Before the turn of the year I was speaking with a friend about effective goal setting in 2012. We talked about the fact that personal goals and professional goals are really the same thing, we're just better at evaluating and making progress on our professional goals.
Too frequently, the goals we set for our personal life are vague and go unmeasured. Furthermore, there is little follow up on our commitments; its easy to dismiss a goal because we're never going to confront ourselves with the fact that we haven't achieved it.
So here's a quick update on where I stand on the goals I set out at the beginning of 2012. Read the goals in detail HERE.
1) Establish My Own Wake-Up Time. For the past month I've been setting my alarm for 7:30 for weekdays and 9:00 for weekends. I may (do) hit snooze a couple (a few) times, but my body is beginning to recognize 7:30am as my wakeup time.
2) Focus On My Hamstrings. Yes, the body awareness is there. Yes, they are still tight as hell. This is more of a theme in my practice, not really a goal I guess.
3) Practice Yoga 5 hours a week. My average for the last 8 full weeks is 4.74 hours a week. However, that also includes a week of travel where I practiced no yoga; taking that week out of the equation, my average is 5.41 hours.
4) Learn Turkish. Yeah, this goal isn't really going well. I'm about 4 chapters into my book and stopped. The difficulty is, for me, learning a language is very time intensive and I really don't have that much time. Also, learning a language, for me, isn't fun-its homework. So its very low on my priorities of what I want to do after a busy day. If progress is made here it will be in April and May.
5) Prepare for effective job hunting. Not yet. Have been keeping notes about a new resume, but haven't started this project yet.
6) Read 'The Brothers Karamazov'. I'll finish this week (I'm on page 725 of 776). I'm really enjoying it. In Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut writes 'everything there [is] to know about life [is] in The Brothers Karamazov'. I get it-it feels like it touches on everything, that at some point or another in it, it discusses everything. I highly recommend it (get the Richard Pevear translation-it makes a difference) and certainly see myself reading it again in my life.
7) Go to an Azerbaijani Rap Concert. I went, I saw, I blogged (HERE). Super bummed about the fact that H.O.S.T. and A-Team are playing a concert in Baki this Sunday and I have an unbreakable commitment. Inshallah, I'll get to see both before I leave.
8) Buy new iPhone and MacBook Air. This is a December goal. Feel free to send me Christmas/Birthday presents of Apple gift cards...
9) Meditate daily. I've begun this practice and enjoy it. I'm not at daily yet, but pretty close, for the month of February I got 15 minutes in 22 of 29 days.
So there you have it. I think I'm doing pretty well so far, the things that I can 'accomplish' I have/will quite soon and those involving establishing good habits are well in the making.
Did any of you set goals for 2012? How are they coming along?
You're doing a lot better than I am. I get distracted way too quickly..
ReplyDeleteBut to that point, I've adopted your (9) as a bit of a goal. I don't do formal meditation so often yet, but I've writing down at the beginning of the day the three tasks I want to accomplish, and then at the end of the day reflect and see why I did or didn't accomplish them. It's really low-time but I think is having a major effect on my day.
That has actually been my most difficult goal as well. I've slipped even worse in March. I think my biggest problem is that I still haven't found a time during my day that works for me, but I'm gonna keep on it.
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