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Off the Tracks

I'm doing my annual "goal planning" this week and took some time to review the past few years goals (and success rate) and it isn't pretty.

First, here are the stats:
2005 9/14 63%
2006 12/15 80%
2007 7/13 54%
2008 5/9 56%

My goals are a combination of personal (fitness, finance, charity, vacation etc) and professional goals. clearly, 2006 was a great year, but I've been sliding hard since then.

2008 was an odd year from the beginning with me leaving the IRC for Microsoft, so I expected some fluctuation (notice the drop in total number of goal targets - down to 7 from 13 in 2007). As a way to get this out of my system, here's what I achieved, and what I didn't this past year:

Success!
  • Maintain 180 lbs
  • Coach sports (specifically spring/fall softball and winter basketball). I also helped out with all-star softball and recently started a coaching blog.
  • 1/2 speaking gigs
  • Establish myself in my new role at Microsoft
  • Build blog readership (>200 visits per month) - actual from both npMarketing and Mindnumbing was 1208!)
Things I didn't Achieve :(
  • Break 95 in golf
  • No credit card debt (it's creeping up a bit lately)
  • Save 10-15 gross salary (I haven't calculated it yet, but I'm certain it's less than 10%)
  • Board of small NGO (this is now removed however
I'm feeling like I need to totally retool my goals for 2009 and in someways, up the ante a bit.

In case you are curious, my process includes an important step of writing down a purpose for each goal and culling the master list each year down to about 10 priority goals for the year.

Comments

Nedra Weinreich said…
Don't despair! You're a better man for having actually thought through what you want to accomplish and taking steps toward those goals. Just because you didn't get all the way there doesn't mean you failed. (And you definitely did better than those of us slugs who have not gone through that goal-setting process at all.)
1:56 PM
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