PERSONAL:
Drop 60 pounds by June 30, 2010
Establish “date night” (min 1/month)
Host people at home (min 1/two months)
Blog more (min 1/week)
Pray / meditate (nightly)
WORK:
Get “1” Rated at work
Continue to use GTD at work – weekly reviews every week
Monthly join-ups to grow network
Meet quarterly with mentors
I divided my 2009 goals into 3 buckets: LIFE, FRIENDS, CAREER/PRODUCTIVITY.
Here is how I did:
LIFE: 6 for 8
FRIENDS: 4 for 6
CAREER/PRODUCTIVITY: 5 for 8 (2 of the 8 shouldn’t have been goals–more like whims)
I’d call 15 of the 22 solid wins. 2 of the 22 I didn’t accomplish and weren’t important so I get a pass on those. That leaves 5 outstanding to stay on my 2010 list in some form or another. 22 goals is too many and my list will be much shorter in 2010.
Additionally, I am toying with making my goals S.M.A.R.T. as well. SMART goals are a work thing. Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time-Bound. Apparently there are several possible words for every letter of the word SMART as Wikipedia lays out here. I find myself somewhat resistant as it is a lot easier to let things slide and “just be flexible” when you haven’t made specific commitments. I feel like I’ve got a lot going on and don’t want to sign myself up for too much. At the same time, I know that the goals I am most reluctant to set specifics around are the same ones I didn’t achieve in 2009. A little external processing going on right there, but it sounds like I will be making my 2010 goals SMART. I encourage you to do the same.
Internet trivia of the day: Apparently that line about Harvard MBAs with written goals earning great fortunes vs. their peers without written goals is an urban legend. See here for details. Another study was done that demonstrated written goals do help people accomplish more, but huge sums of money may or may not follow.
I sometimes find it difficult to stay current with all of the blogs I read, email I receive, and other news I like to follow. I just started my post b-school job as a finance manager yesterday, and have been using the last week or two to try to get caught up on the Google Reader and email fronts in anticipation of that.
One of my 2009 goals was to end each day with an empty inbox. That worked for me, even with a newborn, for the first 3-4 months of 2009. The newborn thing actually helped because what else is there to do when you are up at 3am? Then we started looking for houses and getting more actively engaged in the relocation process and it all went out the window. However, I’m back under 50 messages in the inbox after dedicating a couple solid hours to deleting, archiving, and unsubscribing.
However, Google Reader has been haunting me. I didn’t look at it for ten days or so and I came back to find 900+ “new items”. Digging a little deeper it turns out the real culprit is a recent subscription to Zero Hedge that I had added that was contributing 400+ of those items. The real problem is that I constantly find fascinating stuff in ZH posts. This morning though I had to admit defeat and hit the reset button. I hit “mark all as read” on Zero Hedge and my unread items instantly fell from 600+ to only 219. It felt awesome. As I’ve typed this post I’ve been thinking how nice it would be to see a nice big zero for total unread items. Hold on, one more click (and another to confirm that yes I am that crazy) and bam, ZERO unread items!
This is a little trick I learned from David Allen Greene, the author of Getting Things Done. He advocates doing the same thing with your email. His argument is that if you haven’t written back in 2 weeks, or a month, or 6 months it must not have really been that important that you reply. This can obviously get a little tricky with email but in the Google Reader context it makes perfect sense to get familiar with the reset button. The tools we have are supposed to empower us not burden us. Get familiar with the reset buttons you have available to you and make use of them. You will free up all kinds of mental energy you are currently wasting on things that don’t really matter.
Give it a shot and leave a comment below with how this works for you.
This presentation is a good basic tutorial on social media. It covers the why and how of Facebook, Twitter, blog readers, and personal branding. I designed it for incoming Notre Dame MBA students but it has proven itself valuable for everyone from my parents, to executives, to my peers who don’t quite get why everyone is suddenly talking about Twitter. Basically anyone looking to understand what social media is all about.
Please share it with your friends, family, coworkers, etc.
This is the seventh in a series of twelve posts. The introduction to the series is here. By way of review, these are my notes of Warren Buffett’s responses to questions from Notre Dame and Stanford MBAs on October 9. 2007.
What are your personal goals for the next 5-10 years?
I’m already doing it. If I have a better plan I should just do it now.
I like teaching and meeting with students. Berkshire is great. It’s like a test tube. It’s a fun platform.
I have the ultimate luxury—I get to work with people I love.
Tip for you: If you want a marriage that will last, look for someone with low expectations. I get that on an extended basis.
There are elephants out there that I haven’t shot yet. I have a gun and it’s fun to go hunting.
Subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you don’t miss any of Warren Buffett’s insights from this 12 post series.
