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Happy New Year 2024! -- Working with Goals

It's a new year -- a first day of being able to start with a reset or recommitment to your goals, if you use them.  A new year presents a clean break with whatever you've done in the past/prior year.  Goals are simply thoughts of where we want to see ourselves by the end of the year (or over a longer-term when a project is involved).  Objectives are a more defined vision of what it will take to reach the goals. Making progress on your goals means identifying the reasonable, specific and measurable steps to getting there - these are objectives.    

In preparation for my goal-setting and the change in calendar years, I started with a year-end review of my accomplishments and the progress made on my goals in 2023.  It was done in zine form.  The front and back covers (below) bookend 6 pages of the year's highlights, efforts/activities that align with my interest areas, and actual percentages completed -- of my objectives that inform my goals.

For goal-setting to be meaningful, it's helpful to have a measurable objective(s).  As an example, one of my goals in 2024 is walking regularly for 325 total miles in the year.  An objective that supports achieving that -- is walking 4 days/week.  (Fyi...walking 4 days/week x 52 weeks = 208 days in the year.  To achieve 325 miles walked in the year, each walk will need to be 1.5 miles.  Since I generally walk more than 4 days a week, the objective and goal should be achievable.  So, this objective is reasonable, specific and measurable.)  

How do I keep track of the progress on my objectives?  I use Excel spreadsheets.  In an Excel file, my overall goals are listed on the first spreadsheet.  It looks like the one below.  I track progress on the objectives by quarter.  So, I have 4 additional Excel spreadsheets with the objectives listed and a tally by week of progress for the 13 weeks of that quarter.  At the end of the year, I tally the quarter's numbers and then combine them for the year's totals and see how I've done goal-wise.  

I also use some other methods to track numbers.  They include the SportsTracker app that records the miles I walk each time.  I also have a separate Excel file in which I keep a cumulative total of the miles walked by day/year (as the app doesn't keep the information very long).  I also record each day's art/creative work, exercise, etc. in my daily planner as another method,

What I see at the end of a year is usually an impressive amount of work that I wouldn't recall without having documented it in some way.  It serves to hearten me.  Some of the things I might not have handily recalled doing in 2023, without the record-keeping, included:

  • taking 6 classes, 
  • going to 4 art exhibitions, 
  • designing and having 4 books printed, 
  • creating 6 zines,
  • making 111 blog posts,
  • art-making 73% of my 5 days/week objective 
  • walking 81% of my 3 days/week objective, and 
  • walking 54% of my 500-mile goal  
--all in spite of having had a broken wrist mid-year and recovering from it.

Even as I recommend considering goal-setting, if you do it start simply and take the time to think through how it can work best for you.  

Happy New Year!

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