With the new year just around the corner, I was wondering if you have resolutions/goals/themes for next year and if you will or even can use your tech to help you achieve it!
1 Like
One related topic exists already and was indeed the inspiration for this thread!
About 15 years ago, I stopped making New Year resolutions. For me, trying to make wholesale habit changes never really stuck. I can’t think of a single meaningful improvement to my life that originated from a New Year’s resolution.
Instead, I started setting annual goals and set up a process to hold myself accountable to acheiving them. At the start of the year, I set one to two meaningful, measurable goals for each important role in my life (Husband, Father, Friend, Professional, Money Person, etc.) that I write down in Day One. This tends to be a pretty long journal entry as I work through the importance of each goal and how achieving it will improve my life.
I summarize these goals by role in an Apple Note that I review every Sunday as part of my Weekly Review. I write a progress review journal entry every week which rotates through each of my seven life roles. These entries serve to nudge me to get more done during the year.
I take the week we’re in right now, between Christmas and New Years, to write a self-assessment in my journal of how I did on the goals I set for myself that year. Since I’ve been reviewing the goals every week, I have a pretty good sense of how I have fared. I give myself letter grades on performance. I am a harsh grader. This is also a pretty long journal entry.
The process starts up again in the first week of the new year. This goal setting process, linked to accountability reviews and assessment, has helped me achieve some pretty amazing things throughout my life. It’s really gratifying to took back ten or fifteen years in my journal at big goals I’ve set and achieved for myself. This gives me the confidence to keep pushing myself to improve, knowing that with persistence and fortitude, I can achieve an awful lot. Hope this helps!
4 Likes
@bob essentially wrote most of my post for me.
I don’t do resolutions anymore, but use this time of the year to take stock of my life.
I recently passed a big milestone on the way to earning my PhD, so that has allowed me to be more relaxed this time and really think things through. I’m working on startup and shutdown routines for the days, as well as doing a new start in a new Passion Planner (though it’s in the middle of the academic year). When I started using a Passion Planner a few years ago, it was the first time that I had been able to translate long term big goals into smaller monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
So my tech for this one is a Passion Planner, and a new Monteverde pen that I gave myself for completing the aforementioned achievement.
I am starting to look at timeline software, and will start a new thread (or search).
3 Likes
I make resolutions. I like systems as well, especially for things like exercising daily etc., but in areas that can be accomplished it’s fun to decide on a grand plan.
One resolution involving tech is to put my entire household maintenance program into OF with everything recurring appropriately. I have about 10-20% of it in there right now. I need to go all the way with this. These are mostly things I’m forgetting to do, sadly, so I’m not replacing a working system.
I am also going to set quarterly goals for my department at work. I will probably track them in OF to start, though one of the goals will be to set up a good multi-user work management system so future quarters will probably go in there.
I’m also going to be selling a product (unrelated to productivity/Apple) in 2019 and I’ll be using a lot of new tools to facilitate that.
1 Like
Timely advice here from Tim Ferriss. I am going to give this a try.
Forget New Year’s Resolutions and Conduct a ‘Past Year Review’ Instead
1 Like
One way I use tech to help me with resolutions is to set my password so that it reminds me of them.
2 Likes
I gave up on New Year’s Resolutions many years ago. Instead I gave myself projects and tasks I made myself start by October 1st. There’s something very powerful and freeing about starting doing things months before stressed-out acquaintances/friends/family try for the umpteenth time to start with an arbitrary Jan 1 date.
When I wanted to get in shape I started before the holidays.
When I wanted to cook more at home I took classes in the summer.
When I wanted to save money for something I started before the holidays.
When I wanted to stop eating (too many) carbs I started before the holidays.
I therefore didn’t give myself approval to continue to do the things I wanted to stop doing, and I didn’t have the stress involved with having to psych myself up on December 31st for upcoming restrictions.
FYI you might find this article to be useful - make rules instead of resolutions:
1 Like
Create habits and rituals, not promises…
Habits and rituals will last longer than a promise in the wind.
Once you internalize that any change involves updating habits and processes, you can go back to making resolutions again. 