Reflection on a New Year: Goals and Ambitions and… Being Realistic?

Like many people, I like to use the beginning of a New Year to reflect a little bit on what has been and then reflect some more on what lies ahead.

I'm really not into so-called New Year's resolutions, but I do like to set a realistic goal or two. However, I start off the New Year by taking a look backwards to consider what happened during the year that went to compare how I did vis-a-vis any goals I might have set for myself at the beginning of the year.

I mean... what's the point of going to the trouble of setting goals if you don't revisit "how you did," even if how you did was a miserable failure?

Our lives are seldom just one long highlight reel!

I think one of the important parts of effective goal setting is that you really have to know yourself.

What I mean by that, is that you have to know whether you're the sort of person that rises to the occasion when faced with a really major thing to accomplish, or are you the sort of person who gets depressed by the fact that it seems so overwhelming that you'll likely never get it done.

As I've said before on these pages, I tend to be the sort of person who does better by setting modest goals and feeling a sense of accomplishment for reaching them.

But I digress...

One of the things I have learned about myself when it comes to goal setting is that I'm better off breaking whatever I want to accomplish into little tiny bits. That way, I can cross something off my to-do list pretty much every day and feel like I'm accomplishing something and actually making progress.

The example I like to use for people is that a painting your house.

Setting myself a goal like "paint the house" is really not something that's gonna work for me. I'm gonna look at that, and every time I do I'm going to determine that I just can't set aside enough time to take on such a huge task.

But if I take paint the house and instead break it into paint the guest bedroom; paint the guest bathroom; paint the hallway, etc. etc. then I'm putting a bunch of tasks in front of myself that I can actually finish.

I suppose it could be argued that it's simply psychological trickery, because the end result will still be that I painted my house. The important part — at least for me — is that when I break it into small chunks I'm not automatically setting myself up to fail at completing a big project.

I was actually planning to spend part of today working up a typical my hive goals for 2022 type post, but I realized that I barely got as far as to just make notes of everything that happened and 2021 and write down the various numbers I need to use for benchmarking.

And that's when I realized that we sometimes get in our own way by turning the very process of just setting the goal into an almost unattainable goal itself, and what's the point of that?

Yes, I will probably follow up with a regular "goals" post in the next couple of days because I do like to put one of those "on file" so I can look back and see how I did when we get to the end of 2022... but I'm not gonna pressure myself to get it out today.

Instead I'm just thinking about the process and doing that thing that often frustrates people around me which is talking about doing what I'm gonna do! Yes, I do move slowly...

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your weekend!

How about YOU? Any goals, resolutions or accomplishments you have for the coming year? Or do you avoid such things? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 20220101 23:15 PST
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