Rethinking New Year’s Goals and Resolutions.

On the wall in the front of my desk I’ve kept my goals for the year and realized that even though I have seen them nearly every day since 1 January and reviewed them, cajoled myself, and hoped for the best, I have not achieved a single one. Not one. I don’t want to go into the all too personal details, let’s just say I made one of the worst possible mistakes and that unsettled the entirety of my life. Fortunately, things are much better now and are on a much different list of things I need to do. Perhaps another time for that.

Regardless, how many times have each of us made goals, or resolutions that we did not consistently achieve? Perhaps we made one or two some years, some years we may have succeeded extraordinarily well. Then there are the years where none of it happens, and 2023 is one of those for me.

I am an avid ultra distance cyclist and prior to lock downs and being able to participate in training camps, races and other events I typically weighed around 93 kg (205 pounds.) Currently, I’m not even any where near close to that but it was a goal in January to return to “race weight.” I had a list of how I was going to achieve this:

• completeing every ride
• doing all the off-bike exerises
• regular yoga
• etc

I had all sorts of little messages to encourage me:

• No faffing about!
• No slacking
• Be ruthless to things that don’t matter
• etc

In recently reviewing all this one of the problems I noticed, besides not achieving the marks I set for myself, is that I did not make these 100% SMART goals, these are only 80% of being Specific, Measurable, Attainable and Realistic. I neglected to put in the Time frame in which these would be accomplished. I did not set any way points by which to measure success or anything else. Small wonder I did not make them. That, procrastination, and too many ice creams will certainly doom the attempt.

Which lead me to think of how can I do something with the remainder of the year? What could I get done if I started now? It would be utter foolishness to wait until the start of the year when I can do something today.

What I’ve done is to work up an eight week plan, which is now a seven week plan but that’s okay, so that I will know by 31 December whether this concept works or needs further development. You may notice I’ve already specifed the Timeline for the things I’ve decided to do.

I don’t want to do them, I get to do them because it’s a decision I made. (It’s a quirk of mine where I use the power of my natural stubborness to propel a decision. I was once voted “Least Likely to Change His Mind” in high school.)

This list is much shorter than what I started with in January and I have every reason to think it is sustainable and more likely to be attained.

Here is what I’ve come up with:

• lose 5 kg (about .5 kg per week) with an ~500 calorie/day deficit
• 80% average sleep score (all too frequently I’ve discounted the benefits of sleep!)
• 10 minutes daily meditation (all too frequently I’ve discounted the benefits of a calm mind!)
• Ride 100 miles/week (as I mentioned, I prefer long rides)
• Achieve a fitness score of 75 on Training Peaks (I’m at 49 now)

So far I’ve been able to do the work I’ve decided to set out upon. I think there are two things working in my favor: there is an end date and it’s for eightish weeks. It’s not as though there is any long term suffering to be found in this. Then again, I am in the first week of it but I do have a lot of intrinsic motivation on my side.

All this has also lead me to consider a different approach for the New Year which is to work on quarterly goals instead of something for the entire year. When it’s January you think you have all the time in world until you realize it’s now November and are left wondering what happened to the year. I have no doubt this not something new and there’s probably a book or ten about such a concept and that’s okay. It is still an idea worth trying besides I think it’s my own idea even though Ben Franklin or Socrates or someone much smarter than me thought up ages ago.

I’m sure that I will have some things roll over from one quarter to the next, such as the daily meditation or bike mileage. It seems that having a slightly smaller time frame of twelve weeks might at least feel more manageable as well as less open ended. There is a definite end date that is much closer to the start date than the usual resolution.

I will write a review of how this goes at the end of December. In the meantime, I’ve some things to do today.