Resolutions 2010

First off, Happy New Year. I hope you had a wonderful holiday with friends and family. I thoroughly enjoyed my holidays even though they were over too soon. I was happy to see the friends and family I did, and regret not taking the time to see those I didn’t.

I am generally opposed to setting resolutions, particularly “New Year Resolutions”. I feel that most people set themselves up for failure by listing broad resolutions without any plan and they never get started. A resolution by itself is too vague to have substance in most cases, it needs to be split into goals and sometimes further into smaller action items to make sure you don’t lose site of the bigger picture.

A good example that I see all the time is the infamous ‘I want to lose weight’ resolution. Unless you set goals (“I will weigh 175 by the end of the year”), and break that down to manageable pieces (“I will lose 2lbs per month”) you’ll likely lose interest within the first month. Make sure you answer Who, What, When, Why, and How when you set your resolution. Don’t skip ‘Why’, its arguably the most important question of all.

That all said, I have a few resolution of my own that I’ve decided to plans out and act on. I’m writing them down here for a few reasons; primarily that writing out goals is the best way I know of to commit to something. Also, by writing them down where all can see I become accountable to my goals; an important bit in my own self motivational needs.

Resolution #1: Write More

More specifically, write more consistently. This blog goes though periods of dead silence and stints of furious postings. I want people to to come to my blog on a regular basis and find interesting information every time [why]. I actually started this with the “Flavors of the Holidays” series between Thanksgiving and Christmas and really liked it.

The simple goal is that I [who] will have have a new post every Wednesday morning [what] for you to read, starting today for the entire year [when]. WordPress allows me to create a post well in advance, and schedule it to be posted Wednesday morning. this is the secret of how I plan on achieving the overall goal. And means that I don’t have to sit down every Tuesday night and write a post, instead I can write two or three in one sitting and schedule them out.

Resolution #2: Better Cash-flow

“Better Cash-flow” is much more vague than the previous resolution and involves a couple smaller goals (broken into even smaller pieces). This isn’t going to be something I can complete in one year, or cover in a single post so I’ll be breaking this resolution down in multiple posts over the first part of 2010. But in summary, my committed expenses (read here about committed expenses) are nearly 100% of my income, which means I’m cash broke all the time. The main contributing factors are reduced income (compared to previous years), lingering debt and increased living expenses (living on my own). I want to be able to go out with friends and not borrow cash, I want to be able to buy a new TV with cash to replace my aging panel and I want to stop giving money away to the banks.

So until next week, when we can go over things in more detail, thanks for reading.