How easy is set goals every January (02/23)?

I know that I’m late in this subject but this also shows me how hard it is to set goals every year.

It is almost a tradition, at least for me, to set goals at the beginning of the year. The truth is that it looks like a natural thing to plan what you are going to do with another 365 days.

I feel that all the excitement of the holidays and gathering with friends & family helps you to wish for great things in the upcoming year. And it is easy to convert this awesome energy into great goals. The problem is making them achievable and sticking with them along the year. I would like to talk about the achievable problem today.

I’m still learning but I feel that this year I’m in a much better shape than past years. The big problem for me was how to make sure I will be able to track and achieve the goal. One example of a bad goal setting that I can think of was “Organize photos”. It was set back in 2015. It was bad because I had 11 years of photos to organize when I set it. Back then (and nowadays too) I didn’t have a clue of how many photos I had. If you don’t know the amount of work that needs to be done probably the goal would be hard to accomplish.

Thankfully to the growing process that the company that I work for is facing in recent years I was able to adapt the knowledge acquired during the OKR setting process into my New Year’s goal.

Objectives and key results (OKR, alternatively OKRs) is a goal-setting framework used by individuals, teams, and organizations to define measurable goals and track their outcomes.

If you don't know what is OKR and its benefits I strongly recommend that you learn it. It isn't a new thing but it is hard to implement.

For me the most important thing that I learnt from OKRs and when setting a goal is to make it measurable. For instance, in the "Organize photos" example, if I revisit I would set it as "Organize 2000 photos". That way you will be able to keep track of your progress. Seeing progress is a great motivator!

With this mindset in place I finally put together my 2023 goals. As you can see, all of them are measurable.

I removed 1 goal from this list because it was hard to measure it. I also feel that it is a lot to accomplish in a year. Don’t forget that these are only personal goals for a family man.

If you are curious about the app that I'm using to track the goals or how well I will be doing along the year, please don't forget to follow me.