How my New Year’s Resolutions Are Going After 12 Weeks
Reviewing progress on my resolutions for 2022 (Field Note #2)
I’m a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions. I love the idea of a fresh start and the energy that comes at the beginning of a project. New Year’s is society getting to wipe the slate clean together. The holidays around Christmas and New Year’s are perfect for reflecting and taking a big picture view of your life.
I’m interested in what resolutions other people set, so I’m sharing mine. I broke my goals into health, business, and hobbies/travel categories.
I wrote my resolutions at the front of a brand new Leuchtturm 1917 Bullet Journal on the pre-printed page titled ‘Intentions.’ I use this bullet journal to organize my day, so this regularly gives me a chance to remind myself of my long term goals for the year.
Below are my notes on how each resolution has progressed as we have completed 1/4 of the year.
Health
Lose weight, get from 138 to 125 pounds
I stopped using my Fitbit at the beginning of the year because I was gifted an Apple Watch, but I still love the weight tracking on Fitbit. With an end goal of losing 13 lbs, being 4.5 lbs 12 weeks in is just fine. I understand why people find diets and weight loss goals problematic, still it is a common resolution, and I find it personally helpful as a frame for living the healthy life I want.
Run a Marathon
I’ve never run a marathon but I’ve done a few half marathons. I had a head start on this resolution as I started training in October 2021 after an unexpected work commitment caused me to drop out of a different marathon I had signed up for. I chose a marathon that is being held on my birthday(!) and created a training calendar. I’ve not always been great about work week training runs but I’ve been consistent with doing the weekend long runs and that has been enough to build my endurance up from 5 miles in training week 1 to a 23 mile run by week 20. I will break down my first marathon training experience in a separate post, but this resolution is on track for success. After my marathon in April I will have the opportunity to shift the time spent on the long weekend run to work on other resolutions.
Cut alcohol intake by 60%
I adopted the tool Sunnyside (previously called Cutback Coach) at the end of last year to track my drinking. Using Sunnyside, I established a baseline of my current drinking levels. Next, I decided what number of drinks I would like to be at per week. So far, it feels like gains have been marginal. My weekly drinking level is down 6% from my baseline. I’m still firmly committed to this resolution, and my new tactic is to focus on hitting a new personal best when it comes to drinks for the week.
You can see that these three resolutions support each other. Cutting back alcohol and training for a marathon contribute to the weight loss goal, and training takes up time that otherwise might be spent drinking. The weight monitoring reminds me that every beer hurts my ability to achieve the weight goal. It’s New Year’s resolution “synergy.”
Business
Get my company to #3 for a specific search phrase in Google Rankings
No increase in ranking yet. I’ve been working on the foundation of this goal by pulling together content for a website overhaul. Once the new site is almost ready, I’ll analyze my current ranking, launch the new site in Q2, and focus on adding quality content targeting the search phase during Q3 and Q4.
Make $100 per month on Medium
I’ve made 33 cents. And that was from another account where I wrote some articles on local county politics. Unfortunately, I was kicked out of the Medium Partner program during the recent purge, so I can’t earn anything more until I gain 100 followers. I’m not focusing on followers at this stage anyway; I think establishing the Medium writing habit is the first step. I’ve posted three articles (including this one) thus far.
Write 200,000 words
This count can include new material for my company website or Medium articles. In addition, it supports my other business resolutions. I should have posted 50,000 words by now, and I’m under 2,000; obviously, this is a problem. I need to publish ~5000 words per week for the rest of the year to achieve my goal. Still achievable, but I need to pivot somehow to post more. Hopefully, after my marathon, I can funnel energy here.
Hobbies + Travel
Take cross county Amtrak trip
I’ve been doing research and tentatively scheduled this for September-October. Blocking out the actual dates is the most important next step.
Read 100 books
This resolution is about unfinished business. Last year I set this same goal because my friend was doing it, and I got to 99. It was a stretch goal because I only logged seven books the prior year. Previously I mainly read articles and blog posts. It was frustrating to get that close, so I set the same book reading goal this year. I use Goodreads to track my progress. I’m 11 books behind schedule, but last year at this same time, I was more than 15 books behind schedule, so this is fine.
Finish pet project website about traveling along Highway 395
I haven’t worked on this project yet, but it’s something that I can do over a few weekends. This has been on my non-urgent to-do list for years, so I made this a resolution to force myself to make time for it.
Note: I used affiliate or referrer links in this post for my links to Sunnyside and my bullet journal on Amazon.
