Checking My Goals at the Beginning of the New Year

 
In December of 2001, while finishing up The Journal 3, waiting for our 2nd child to be born, and looking for a job (that I never found), I wrote down my first-ever set of yearly goals. Thus began a 12-year exercise where, with much thought and consideration, usually soaking up at least a week of each December, I consistently failed to predict more than about 33% of what I would actually do in the next year.
 
I’m a planner by nature, so I’m surprised it took me as long as it did to begin setting yearly goals (I turned 33 in 2001). Maybe as a younger man I was more of a realist. Anyway, I now demonstrate that while I can be a slow learner at times, I do, eventually, learn, and will finally admit the primary lesson from 12 years of setting yearly goals: I suck at it. And I will apply this lesson by not setting goals for 2014.
 
Because I have a record of all 12 years worth of goals (I use The Journal a lot), I can see my evolution of goal setting. I can see how I some of the earlier goals were poor choices, being about things out of my control. I can see where I set goals thinking a year was going to be All About This One Thing, when it turned out to be Mostly About This Other Thing. I can see where goals copied-and-pasted from the year before had gone stale.
 
It’s not all bad, though. For every year, as I pondered the next year, I would write a report of my accomplishments for the year that was ending. I had to do this. It was the only way to put a positive spin on a list of mostly un-checked bullet items. This report would remind me how, even though I hadn’t done much that was on the list, I hadn’t been a complete tosser. Stuff got done. Unforeseen targets were hit on short notice. Progress was made.
 
As I mentioned in an earlier post, 2013 went off the well-planned rails within two weeks of starting . Then refused to get back on the rails. A lot. Further, I realized that my yearly goals had become baggage. Heavy, depressing baggage. I was no longer seeing my goals as targets I could hit. They had become a measuring stick I was hitting myself with, even when there were circumstances beyond my control that had caused the perceived “failure”.
 
Setting yearly goals hasn’t been completely useless, of course. I think it’s a good thing to periodically sit down and figure out what you want versus what you’re doing and make adjustments. I’m just no longer convinced that doing this on a yearly, calendar-bound basis is particularly useful. And I’m beginning to see that the most important goals don’t have endpoints.
 
So this past December, looking back over the years, I decided I was done with this whole setting goals for the New Year thing. I cannot choose in December what I will or won’t do in the next twelve months. There are just too many days, and too many decisions, between now and then.
 
I still have dreams and goals for my various personal and professional endeavors. I’m just not going to make a futile effort to predict when the steps toward those dreams and goals will be taken and/or completed.
 
And because I am a planner, I do have plans for the first 3-4 months of 2014. But those plans aren’t exactly goals. More like … guidelines.
 
My plans/guidelines for 2014 are more about improving as a person, a husband, a father, a writer, and so on. They aren’t bullet points I get to check off as I somehow “finish” them during the year. They are organic and ongoing, possibly even neverending.
 
It’s a little scary, walking into 2014 like this, with no map at all–not even a made-up map. All I have is a wonky compass that sometimes contradicts itself and sometimes spins wildly, trying to point in all directions at once. But I’ve dropped my excess baggage (well, some of it, anyway) and I’m feeling lighter on my feet. I think I can handle whatever I find.
 
Happy New Year to All, and to All Some Good Luck! =)
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
Almost Time to be a Writer AgainA Year of Scrapping PlansThings That Loom and Goals That AdjustI Count WordsStill Planning, But Also Writing