Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

I’ve never been a fan of New Years Res­o­lu­tions. The ideas of self improve­ment and set­ting goals are great. But New Years Res­o­lu­tions are for the most part, doomed for fal­i­ure. It’s as if peo­ple sub­con­ciously say, “I’m going to set a goal that’s slightly out of reach, then attempt it for a month, then by Feb­ru­ary even my spouse will for­got­ten that I was trying.”

Maybe it’s because the peo­ple that I know that are big fans of res­o­lu­tions are not as seri­ous about goals as I am. Or maybe it’s just a bad way to go about set­ting goals. I’m going to assume the latter.

Let’s just say a goal is wor­thy like say, los­ing 30 lbs. Why would you need to wait till New Years Day to begin achiev­ing it? Should you really put your health on the shelf for a month or two? Absolutely not.

This is prar­tic­u­lary nerdy, but I’ll admit that I used to post my goals, usu­ally writ­ing goals, on my refridgerator.

This is a lit­tle harder to do these days with a house full of women so I try to keep this list more men­tal these days. But it works a lit­tle like this.

Daily: Write every day for an hour.

Weekly: Write at least five days a week.

Six Months: (For larger goals) Fin­ish rough draft

One Year: Fin­ish first draft

18 Mos: Com­plete project

Then every six months the list is revised based on how well I met my goals and hope­fully it reflects that I’m moved closer to com­ple­tion of the project.

The point here isn’t that my sys­tem is any smarter than any­one else’s. It’s cer­tainly no GTD sys­tem. The dif­fer­ence between my lit­tle lists and a New Years Res­o­lu­tion is that it isn’t based on any out­side force of a sta­tic date or peer pres­sure. It is cre­ated because I put it there for my own, very per­sonal reasons.

So, if you have devel­oped a New Years Res­o­lu­tions to lose 30 pounds, please go ahead and work towards your goal. What I’m sug­gest­ing is not to call it a “New Years Res­o­lu­tion.” Make it a per­sonal goal that won’t be cast aside like last years Christ­mas tree when the sea­son comes to an end. Set your goal and own it.

OK, so what are my per­sonal goals?

Within 6 months: To run the ING Half-Marathon 15 min­utes faster than I ran the Atlanta Half-Marathon on Thanks­giv­ing day.

Within year: To com­plete a cen­tury moun­tain bike race. (I’ve reg­is­tered for the Leadville lot­tery, will find out more in February)

6 months ago my goals were to run a half-marathon and post here twice a week. Check.