goal system:
Make a list of all of your goals.
1. Make a list of all of your goals for this year from major feats that you would like to accomplish all the way down to little changes you would like to make (like reading for 30 minutes instead of watching one of the TV shows in your routine). Try to come up with at least 12, one for each month.
Organize your goals.
2. Organizer all your goals in order of importance. The most important at the top and the least important (or the “it would be nice if I did it”) goal at the bottom.
Start working on your first goal.
3. On January 1, start working on your number one, most important goal. Work hard at it as if it is the only goal you need to accomplish this year. Each day in January do something that will bring you closer to your goal.
Evaluate your progress.
4. At the end of the month, evaluate how well you’ve done. Did you accomplish your goal? Did you get close? If not, what can you do to help yourself achieve your goal over the next 30 days? If successful, skip to number 6.
Evaluate your goal.
5. If you didn’t succeed, try and figure out why you didn’t. Was it too hard and should take longer than 30 days? If so, keep working on it for as long as it takes. Just make sure you evaluate your progress at least once a month and don’t give up.
Sometime you may find that the goal isn’t even right for you and that there are more important goals to focus on. If that’s the case, over the next 30 days, try the next goal on your list. It’s ok to decide that one or two of your goals were not right but if you find this happening with too many goals, try and figure out why and how you can make better goals that you can achieve.
Move on to your next goal.
6. Once you’ve accomplished one goal (or are comfortable enough with your progress), move onto your next goal. Work for the next 30 days to accomplish your next goal while maintaining your progress of your first goal (unless there is nothing to maintain since the goal was a one time thing).
Evaluate once again.
7. Go back to step 4 and repeat the steps over and over each month.
Keep doing this until next New Year and see how many goals you can accomplish. Next year try adding more goals and shorten the trial period. You can always assign different amounts of time to goals of different difficulty. Challenge yourself each year to see how many goals you can accomplish.
Over time, you will get better at disciplining yourself and maintaining your progress. Last year, without even noticing, I started using this system. If you look back to my first blog post, I wrote about starting my New Year’s resolution of blogging about “luck” on December 4th. On December 31st, I wrote about starting my next goal of creating personal financial statements every month, which I have also accomplished. Throughout this past year, I have started and accomplished many personal goals such as moving to a bigger place to live in a new city, quitting my job and starting my own company, spending more quality time with my family and many more. Looking back, it took about a month or so for each of them.
You will never accomplish all of your goals overnight but if you take baby steps and do them one at a time, you can be successful. Just remember, it takes 6 years to become an overnight success, so start working toward 2015.
Good Luck and Happy New Year!
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Posted by Amir Lehrer on December 16, 2008
I hear so many people saying that they will not start item “B” until item “A” is accomplished. For instance, “I will not get married until I have a job”, “I will not have kids until I am comfortable in my career” or “I will not start my own business until I have at least 5 years of experience”. Sometimes it’s good to wait but make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. If you ask me, you don’t need to get your ducks in a row; you just need to get your ducks while you are able to.
Idiocracy
The “not having kids” example reminds me of the movie Idiocracy where they show the difference between “educated” and “not so educated” people when it comes to having kids, which ultimately leads to the population of the earth. If you don’t know what I am talking about, Please watch this 3 minute video:
I am not telling you to go ahead, get married, have kids and start your business right now. I’m not even saying that you should do any of the above. What I am saying is that everyone has at least one thing that they are pushing off because the time doesn’t seem absolutely right. It may be making that sales call, asking your boss for a raise or asking someone out on a date.
The time will never be right so why not now?
The time will never be absolutely right because when you pass one hurdle, another comes along. In Idiocracy, first they want to focus on their careers, then the market is bad, and so on. Life is funny and it doesn’t always give you what you want when you want it (like Harvey’s does) but it does give you the opportunity to go out and get what you want. It may mean that you have to be a little spontaneous, you may have to improvise and you will have to rethink everything every step of the way but at the end of the day when you look back it will all be worth it.
You will regret not doing more things than you regret doing
Someone once told me and I happen to agree “you will regret not doing more things than you regret doing”. At the end of your life, you will look back and ask yourself why you didn’t jump on more opportunities.
Life is all about learning
Life is a learning experience. You will have to learn to deal with each situation that comes up and the more you learn, the more prepared you will be to face tomorrow. So, why not force yourself to learn as much as possible? You could get “lucky” and end up with everything you ever wanted.
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Posted by Amir Lehrer on December 17, 2007
When I wrote my goals and made the conscious decision to follow and achieve them, without consciously knowing it, I took upon myself a ton of work. One of my goals was to build this blog. It seems pretty simple on the surface but if I really want to build a successful blog, I am going to have to make it something that people will want to read on a regular basis. Also, I have to define what a successful blog is. Is it having 100 visits per day? Maybe it is having 1000 unique hits per day. Does it depend on how many people subscribe to my rss fees? Maybe it has to do with how much income I can produce through this blog. In that case, I have to figure out how I would make my money. Should I use Google Adsense? Should I use other ad providers? Or should I sell my own ad space? Maybe I should rely on tips. I can also become an affiliate for all kinds of different companies and make commissions on sales and signups through my site. As you can see, everyone must define their own version of success and each definition can be very different.
When Making Goals, the Goals Must be Defined.
I am trying to take this goal very seriously even though it is a lot more complex than I originally imagined. I need to learn enough about blogging and the blogisphere to gage my progress and success. I also need to learn what makes a good blog and then put as much of it into play as possible. I have to figure out what layout is best, how to track my blog and how to advertise it.
As I try to go through every step, I find myself forcing my way to research more and more blogs and learn everything I can. Along the way, I end up learning what I was looking for but at the same time, I am learning so much more and discovering so many more opportunities. For example, today while reading Lazy Man and Money, I learned about Prosper.com where I was able to sign up for a free account to start lending money to different people and earn interest, just like a bank.
Most of all, I find myself busier than ever but more in control of my time and much more accomplished. If only I made goals for myself years ago, I could be so much farther ahead in life. Well, that’s my luck changing for the better.
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Posted by Amir Lehrer on December 13, 2007
Yesterday I wrote about how I realized that in order to get anything done, I needed to make clear goals for myself. A few of the goals on my list had to do with this blog. I wanted to fix up the blog, add Google Adsense, add some articles, etc. Those were just in my first list of short term goals. In a year, I am hoping to have at least 60 articles on this blog. In reality I would like to have at least 100 but I made sure not to put too many things on my list since it might get a little unreasonable. I can do millions of things but I can’t do all of them at the same time. I need to leave some time to accomplish all my other goals while leaving a large amount of time to slack off. Slacking off is not one of my goals, I just know myself and just because I have goals now and I’m a little more organized, I cant expect myself to change overnight. I know it’s going to be a slow process but as I wrote yesterday, I have 20 years to complete my goals. I am sure some will change and some will expand but at least I have the step by step instructions on how I am going to get there.
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