Achieving goals

I ran across some advice from an e-newsletter I get on achieving New Year's goals, and thought I would summarize it. Of course, New Year's seems to be the time for a lot of people to come up with resolutions for the year, but these steps are helpful any time a person sets a goal. Hopefully, these tips can help you not become one of the estimated 90% who do not keep their New Year's resolutions. 

1. Set the right goals - set goals you are enthusiastic about accomplishing. 

2. Set priorities - don't set a ton of goals, one or two big goals is sufficient. If you have more, put them in order, then work on the higher priorities before moving on to others.

3. Focus - don't allow minor tasks or distractions to get in the way of accomplishing your goals. 

4. Put in the time - many goals can be accomplished if you simply put in the time. Plan time to work on your goals.

5. Chunk it - just like the answer to the question, "how do you eat an elephant?" is "one bite at a time," goals can be more easily accomplished if they are chunked into smaller tasks. 

6. No Excuses - work on the important things - those related to your goals. 

Hopefully these tips will help you toward accomplishing the goals you set this New Year as well as throughout the year. 

Hide & Seek

I got this image in an e-mail - the perils of being a surveyor in Alaska. Not quite the exercise I will be looking to do for a New Year's resolution. 

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all. I hope everyone has had an enjoyable holiday season thus far and continues to find comfort in spending time with family and friends. As the year winds down, it is a great time to reflect on the past year and the things we were able to accomplish as well as those things we weren't. I know the list of things I would like to do in the coming year is long, but I've decided to take some advice I read recently on limiting the number of goals. I'll write more about that (on New Year's Day, of course.) May you have peace and love on this special day.

Thanksgiving

As the holiday season begins and Thanksgiving weekend has passed, I wanted to make a list of some of the things I was thankful for again this year. As I was driving in today, I was a sign that said something with the words "Gratitude" and "Attitude." (So much for details.)  I thought that so much of gratitude is our attitude about where we are in life and what we have. We need to be grateful for all the things in our life - they are there to teach us something - and hold that attitude daily. It is not always easy to do, but if we can convince ourselves to be grateful each and every day, things certainly seem to go a lot better. So, here are just a few things for which I am grateful. Happy Thanksgiving and may the holidays bring fellowship and good cheer.

1. Life

2. Love

3. Family

4. Health

5. Challenges 

6. Ideas

7. Friends and co-workers

8. Good food

8. 

Act Now

The title sounded a bit like a sales pitch when I wrote it. Maybe it is. The idea behind this post came from an article written by a person well-versed in that area.

The premise of the article was to not put off things you could do today to protect yourself in a number of different areas in your life, including personal, professional, and health. The author wrote that his wife had mentioned some months ago that they had a security system at one of their homes, but not the one in which they were currently residing. A comment of "Yeah we really should do that," was not followed up on. Of course a few weeks later, they were robbed. The point of the article being, don't put off until tomorrow the important things you could do today.

As I read the article, I thought, I really need to post to the blog, I haven't written for a while; I'll do that later. Thankfully, the article reached out of the computer screen, smacked me and said "read that again, it says act NOW." So I did. As is the case so many times when we don't put off things, it felt good to do it. For procrastinators, it can be difficult. For others, not so much.

One of the tools I've started using is a calendar on the computer that sends reminders for events that are scheduled. I'm finding that as I get those reminders, I'm more prone to either act on them right away or "snooze" them for a short time if I'm in the middle of something. I think I will add this article to my bulletin board, highlight the quote about acting now that is at the end of the article, and repeat the mantra, "Act Now."