Like our Tuesday Fox, Jillian, I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I don’t believe in them. My philosophy has always been why wait until the beginning of the year to decide to do something I need to do anyway?
It’s all about setting reasonable goals. Sure, I have the great big goals like landing a twelve-book deal with one of the big six, winning the Nobel Prize for Romance (which doesn’t exist), and making more money than Bill Gates, but those are long-term goals *cough* Short-term goals are much easier to manage and are endlessly more gratifying.
Some of the goals I have set up for this year are in my control while some are not. Here’s my list of 2012 goals:
1. Finish at least three books (this is entirely in my control)
2. Lose weight (notice I don’t say how much because every pound counts)
3. Get at least one book published this year (not in my control, but not impossible)
4. Attend at least three conferences (I’m already registered for two so this goal is almost complete)
5. Start Christmas shopping early
A lot of my goals have limits set. “At least” tells me I need to do no less than that, but more if I can. These are things I can control in one way or another. These are attainable goals. These are things I want to do throughout the year. I have even shorter-term goals that I won’t mention here, but those are ones I handle as they come to mind.
I’m all about instant gratification. Hell, who isn’t? That’s why I don’t set impossible goals for myself. That’s what always got me about resolutions; they always seem so unattainable, like resolving to climb Mount Everest when you’ve only ever seen a hill.
Happy New Year and good luck with your goals!
Angela Schroeder
Patricia Kiyono
Elaine Cantrell
Jeff Salter
Joselyn
Tonette Joyce
Four Foxes, One Hound 
Your goals sound a lot like mine. And, like you say they are attainable.
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Like I said, I’m all about the instant gratification 🙂
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“Reasonable goals” makes perfect sense to me. And I also like flexibility in goals & objectives.
My wife has worked for two diff. ‘call centers’ in which the phone agents were considered to have FAILED the call if any single aspect went wrong. Often this was something beyond their control … since so much depends on the client-caller.
Anyway, it seemed to me to be such a negative culture there — instead of reinforcing the 98% that the agents did RIGHT, they were chastised for the 1 or 2% that didn’t work perfectly to script.
Which is my long way back around to why I like flexible goals and objectives. It’s easier on our psyche if we can congratulate ourselves (whether or not anyone else notices) when we do a LOT of great stuff toward some lofty goal. Not to beat ourselves up because we fell a few measurements short.
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It seems companies would realize by now positive feedback and encouragement is so much better than negative.
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Some of my resolutions/goals haven’t been “officially” written down, but today I am 25% closer to completing one of those bad boys. I made it a goal to donate blood (something I haven’t done since college back in the 80’s) at least 4 times this year. Maximum you can donate in a year is 6, so if I hit that, I could boast I achieved one goal by 150% next year. But you know, some of those great big goals are fun to put on the list even if we know it’s highly unlikely to happen as long as they’re still possible. Dream big!
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See,I KNEW I liked you!! We’re so much alike, it’s scary!! Love these goals you’ve chosen and love the kitty picture, too!
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