2011 - Here We Go

Alright...as promised, the 2011 Goals post.

I've been doing a bunch of research on what behavioral psychologists etc have been coming up with regarding the setting of goals and the attaining thereof hence the delay. I'm not going to go into the detail they did but I will put down the basics and I'll answer the question some of you had about achieving the tough ones.

1. They should be shared. If you're the only person who knows you intend to quit smoking then you're the only muppet who's going to know you gave up on your intention. By putting it out in public (here and on FB for example) others will know. Your reputation therefore is on the line and that's one of the keys that keep people on track.

2. They should be written down. They don't know why but there's a definite link between writing and getting it inside your head. People who write them down are approximately 3 times more likely to achieve their goals than those who just think about them.

3. They should be linked to a positive outcome as opposed to a negative one. (Seems the positive thinking crowd has it right after all) People who thought about the positive benefits (of going back to school for example) were more likely to achieve their goals than those who thought about the negative aspects of being stuck in a dead end position.

4. To make the anti-positive crowd happy people who were aware of how hard it might be to achieve their goals did better than those who thought it was going to be a cake walk.

5. Last one I'll go into here - and this is for the truly tough goal that you struggle with - is to be held accountable. This one is from the economics geniuses at Yale. Pledge money to someone if you don't achieve the goal in question and you'll be far more likely to achieve it. My own spin on that is pledge it to someone you don't like.

I bet if Brian S pledged 500 quid to Kaaarl if he didn't get down to his target weight, he'd get down without any problem at all.

Nick

Some of mine for this year are...

1. Go back to school for a degree in Psychology (already under way...have begun my pre-college core classes with the local community college)

2. Move to the Lake. Planned this one last year but deadliest warrior and a medical emergency got in the way.

3. My book published.

4. Improve my credit score (took a beating after the divorce etc)

5. Get my six pack back. I did lose 2 stone en route to the goal but got derailed with the medical emergency. Once that's squared away I should be back on track.

6. Build Krav up to 40 students. Have 18 on the books now so I need 22 more students.

Ok...that's five of mine to be getting on with. What are yours?


Nick

Hi Mate

Yup I'm back on I didn't just post on FB for a lark

I've not given a great deal of thought to this but I have a few ongoing goals and I really do need to get my life back on track. Here are a few things I'd like to see...

1. Get back into some sort of training.. I've not trained properly at all for the past two years for reasons I won't bore you with. I need to start a martial art that I find rewarding. No progress on this thus far but I will be making enquiries this week.

2. Get my fitness back.. I'm very out of shape and I want to get back to the point I was at two years ago.
On this one I've already started at the gym an am slowly building up.

3. Finish writing my book. I'm was working on a novel that fell foul of aforementioned times, I've since starting working on it. I've no illusions about it getting published or anything this year but I'd like to know I've written got it laid out from beginning to end.
I'm onto about page 200 and writing about a page a night.

4. Change jobs. This ones tricky but one of the reasons I feel so fed up at the moment is my work so I need to make in roads to getting my bollocks in gear to find a career. I intend to start looking at courses and retraining for this.

5. Start a band... believe it or not I sing old folk music, I want to start a group.
I'm performing at a few open mikes locally trying to get myself seen... believe it or not I got a few videos on youtube as well but if you look at them you'll see I have a long ways to go, I'm practicing most nights though

1. Carry on not smoking

2. Master this beastly 70lb kettlebell that my missus bought me for xmas

3. Get back down to the 15st "something" mark...presently weigh in at around 17st 3lbs

4.Learn more

5.Earn more

6.Play more!

1. Finally pack up smoking, i've been cutting down since before christmas so it won't be such a shock to the system (well that's what i hope anyway)

2. Get some more students at my Arnis / Eskrima club.

3. Train More

4. Get fitter

Well I didn't post on this thread last year as opposed to the year before and didn't really achieve much, so there must be something to this goal setting malarkey.


So here's mine for 2011

1) have now quit the booze and fags for two years, this year I need to sort out my eating, its horrendous, I haven't put much weight on but am certainly a lot flabbier than I was two years ago. So limited sugar intake and a much healthier diet.

2) I have had tendonitis in my achilles since I knackered in back in 2010 and haven't run since, get this sorted out so I can run again, I want to be running by July.

3) Same with my shoulder, I tore it up last year and thats still giving me gyp, get it sorted.

4) Not allowing the above mentioned injuries to stop me training, work round them, find things I can do, go light, whatever!! just stop letting them being an excuse, I did do a learn to scull course last year, so I have rowing if nothing else.

5) I went back on my own, business wise last year, so I haven't any previous years figures to go on, I aim to make a certain sum by the end of March this year, I will post back to say whether this was achieved or not, promise no fibbing.

6) I am still living in rented accommodation, its a nightmare when every penny you ever had is tied up in your house, your ex lives in it and you may never see that money again but I digress, I aim to raise enough money by No 6 above to buy myself a flat by the end of the year.

7) Silly one, but I will continue trying to fill my 160Gb IPOD with Music, currently at 46Gb, want to get to at least 90Gb, no illegal downloading.

Lastly, I want to start learning some more on both professional & personal levels, I struggle to read books nowadays for some reason but have discovered audiobooks, so thats the way forward for me.


Nick

Three Months in and time for an update:



1) have now quit the booze and fags for two years, this year I need to sort out my eating, its horrendous, I haven't put much weight on but am certainly a lot flabbier than I was two years ago. So limited sugar intake and a much healthier diet.

Pretty good so far, not 100% success but a huge improvement, recently discovered intermittent fasting and now following a 16 fast 8 hour feed protocol, really like it and it fits around my life well

2) I have had tendonitis in my achilles since I knackered in back in 2010 and haven't run since, get this sorted out so I can run again, I want to be running by July.

Been having treatment for about a month now, ankle has calmed down and hopefully still on target for this.

3) Same with my shoulder, I tore it up last year and thats still giving me gyp, get it sorted.

Same as above

4) Not allowing the above mentioned injuries to stop me training, work round them, find things I can do, go light, whatever!! just stop letting them being an excuse, I did do a learn to scull course last year, so I have rowing if nothing else.

Been following a 5x5 lifting program since mid Jan, up to BW squats now with good form , was a bit of a slow start as my form was crap but its coming together slowly, doing weighted pulls & dips also

5) I went back on my own, business wise last year, so I haven't any previous years figures to go on, I aim to make a certain sum by the end of March this year, I will post back to say whether this was achieved or not, promise no fibbing.

exceeded it by 5%, really happy considering work has been pretty quiet but have put my soul into this.

6) I am still living in rented accommodation, its a nightmare when every penny you ever had is tied up in your house, your ex lives in it and you may never see that money again but I digress, I aim to raise enough money by No 6 above to buy myself a flat by the end of the year.

So far so good, have a nice little nest egg growing slowly

7) Silly one, but I will continue trying to fill my 160Gb IPOD with Music, currently at 46Gb, want to get to at least 90Gb, no illegal downloading.

Haven't done a lot on this but don't really care.

Lastly, I want to start learning some more on both professional & personal levels, I struggle to read books nowadays for some reason but have discovered audiobooks, so thats the way forward for me.

50% success on this but the others are more important so not too bothered.

Will check in on this again in another three months


Nick

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Awesome mate...way to go. I'll be back with a massive update and surprise announcement myself in the next couple of weeks.

I'll also have some info on how to accelerate all the goals you've set.

In the meantime, congrats

Nick

Still working on my goals but I'll put them up soon.

Ade wrote:1. Carry on not smoking

2. Master this beastly 70lb kettlebell that my missus bought me for xmas

3. Get back down to the 15st "something" mark...presently weigh in at around 17st 3lbs

4.Learn more

5.Earn more

6.Play more!

1. Absolutely!

2. getting there

3.slow but sure...currently weighing 15st 20lbs

4 and 5. not much to report as yet...

6. A bit,i've been indulging in a bit of metalwork lately when i have the time