Setting Goals in 2012
The sun rises on a new year
In 2010, I started a new habit of setting goals for the upcoming year. This year is no different.
I started the process by looking back on 2011. With the year behind me and a lot learned, I’ve now set goals for 2012.
The process of setting goals for an entire year is more time consuming than you’d think. Looking back took me the better part of the day, and after I realized how poorly I’d done it took me two more days to think through what I need to do about it.
Before I go any further, I need to let you in on my goal setting process.
The Process
I define a goal as a realistic, measurable change that can be defined in one sentence and is chosen by the person who makes the change.
If I can’t measure it, it’s not a goal. If it’s forced upon me, it’s not a goal. If it’s impossible to achieve, it’s not a goal.
Being happy is not a goal. Eating five vegetarian meals a week is a goal.
Knowing what a goal is, I break my life into seven categories and set goals for each one. The categories are:
- Spiritual
- Family
- Personal Growth
- Business (or career)
- Financial (which is broken up between income, saving, and giving)
- Social
- Health
Each category is an area of my life that needs work in some way. And while I make goals for each area, I always keep in mind that they are interconnected with one another and can’t be separated. If I’m unhealthy, my social networks, family, personal growth, and business will all suffer.
In addition, I make a point of limiting my goals to 3 per category. It is unreasonable to think you’ll achieve more than 3 goals per category. I tried it last year and failed miserably.
This year, I tried to keep most categories down to two goals. A few have three, but most are squarely in the two goal camp. If I hit July and have achieved all my goals (unlikely) I may change this, but for now I’m sticking to this limit.
Once I’ve set the goals in each category, I come up with a theme for the year. The theme keeps me focused and is easy to remember. Last year was “the year of massive change” and (while stressful) it reminded me to keep pushing when everything in my life felt foreign.
My 2012 Goals
I’m calling 2012 the year of development. Since I’ve changed almost everything about my life, it’s time to start developing all the changes.
Most of my goals are personal or uninteresting. Things like learning a new language, going on a vacation and starting a family devotional. As far as the blog is concerned, here are a few of my goals:
- Earn $3,000 dollars in one month. To date, I’ve never earned more than $150 dollars in a month from the blog – and most of that is affiliate sales. In 2012, I plan to develop the blog into a major source of income and my goal is $3,000 a month gross.
- Make writing my top income earner. I’ve already written a guide and have been staff writing for two month. In 2012, I will continue to pursue staff writing, write more guides, and work out ways to earn the lion share of my income from writing projects.
- Coach 25 people. I’m currently working behind the scene to launch personal finance coaching. Once it’s live, my goal is to coach 25 different individuals. Couples and families count as 1 person coached. I’ll go into more detail once this goes live.
Your Turn
This year, you can make resolutions (which most people fail by Valentine’s day) or you can set some goals and be the person you want to be. It’ll be harder than you expect and force you to deal with things like procrastination and failure. But if you do it, it will change your life.
I’ll even help you out. Click here to download my annual review template.
What will change in your life in 2012?
Brandon (132)
Loren Pinilis (109)
Mike Luna (103)
ixnayonthetimmay (83)
Dustin (78)
moe (63)
Don Sartain (59)
Pastor Matt (36)
JeniferR (30)
Adam (20)
Those are awesome goals! For the income, I would also consider selling a few ads on your site. Even if it is super cheap…people will buy them!
For my goals, I am working on getting my medical blog successful. This website will help me develop a nice platform for when I apply to medical school. I am also going to be posting and updating things on it even into my professional career.
The site is: http://www.studenttosurgeon.wordpress.com
Brandon recently posted..Book Review: Why Church Matters
I do plan on adding advertising as well.
Your new site has been added to my bookmarks! I can’t wait to read about your journey
Awesome…Thanks!
Brandon recently posted..Failing With Success
Those are some pretty ambitious goals, that’s awesome.
It’s funny you mention this, because I’m in the process of re-evaluating my goals and even my goal-setting models. Being that I blog about productivity, goal setting is naturally a big subject, so I’m trying to think deeply on how and why I set goals.
Loren Pinilis recently posted..Don’t Concentrate on God’s Will for Your Future
One of the things that helps me the most is the template. It gives me a place to look at what I hoped to do and forces me to put my goals in writing.
Maybe it can even help you go deeper into the ‘why’ part of goal setting.
Personally, I kind of liked that you laid out all of your goals in last year’s goal setting post. It gave a better clue into who you are and how you’d like to change or improve yourself in the coming year.
I suppose I can’t really make you tell us everything, though. Or can I? No, I don’t think I can.
Anyway, a few nights ago I actually set some time aside and hammered out this stuff for my own year. For some reason I had the most trouble with Social. Everything else came pretty easily and I feel pretty good about all of it.
What I find most rewarding about having all of this stuff in front of me is that I can easily look back over everything as often as I want. I can actually look at each goal and ask myself when the last time that I took a step towards achieving it was.
Mike Luna recently posted..Loco for Coco
I may make another post with all my goals to keep me more accountable.
I would be interested in hearing your goals for the year. I know we already talked about it a bit, but it’d be cool to hear everything you’re shooting for over the next 12 months. I could tell you mine as well.
You’ve got some good plans and a solid footing on which to go after them. After reading this, I will set some goals for myself for this year, though not as ambitious as yours, I suspect.
As an aside, where is it you get the images you use in your posts? I know you’re a photographer with some good equipment, so I must wonder how many of them you took yourself? And don’t you think you should give yourself credit, at least in the alt tag of the image?
Honestly, I’ve only ever used a few of my own photos. I use creative commons images. Some, not all, ask for credit and the pictures that want credit get it at the end of my posts. This photo was taken by someone else, unfortunately.
That being said, I’m thinking of picking my camera back up again soon! Hopefully you’ll see more of my photos