New Years Resolutions. The phrase can either bring joy or ire to one’s mind depending on how successful you have been at them in the past. I have made my fair share of New Years Resolutions and I have failed just as many of them. One thing I didn’t know is just how many years we humans have been failing at New Years Resolutions. We have been making and inevitably failing at these for nearly 4,000 years. The Babylonians seemingly started the tradition in promises for change made to their gods at their 12 day New Year celebration. Why then am I writing about my goals and resolutions if we fail them so often. The answer is two fold. First, in 2021 I set and kept the largest goal of my life. Secondly, I believe personal growth and challenging yourself to be an important part of life. This article will discuss what my goals for 2022 are and how I intend to keep them.
How to keep goals
This will not be a definitive list of all the ways to help yourself keep goals and habits. That would be far too long an article if I did that. However, I do want to give some of the things that have helped me.
The first thing that helped me is learning not to bite off more than you can chew. In the New Year, we seek to revitalize and change a lot of things all at once. In years past I have taken on multiple huge goals for the year and it never worked. I would make it a week or two and then slip in one habit. That led to slipping or giving up another all the way to giving them all up. So be cognizant of the challenges of taking on too much and set small goals throughout the year. This will spread out the change and allow you to focus.
The second thing is setting an action plan. We tend to set the goal and then not always set an action plan to accomplish those goals. This relates to setting SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time bound) goals but is a bit different. For example, you can set a goal to lose 20 pounds by August but without a plan it is still difficult. So I started setting actionable daily or weekly tasks to build habits that push towards my goal. You will see some of those later.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. – James Clear
That quote is what drove me to my success in 2020 and 2021. I created habits and systems that forced me to make my goals. This relates to your action plan but can go a step further. If you automate your habit formation or the adherence to habits than you take that to an entirely different level. If possible, always try to create systems that force you to succeed.
Goals
So just what are my 2022 goals? Well some of them are hangovers from 2021 and some are new ones. It is a larger list than years past but I believe all of these are attainable. My goals will be more high level in this list and then my action plan will list out my “systems” that will make me hit my goals. I will also discuss the ‘why’ behind a lot of these goals. Some will be more self explanatory than other but it is still helpful to discuss.
- Lose 35 Pounds by the end of the year
- Read 12 books
- Grow my blog and YouTube Channel
- Buy a house
- Save $10,000 more that automated savings
- Become conversant in German
- Grow technical skills
Let’s get the simple ones out of the way. Losing weight is something I need to do. As I approach 30 I need to be in better shape and a more healthy weight. I am Obese by BMI and need to get that under control. Losing 35 pounds amounts to about 3 pounds per month which is incredibly doable. Next up, reading 12 books is again pretty self explanatory. Reading is a good thing for people of every age. I enjoy fiction and non-fiction books and will strive to read a mixture of both. Buying a house might be simple in theory but I worry that in 2022 it will not be simple in practice. After getting married this year my wife and I have decided that we will buy a house in 2022 due in part to the announced rate hikes.
Now for the fun ones. I want to try and grow my blog and YouTube channel. As I have learned about finance and settled my financial life I want to share that with others. This will give me something to work on outside of my 9-5 job. While I truly enjoy where I work I feel I can get stuck focusing too much on work. Having a more creative outlet with the potential to help others is a good balance to my focus on work. Now that is not all I want out of these platforms. While I do seek to help teach some of the lessons I have learned this also gives me the opportunity to learn from my viewers as well.
I have automated a large amount of my financial life. I automatically contribute to my 401K, Roth IRA, brokerage account, cash savings and crypto. However, I want to set goals above and beyond that. This goal is about mostly limiting my spending and learning to be more minimal and less materialistic. I think learning to be more content with the material possessions I already have is positive in many ways and this is a goal that will cause me to create a system to do those things.
My final two goals are a bit more vague. I took German from the age I was 7 all the way through I was in the 10th grade. Unfortunately, I stopped using it nearly as much and have since lost a lot of my knowledge. I currently have the opportunity to possibly travel to Germany in 2023 for work. I want to get back to a conversational level in German in order to immerse myself more if I travel there. Furthermore, there is research that suggests a lot of cognitive benefits to learning another language which is icing on the cake. The last one is the most vague. I want to grow my technical skills. I graduated with a Computer Science degree and started working in IT and soon moved into management. I have not done enough programming in my non-professional life to keep myself up on my skills. I want to grow my skills back up both for the benefits of bringing them into my work life but also to keep myself marketable in the future.
Action Plan
So now we get to the meat of the goals. I honestly consider this portion the most important. I will not be focusing on my goals throughout the year. I will be focusing on this action plan as opposed to my goal. These will be my habits and systems that I build in order to force myself to make my goals. Some of these steps will start at different times. I do not want to bite off more than I can chew and end up failing to build a key habit in my system.
- Track food intake each day
- Greens shake and multivitamin each day
- Walk/Jog 12 miles per week
- Drink 2 liters of water per day
- Weekly budget checkup with wife on Sundays
- Monthly finance and spending review with wife
- Post 1 blog article per week
- Post 1 YouTube video every other week
- Read 30 minutes each weeknight (January)
- Minimum 2 hours per week German course (February)
- Lift weights 3x per week (February)
- Minimum 2 hours per week coding classes (March)
- Complete 3 No Spend Months (January, May, October)
These are the items I will be tracking throughout 2022. Like I mentioned, the overall goals will almost fade into the background throughout the year. The goal is the end point and what is really more important is the habit in and of itself. Losing 35 pounds will be great. It will inevitably help my health. However, will walking or running 12+ miles per week for the next 5 years outweigh that weight loss? Absolutely. Will saving an extra $10,000 be great? Of course. But what about when my salary doubles and I am able to more comfortably maintain my current spending. I will save a lot more than $10,000.
In order to build these habits I will be tracking myself to keep myself accountable. I have not found the best way to do this yet but will be experimenting with some different ways to do this. My first attempt is going to be manually tracking them in a spreadsheet and using reminders on my phone. If anyone knows of a good way to track these, please let me know in the comments.
Since this is a finance blog I wanted to mention how some these might impact my financial life. A lot of these goals will have a direct impact on my finances and others are more tangential. I don’t think I have to explain how saving more money will help for example.
Losing weight and being fit is obviously good for one at a physical level but I think the cost is underestimated. Firstly, a reduction in eating out has a direct cost saving along with bulk cooking meals which I do weekly. The average American spends 3,000 a year eating out so even cutting that in half would be a good chunk of savings. The more substantial amount of savings would come in more hidden costs. The estimated yearly healthcare cost attributable to being obese is almost $2,000. This is over a lifetime and it more prevalent in older ages but it is still substantial.
My final two goals focus primarily on the earnings side of the equation. Reestablishing my German skills and making this international project successful would come with being in line for a substantial promotion. Growing my technical skills will allow me to possibly grow some side hustles or possibly change jobs in the future. Both also help keep your mind sharp. There is a lot of interesting research on continuous learning being beneficial to your cognitive health.
I hope this article has inspired some people to reconsider how they make New Years Resolutions. I honestly think personal improvement and setting goals can be hugely beneficial. It is the culture around these resolutions and how everyone tries to jump in head first right at the beginning of the year that causes so many people to fail. I wish you all the best in your New Year and let’s hope it is better than 2021!
SimpliFI 