New Year's Plans, Part 1: Developing Good Habits!

Without a doubt, most of us feel inspired by the arrival of a new year, and hope to "make things better" in the year ahead.

But even though we might have the best of intentions, a lot of people find themselves going to happy hour rather than to the gym by the 10th of January.

So what's the problem? Don't we actually want these changes?

Well, we typically do but we tend to make spur-of-the-moment promises that sound good, but we do so without any kind of framework in place to support their realistically coming to fruition.

I have long since stopped making New Year's Resolutions because I don't want to have a disappointing start to the year! And I know myself... if things aren't "right," I'll just stop doing them!

But I do have plans for 2025!

But they don't start with some grand end goal, they start with developing good base habits that make reaching a potential goal more likely.

Yes, I realize that might sound like a very "boring" approach to accomplishment, but I happen to think it's an important — if not crucial — part of achieving success, in whatever you are trying to do!

The way I do things actually date back almost 30 years, to the time in my life when I finally and permanently decided to trade in "having a career" for being self-employed.

But I didn't "just" jump into self-employment — I actually spend almost three years simply laying the groundwork to make such a life change possible.

That involved selling my house and moving into a much more modest apartment, completely restructuring how my monthly expenses looked and generally giving up a lot of expensive habits and benefits that typically go with a corporate job. I needed to put myself into a position where I could still get by, even if things were not going as well as expected and/or building an income was turning out to take longer than I had hoped for!

Again, that sort of thing might sound very boring and maybe even like overkill to many readers... but I'm ultimately glad I did things the way I did.

But I digress.

This year, I want to devote more time to writing, and to my blog, and to engagement on Steemit.

That's a nice thing to say, but how can I actually make that a reality, given the time I have available? After all, I'm not going to magically have "more time," just because I make this plan!

For one thing, I have to start writing earlier in the day.

In order for that to become a realistic possibility, I have to take a long look at what it is that keeps me from getting around to writing till 11:00pm. What can I take out of my time budget? What can I shuffle around?

Sometimes the answers are pretty simple.

Whereas I like keeping up with what's going on in the world, it's something I can do at pretty much any time during the day. Spending my morning coffee time filling my head with the "noise" for the world news — at the time of the day when my mind is sharpest — is not a good use of time. I can just as well do that at 9:00pm... and use those first two hours to write, even if I am just writing outlines to polish up later.

Priority setting matters!

That is really one of my personal fundamentals, when it comes to setting goals. If you really want to accomplish something, you have to make it a priority. Just "adding it on to everything else you're doing" is only going to lead to disappointment!

When you look at your own day, it's very likely that you give time to things that really don't matter, yet you do them, perhaps out of habit. Instead, we have to prioritize the underlying patterns and habits that will support our end goals... and let "busy work" fade into the background.

So that's what I am working on, at the moment... creating good habits that will make it more likely that I will be able to write more regularly.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about you? When you set goals, do you make sure you have the habits to reach those goals? Are you good at prioritizing your time, and creating schedules to SUPPORT your goals? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2025.01.07 19:17 PST
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