New Year's and SMART Goals
“Why start today when you can procrastinate until next January?”
Happy New Year! Do you have your backlogged list of “to-do’s” to set as New Year’s resolutions?
On my side, I am not normally one to make New Year’s resolutions because I’ve always believed that the moment I realize that I should start something, I shouldn’t wait to do it. One of my favorite expressions is “the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago; the second best time is today!” Still, this year felt a little different to me!
The awkward annual conversation
I understand why people set their New Year’s resolutions at this time of year, as the holidays reunited with family happen to be a good time to sit down and reflect. For the Pao Family, we are reunited for New Year’s after having spent our Christmas holidays apart. (Our younger daughter spent Christmas with her partner’s family in New Jersey, while Marsha and I spent Christmas in the UK with the family of our older daughter’s partner!)
Leading up to the new year, we were able to catch up again on both our year-end reflections as well as our New Year’s resolutions. Historically, I haven’t been wholly prepared to have this annual discussion.
This year was different because I’ve been spending quite a bit of time on reflections. Those of you reading this Substack have likely seen several of the 17 Substack posts over the past few months just reflecting! (Check out the new menu item on retiredpdx.com called “Reflections” dedicated to these deeper thought posts.)
This year I had resolutions
I have also been starting a mental “to-do” list for New Year’s resolutions. In the spirit of “thought-word-deed,” I know that putting the thoughts to words is the precursor to action. Here were some of those thoughts on my mental list that I articulated into words at dinner on Monday night.
Do my first bartending gig. I have a friend that owns a taproom. We discussed doing a shift together as a fun “retirement job” activity. For background, I volunteered once for just a day at the Portland Craft Beer festival, and it was so much fun! As a volunteer, all I had to do was sign this form and keep it on me during the event. For this new bartending gig, I had to do a 2.5 hour online course and take a test with the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission (OLCC)! The next step is to get trained at the taproom, and we’re going to do this in January!
Follow a time-based workout calendar for Q1. With the progression of my Diabetic Kidney Disease, my blood pressure crept up. Given that I was already on the maximum dosage of Losartan, I just recently got prescribed Amlodopin. The good news is that my blood pressure is back down to the target range. The bad news is that piling this drug on top of the others makes me feel lethargic. My overall stamina has degraded, and I have lost motivation. The numbers have shown that I just haven’t been getting out to exercise on my own since I’ve been on it, and it’s negatively affected my numbers on Apple Health for the year, too!
To get back on track, for one quarter, I will stop setting any goals based on intensity (weight, reps, calories burned, or distance), I will set goals based on times to set new baselines to keep myself motivated. I will start by simply allocating 20 minutes twice a week for cardio, 20 minutes twice a week for core/strength, and 40 minutes once a week for any type of lower intensity workout.
Instead of making this optional, I will keep a calendar in Q1 to force myself to get out there.Find another project that I want to do. Back in 2023, I untangled myself from the myriad of consulting projects, volunteer projects, and investing activities to clear the decks. In 2024, I had just one paid consulting gig, and I closed it up in December. Now I have some more time freed up to do another project. I don’t yet have an idea what this will be yet, but I am entering 2025 with an open mind to think about new possibilities and will keep the mindset of “one more”!
Figure out if there’s something I should do differently with this Substack. So far, this has been my personal journal that I let other people read. The journaling has worked well for me. In the spirit of “thought-word-deed”, I think that forcing myself to write words has prompted better actions!
I have also really appreciated the nice notes and conversations with old friends that have decided to read this and engage! Thank you!
As I am finding my voice here, I keep wondering if I should convert this journal into something with a bit broader appeal. As you all likely know, the vast majority of people who subscribe to this Substack are personal friends who know me outside of Substack. As such, most of you can put these reflections in context and have some interest in my personal journey. I am wondering if there are nuggets that should be packaged in a way that may be of interest to people who don’t already know me!
I know these last two sound “squishy!”.
SMART goals
To address this “squishinesss,” I turn to SMART goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
My first two resolutions meet these criteria. The third and fourth resolutions don’t really meet the criteria, as they aren’t really “achievable” or “actionable” and not necessarily “relevant” or “results-based.” In other words, how do I intend to achieve these goals, and what will the result be?
Given the desire convert these resolutions into SMART goals, the implementation of the third and fourth goals will be reduced to something more actionable and results-based.
Goal: Do 5 write-ups per month of interviews with others that answer two questions:
What are your thoughts about my Substack and where it might go?
Any ideas of problems that need to be addressed that I could contribute to?
Given that this is my journal, I’ll be checking back in on the progress against these four resolutions from time-to-time!
Your Turn
How about you? Do you have resolutions that you want to declare?
Please note the changes to the menu on my Substack website. With over 3 dozen posts, I created new menu items on the top to categorize the posts as Reflections, Finance, Tech, Health, Business, and PNW (Pacific Northwest).
Separating the mailing lists as “A-sides” (mainly Reflections) versus “B-sides” (everything else) largely didn’t really help anyone, as just about everyone stayed subscribed to both. As such, I will be deprecating this concept.
I will also be deprecating the Referral program, as I know this didn’t really take either. As such, I’m going to keep off the “paywalls” that I suspended for Christmas. Since then, I see that the number of views went up for the old “paywalled articles” have climbed, indicating that some of you revisited them to see the additional content (or perhaps caught up on reading over the holidays!) Feel free to visit Fighting Reward Card Inflation, Do you have sleep apnea?, Housing Choices — Cows and Milk, and A Digital Estate Planning Concern if you were previously paywalled — or if you just didn’t get reading them!
As always, I would appreciate hearing from you! If you have specific suggestions for this Substack or future projects I should potentially engage in, message me! I may be reaching out to you anyway!
Interesting. You are applying SMART to your resolutions, and in my newsletter this week with New Year resolutions, I was delighting in not having to make my goals SMART. Horses for courses.
There must be an AI app that can consolidate, organize and publish in book form, a best seller! Good luck in 2025! You have given me some good things to consider, albeit my mantra has been; I get to do what I like, and they pay me too! Hard for me to call it work! Only a few bosses understand what I do, less have tried to direct and tell me what to do. The few rough times have more than been overshadowed by the awesome times. And most I can laugh about once the raw wounds have healed into experience stripes and Great War stories.