New Year's Resolution Overkill

I don't really do New Year's resolutions because I believe that every day presents an opportunity to learn, fine tune and to resolve to improve through actions that get me closer to a goal.  But, today is New Year's day and I find myself writing out some details about important goals that I've had for the past few months. I've not solidified or further defined into steps I need to take if I ever want to actually reach these goals, so I decided to take advantage of some down time and get things down on paper so I am more committed to taking action.

Every day is one more chance to start all over
One more chance to change and grow
One more chance to grab a hold of grace and never let it go
~New Year's Day by Carolyn Arends

Some of the tools I'm using are the annual, quarterly and monthly Your Smartest Goals planners from personal coach, Gwen Clayton.  I've never used a quarterly planner before, and I'm finding it really helps to break yearly goals down into that time frame before further refining the goals into actions for any given month.  From the month goal planner, I use a simple list of weekly actions and then plug those into a daily calendar.  After the initial planning is done, I really only use my weekly and daily planner regularly, revisiting the other planners once a month for a few minutes.  I use my ToodleDo online and mobile outlining and project planning app for reminders, check lists and to easily revise plans and projects, but I prefer to work on paper first.

Today, I found myself stuck at the quarterly goals level, and I wasn't moving too fast at coming up with a good list for what I wanted to accomplish this month, either.  I spent several minutes fumbling with getting my thoughts on paper, then considered switching to a mind map when it hit me that the reason for the bottleneck in my thought processes hit me: I was trying to define way too many primary goals!  The planners I'm using are similar to many life goals planners in that your life is broken down into nine areas including career, spiritual, health, etc.  I was trying to plan something for each of those areas, but that was overkill for me.

I have a lot to do with for health and fitness after having recently been diagnosed with digestive tract inflammation, adrenal fatigue and having just recovered from having the majority of my thyroid removed.  I also have much to do career-wise as I seek to expand my freelance projects or to secure part-time employment (see my LinkedIn profile if you're interested in what I have to offer). And, I really, really need to do some decorating in this house, so much so that it's starting to bug me. We've been here for five years and I still need to get these Contractor Vanilla walls painted.

Once I reduced the major areas I would be working on in the weeks to come to these three, the ideas started flowing again and the planning was quickly wrapped up.  If you're struggling with setting goals and resolutions, consider how much you're trying to do - is it realistic?  Choose the most important goals to focus on and make a "Goals I Gotta Do Someday" list for the rest. Then, define the projects that are necessary for achieving the goals and funnel those down to specific actions.  Schedule the actions on your calendar and honor that time as a real appointment and you're on your way to fulfilling resolutions.  And, remember that if you're reading this long past January 1, every single day presents an opportunity for improvement and planning toward that end.