2009 Plans

I’m not a New Year’s Resolution person.   I keep a rolling list of goals that I edit as necessary, which seems a lot more logical than waiting for January 1 to roll around before doing anything.  Even still, the sheer number of New Year’s Resolutions posts and articles I’ve seen lately has prompted me to take another look at what’s currently on my list going into 2009.   Here’s an excerpt:

• Make it to Affiliate Summit West, SXSW, and BlogWorldExpo.
• Attend circus school or clown camp (or both, if time permits).
• Visit Argentina for 2-4 weeks.  Spend one week on a beach somewhere outside the U.S.
• Learn Italian with the goal of being able to comprehend one or more movies without the subtitles.
• Increase monthly income on web properties by 4x.
• Sell at least 1000 units of my latest project.
• Complete a second product.
• Continue to exercise at least 4-5 times/week for the next 6 months.
• Become well-acquainted with at least 5 other self-employed people and 5 other web marketers over the next month.
• Reduce soda consumption to 3/week for 60 days.

I like my rolling list because I get the satisfaction of crossing things off when done, and it helps keep me motivated throughout the year.  New Year’s resolutions don’t seem to do much past February or March. 

In the last 6 months, I’ve seen about 75% turnover on my list, which isn’t bad at all considering that some of the items on the list will take quite a while to complete.  I think the key here is that all of the goals are listed with clearly defined end points, and most have deadlines (not listed above).  You either sell a certain number of units or you don’t, and there’s no doubt about whether you attended an event or not.  There’s no room to be vague or back out.

Even for ongoing goals, I try to list them in set blocks of time instead of making them permanent.  At the end of the time period, I can cross the item off the list and re-evaluate whether or not it should be present on my next list.  In November, I wrote down the goal of exercising 3-4 times/week for 1 month.  I easily exceeded that and increased the goal for the next 6 months.

Obviously, none of this matters if you can’t get yourself excited about doing things differently, but it has worked well for me.  In the last year, it’s allowed me to improve my income, leave my day job, and change a number of habits that weren’t serving any purpose. 

If you have any other tips or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments!