New Year's Resolutions

How to set goals the right way

New Year's resolutions seem kind of silly. What's special about the turning over of the calendar that makes it the right time to set goals? Nothing, really, but that's ok. The actual point is that setting goals is important, and if New Year's gives a prompt to do so, cool. Problem is, most people suck at setting goals. Let's unfuck that.

Let's take a really common New Year's resolution: I want to lose weight and get in better shape. Well that sure sounds like a good goal, doesn't it? I'm sorry to say that, no, this is a shit goal. 

There are a few important things for every goal you set in life:

1. WHY do you want to accomplish this goal?

2. WHAT precisely are you aiming to do?

3. HOW will you accomplish this goal?

Just a vague goal of "losing weight" is meaningless. How much weight? By when? What will you do to achieve it? And why do you want to do it? That takes a vague, meaningless goal and makes it specific and actionable. 

The Why: goals are tough. If it was something that was easy for us, we wouldn't have to sit down and set a goal for it...it would just happen. I don't need to set a goal to consume an entire bag of chips in one sitting because I'm really damn good at that. The reason having a "why" is important is because it gives us motivation during the hard spots - it gives you something to visualize about how your life will be better once you've achieved this goal. So instead of just "I want to lose weight," maybe it's something like "because I want to be able to run around and keep up with my kids" or "because I want to be able to complete a marathon."

The What: goals need to be clear. You want to lose weight? Cool. How much and by when? You need something measurable because that makes it achievable and it also gives a way to track your progress (which, again, creates and reinforces motivation). Instead of "I want to lose weight," the goal becomes "I want to lose 25 pounds, so about 2 pounds a month." Now you can track that and see how you're doing, giving you motivation when you hit each monthly target.

The How: what are you going to do in order to reach your goal? Well, if I want to lose weight, I probably need to think about diet and exercise, but again we need more specifics. So "eat healthier and go to the gym more" can become specific actions like "I will go to the gym every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday," "I will walk at least 10,000 steps every single day," or "I will track what I eat and average under 2,000 calories per day." 

These three things together take a goal from being something vague and not very actionable (i.e. likely to fail) and gives you the most important things you need in order to accomplish it: the target you're aiming for, the specific actions you'll take to get there, and the motivation to keep going when it gets tough. This is my goal-setting framework, and I’ve found it to work well.

And with that, time for MY New Year's resolutions - and you can see how that framework applies in real life!

The broad theme for me this year is financial independence. Some background: I was laid off from my job in October. I’ve been very fortunate in my life and my career, and I’ve also always been a very diligent saver and investor, and so while I’m not “retired” in the sense that I can’t just live off of my investments forever, there’s a big cushion there and I can draw down a decent chunk every year into perpetuity. But I’m not QUITE at the point of saying “I don’t need to make any more money, I can just live off the investments and watch Netflix all day.” I currently work a side job as a fantasy sports analyst for One Week Season (OWS) (I think most people here at this point in the newsletter’s life come from there and already know this), but I need a bit more beyond what I’m making from that. With that in mind…

Goal #1: figure out how to make enough money independently (i.e. no corporate W-2 job) to survive

Why: if I can get to this amount, I can kiss corporate life goodbye! Woo! I am, frankly, tired of corporate life (as if you couldn’t tell based on some of my earlier writing). I’m tired of the politics, I’m tired of the bureaucracy, I’m tired of work that I don’t find very meaningful, and I’m tired of working for companies that demand loyalty and commitment but are unwilling to reciprocate it.

What: based on our current annual expenses and what we have invested and can draw down from, I need about $2k/month more to provide for our family to maintain its current standard of living above and beyond what I’m already making from my one “side gig” job.

How: I have 3 ideas here…

1. In addition to being a fantasy sports analyst, I also run a betting service for OWS. That service is doing very well, and some additional growth in customers there would go a long way to closing my income gap. I’d like to grow from our current ~300 subscribers to 450-500 in 2024, but this is somewhat outside of my control as I don’t handle the marketing (nor would I even be capable of it, that’s not my strong suit).

2. This newsletter happens to have a subscription option. It’s not exactly big, but I think if I’m able to create content that people find valuable, it could provide at least a non-token amount of income. My goal here is annualized revenue of $250/month by the end of 2024 (more on this one later)

3. I have this idea in my head of creating personal financial dashboards for people. Savvy folks can easily do this themselves with services like Mint or Empower (though Mint is shutting down in a couple of months, boo hiss), but there are a lot of people out there who don’t know or don’t have the time to do this themselves. Creating a snapshot “how things are going” dashboard and sending it off once a month to show income, expenses, and net worth seems like a possible niche business idea and I want to explore this.

Goal #2: grow this newsletter from its current list of 130 readers to 1,000. 

Why: because I feel like I have something of value to share with people. I've heard good feedback from people who read it, and I feel like I can make some amount of positive impact on peoples' lives and I want to share that as broadly as possible. And, because as noted above this could eventually become a small but meaningful income stream - but I’d rather set a goal around readers than paid subscribers, because I have more control over the former (and if I do a great job creating valuable content, the latter part should take care of itself).

What: I need 870 more subscribers, and that's about 73 per month. But these things scale exponentially, so just spitballing, I want to reach:

• 225 by the end of March (+95)

• 400 by the end of June (+175)

• 650 by the end of September (+250)

• 1,000 by the end of December (+350)

How: I need to do a better job of promoting my writing on social media (I'm lazy about that). I will commit to 3 social media posts per week about a topic I'm interested in that I can use to tie back to the newsletter. I will also try to explore cross-promotion with other smaller newsletters in similar areas, and will reach out to 1 other such newsletter each month to explore that.

Goal #3: this is cliche, but I want to get in better shape.

I was in decent shape before my daughter was born, but then life got away from me with a kiddo and now I'm 30-40lbs overweight. 

Why: because I want to FEEL healthier. I want to sleep better (weight has led to me developing a snoring habit, not fun for me OR my wife). I want to be able to play with my kiddo without getting tired as quickly. 

What: I don't want to be super aggressive here because I want to keep this goal reasonable and manageable. I know myself and I'm not a fitness buff, so my goal for this year is to lose 12 pounds. Just 1 pound per month. 

How: I'm going to get back into my old swimming habit and go swimming at least twice per week. I'm also going to resume a habit I picked up for a bit at the start of Covid and then trailed off, which is going on 2 walks per day (which got me to that magic 10k steps per day number). As for diet, I know myself here too and if I set a dramatic goal I'll end up failing, so I'm going to shoot for incremental change by only having dessert once per week.

Look at that! 3 goals, and each one has a “why” to keep me motivated, a specific “what” about what I’m aiming for, and a “how,” or a plan to achieve it.

Happy New Year to everyone - what are YOUR New Year’s Resolutions? Feel free to share in the comments, I’d love to hear from you all!