The Rosy Wanderer

It’s hard to believe 2020 will be here in a few weeks. Every year the time flies faster, and I don’t know where it went. There are so many goals I want to accomplish, but I get distracted by the demands of work and spend more time on quadrant 1 & 3 urgent tasks than quadrant 2 important items. (If you haven’t read The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen Covey then you need to make that a goal this year!)

But how do I stay focus on the important and not urgent items? What are those for me? That is my goal for 2020. Historically, I have created checklists (I love checklists!) for each year to guide me and give me a purpose to the year. Sometimes those lists have been a little too long or complicated so I can’t accomplish everything. This year, I am going to go back to making a checklist and then use my blog to hold me accountable for achieving those things. 2020 will be used as a stepping stone to achieving the bigger goals I have for my life.

2020 Checklist

• Complete the Dopey Challenge
• Lose 30 pounds
• PR the Chicago Marathon
• Visit Australia (continent 5!)
• Publish 4 posts/month on The Rosy Wanderer
• Complete Google Analytics, Google AdWords certifications
• Book African safari for 2021
• Increase net worth by $30,000
• Read 31 books

Understanding Goal Setting

The difficult part of the above checklist is that these are all lag measures – I have to implement different behaviors, habits, and mindset to achieve these 2020 goals. Health and general wellness have always been a challenge for me. Even though I am excited for Dopey, I didn’t execute my training plan well. Staying accountable is important – to my diet, to my budget, and to my commitments. In order for me to accomplish these goals, I have to find a way to hold myself accountable. That is the key everyone needs to figure out in their life.

Gretchen Rubin has four quadrants to describe our tendencies. I am an obliger, which means I’m worried about letting other people down but not myself. I wish I wasn’t like that, but I am. As an obliger, I view other’s requests as urgent even though they may be unimportant or even not urgent, but I am trying to please others. This then reprioritizes my goals for the day.

Even though I wish I didn’t prioritize other people, I do. For me to be successful, I need to use this tendency to hold myself accountable for achieving my goals. I am going to share my successes and setbacks here to keep me accountable externally.

For me to be successful, I need to plan out the lead measures required for me to accomplish these goals and find ways to make sure others hold me accountable for these behaviors. Or I need to make myself a priority in my life and stop worrying about what other people think! But it is probably a better bet to set up systems to play to my natural tendencies.

Here goes nothing! Looking forward to 2020!