Tag: Goal Setting

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Goal Setting Goals

Aiming to Run 1,000 Kilometers, and Other Goals for 2025

My weekends already look quite different than they did in 2024.

One of my favorite things about the Christmas holiday season is the opportunity to reflect. To take stock of my life. To zoom out and re-imagine things.

Where am I succeeding?

Where am I growing?

Where do I need to realign my investments of time and energy?

An annual tradition that anchors me

An important part of this annual reflection is a goal-setting session that my dad and three brothers complete together. It usually takes us 3–4 hours to discuss each domain of life, and because we love and trust each other, we get pretty real.

This year was our twelfth annual meeting of the minds, and as always, I’m fired up for more growth in 2025.

One of the most significant changes I’ll be making in 2025 is to hit pause on weekly livestream interviews with educators. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this hobby, but it’s taken 7–8 hours a week (mostly weekends) to get through each step of the workflow involved.

It’s actually quite painful to hit pause on these episodes, because I enjoy the activity and weekly rhythm. But freeing up this time allows me the margin to create other forms of content that I’m passionate about, including this blog post.

Why share these goals publicly?

Fair question, and I know most of my acquaintances would be horrified by the idea of sharing their own personal goals on the web.

I’m posting them here for three main reasons:

  1. When we write them down, our goals become a little more real.
  2. The power of public accountability is REAL. People may ask me how I’m doing on these goals this year, and that awareness pushes me to stick with them.
  3. Even if I don’t reach every goal, I believe that aiming for a goal is better than playing it safe and not aiming at all. Some progress is better than none.

I’m not afraid of failure.

Here they are — my goals for 2025

Physical

  1. Run 1,000 km. This will be tracked automatically on Strava.
  2. Complete daily mini-workouts (push-ups, squats, curls, stretches) for 300/365 days.
  3. Check blood pressure numbers weekly (52 times) and push my averages below 130/80. My BP numbers have always been poor, but 2024 was especially worrying.
  4. End 2025 at 189 lbs. I ended 2024 at 195 lbs.
  5. Complete the Vancouver Sun Run (10 km) in under 53:48 (my 2024 time).
  6. Complete 10+ chin-ups in one set by end of year.
  7. Bench press 135 lbs. x 20 reps (recorded PB is x 12 reps) by end of year.

Financial

  1. Invest in S&P 500 ETFs within my TFSA. Single stock-picking has been fun for the last few years, but my results haven’t kept up with the S&P. When it comes to investing, boring often wins over the long haul. It’s time to get more boring.
  2. Earn $240+ from blog posts on Medium.
  3. Earn $1,200 from AdSense on my YouTube channel for teachers. To get there, I’ll need to publish more tech tutorial content — that’s what teachers around the world find most helpful.
  4. Give successively more to charitable organizations each month than the month before. This is a trend that my wife and I have followed since marriage in 2015 and we would like it to continue indefinitely.
  5. Give spontaneously to family, friends, or those in need once a month. This often takes the form of treating another couple to a meal, but it can take other forms as well.

Marital

  1. Continue to connect with my wife on Friday Family Fun nights, Saturday date nights, and Sunday afternoons. She needs lots of quality time together and I am grateful that she doesn’t ever seem to get sick of Tim Time.
  2. Create some new travel memories together in July — location still to be determined.

Parental

  1. Connect with our younger son (he lives at home with us, but the three of us have different schedules) over a meal at least once per week.
  2. Continue to match him dollar-for-dollar on his university tuition. His mother and I share finances, so this is a shared goal.

Professional

  1. Improve my contributions to my elementary team, students, and parent community. I’m happy with my current mix of teaching and administrative duties.
  2. Support my still-to-be-hired new principal (my seventh principal in nine years) this fall.
  3. Obtain my BCCT certification. I’m currently certified to teach at all schools in Manitoba, but only independent schools in BC.
  4. Publish 50 blog posts (and matching vlog posts) about my education practice.
  5. Increase my proficiency with AI-for-teachers tools. This one is difficult to quantify, but let’s say that by year’s end I want to be leveraging AI tools in my work more than once per day.

Self-Improvement

  1. Complete daily goal tracking consistently (as in: charting my progress virtually every day) using the Strides app.
  2. Finish 12 books. I read almost every night, but I hop around a lot, so the word ‘finishing’ is important here. If you’re a reader, I’d love to connect with you on Goodreads.
  3. Publish 26+ personal interest blog posts (and matching vlog posts) like this one.
  4. Complete 24+ bedtime journal entries.
  5. Complete 24+ morning reflection and prayer journal entries. These are profoundly centering and give me great peace when I actually do them
  6. Complete 6 BC hikes and 6 paddleboard trips in the summer.
  7. Publish 12 long-form videos on each of my Vancouver reviews channel (in 2024 I published 2), travel channel (in 2024 I published 3), and my hiking and paddleboarding channel (in 2024 I published 10). The long-term goal here is to have 4–5 monetized YouTube channels by the time I retire from teaching.

Social/Relational

  1. Meet weekly with other couples from our church community to share life, learning, and friendships together. This is a life-giving practice for me and my wife.
  2. Organize and attend 10+ monthly father-son Zooms (we live in different parts of the country).
  3. Complete a first-ever camping and hiking trip with my brothers and some of their children in August. I’m dreaming of an overnight trip to Landslide Lake on Vancouver Island.
  4. Meet six times with three other male teacher friends in my area. We aim for monthly get-togethers, but about half of our meetings get knocked out by life.

Final thoughts

There you have them — most of my goals for 2025. They’re as specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timelined as I can make them.

What do you have in mind for this year? Whatever your goals, make sure they are quantifiable.

And if you DO make yours public, tag me below and share a link to your work. I’d love to check them out and cheer you on.

Let’s GO.

Standing near the peak of Brunswick Mountain in Lions Bay, BC

Categories
Finances Productivity Self-Actualization

The Exceptional Power of Public Accountability

Want to achieve big goals this year? Try putting them in print.

There’s no such thing as a slam dunk commitment. But when intentions are declared out loud, they tend to be just a little more sticky. They carry a little more weight.

They raise the stakes.

There are plenty of examples of this in public life. It’s the reason why weddings — despite concerning rates of divorce — still garner plenty of attention and fanfare. Though marriage has become passe in some circles, there’s still something about vows made in front of witnesses that means a lot.

It’s why we pay attention to what our politicians say in public (and by extension, it’s why a free and robust press is foundational to a healthy democracy). It’s why signed contracts in the world still warrant headlines. It’s why when CEOs at major corporations make announcements, the markets respond accordingly.

Facing the Fears

We’re often reluctant to declare goals out loud because of the social risk. It’s so easy to imagine the pushback months down the road.

  • “Didn’t you say you were going to lose 20 pounds this year?”
  • “I thought you were going to apply to law school. What happened to that?”
  • “So what ever happened to the book that you were planning to write?”

We can hear the snickers and see the sneers.

Channel the Energy

What would happen, though, if instead of backing down in the face of those fears, we embraced the pressure they signal. I mean, what if we really leaned into the power of audience.

This is something I’ve thought a lot about lately. Just a couple of months ago, I decided to finally — finally — FINALLY start writing on a weekly basis.

And in my writing, I’ve tried to be real. Real about where I’ve been. Real about where I want to go from here. In posts like My 27 Goals for 2019, I’ve really put it out there.

Some Public Goals and Decisions

In fact, since my first article on Medium in October of 2017, I’ve shared the following goals and decisions:

  • I’m working on a Master’s degree.
  • I keep my phone out of the bedroom at night.
  • My wife and I will not borrow money to buy a vehicle.
  • I’m going to start a podcast (this became reality in March of 2018).
  • I don’t eat potato chips, French fries, or non-alcoholic sugary drinks.
  • I’m going to try to finish the Vancouver Sun Run (10 km/6.2 miles) in <50 minutes.
  • My family eats dinner at the dining room table sans screens — not in front of the TV and not with phones present.

Find the Tipping Point

Of course, I’ve set a ton of other goals and made a ton of other decisions in terms of how I live my life, but I share these examples in particular because they each represent terrific battles. They’re not always things I want to do in the moment.

Mind over matter, spirit over flesh — each of these goals and decisions invites powerful opposition from a dark part of me that wants to settle, wants comfort, wants less struggle and more status quo.

And sometimes, that dark part of me speaks very loudly. When I’m BLASTed (Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stressed, or Tired), it’s hard to find the resolve to resist McDonald’s fries and run 3 miles instead.

But do you know what helps me win in every case? Public accountability.

I’ve literally told so many family members, friends, colleagues, and readers that I’m going to do X and not do Y that I paint myself into a corner.

I leave myself with no choice. Either I press onward, or my credibility takes a beating.

So call it pride. Call it dignity. But I want my word to mean something. I want to be a man that follows through. I want to be intentional and committed and reliable. And as a result, I press on.

Life’s Wins Never Come Easily

As Dave Ramsey likes to say, “You can wander into debt, but you can’t wander out of it.” As it is with financial freedom, so it is with most of life’s wins.

But if you’re looking to make permanent changes, chart better courses, and realize bigger dreams, may I recommend embracing the power of accountability.

Take a look at the goals you wrote on that piece of scrap paper, and tell someone. Share your decision. Write about your plans.

Raise the stakes. You’ll be glad you did.

Because there’s excpetional power in public accountability.

Categories
Career Content Creation Education Finances Goal Setting Productivity Self-Actualization

27 Goals for 2019

My targets are clear, quantified, and higher than ever.

Photo credit: @Alexanderredl

Last year I made the case for setting New Year’s goals and resolutions, explaining that most critiques or dismissals of goal-setting amount to a failure to recognize that goals must be measurable.

Putting it bluntly, if your goals aren’t quantifiable, they’re a waste of time. And yes, the cliches apply. Goals like “eating healthier” don’t make it past the second week of January. They’re meaningless because the success criteria isn’t clearly defined.

So with quantities in mind, I’m looking for big results this year. I’m hoping that by sharing these targets, you might be encouraged and inspired, too!

Here are my 2019 goals, by the numbers.

Physical

  • Work out at Anytime Fitness 156+ times.
  • Run a total of 156+ km. Now that I have a weekly running partner, this one might get blown out of the water. But years of inconsistency in this area make me cautious.
  • Run the 10 km (6.2 miles) Vancouver Sun Run in <50 minutes with 40,000 other runners. The under-50 time has been an elusive goal for the last decade. I was 0:19 away in 2015.
  • Complete 42 push-ups in one set.
  • Complete 15 reps of 135 pounds on the bench press.
  • Continue diet of no French fries, chips, or non-alcoholic sugary drinks.
  • Monitor and maintain optimal blood pressure averages for 2018.
  • End 2019 at 179 lbs (I’m currently 188).

Self-Improvement

  • Read 15 books on my Kindle. Connect with me on Goodreads to see what I’m reading!
  • Write 104+ blog posts.
  • Purge 1+ clothing item/week.
  • Complete 104+ bedtime journal entries (handwritten).
  • Complete 104+ morning reflection and prayer journal entries.

Financial

  • Pay off our HELOC (home equity line of credit) by an average of $500/month. This thing has been in existence since we purchased our home in 2015, and it’s time to make some serious progress.
  • Earn an average of $50/month or from Medium publishing and other online activities.
  • Give $5 more per month to charitable organizations. We currently donate above 10% of our net incomes but less than 10% of our gross. The plan right now is to continue increasing our giving by $5/month to continue nudging that upward. Ultimately this speaks to our intention to live more and more generously, holding on loosely to the resources we’ve been given.

Paternal

  • Read with the boys one night/week before bed.
  • Complete monthly stepdad-stepson date nights.
  • Enjoy 36+ Friday Family Fun Nights.

Professional

  • Complete M. Ed. degree.
  • Grow the Teachers on Fire podcast to 500+ downloads/episode.

Social/Relational

  • Organize 10+ monthly father-son conference calls (I’m speaking here of my own father and three brothers.)
  • Complete a third annual father-son summer camping trip with one of my brothers and his son.
  • Meet 10+ times with a close friend and goals accountability partner. We’ll be talking about this very list each month and updating our progress.

Marital

  • Complete 36 Connect Times with my wife. Connect Time is what we call weekend meetings where we sit down together to complete a thorough review of our current spending, financial picture, calendars, event planning, pressing decisions, other discussion items, and the health of our relationship. Connect Time is agenda-driven and methodical, but once we’re finished these meetings we feel in sync and settled.
  • Write 12 handwritten notes (1/month) to my wife. By no means should this be the sum total of my romance, but a friend suggested this one and I like it.
  • Make love regularly. We do have numerical goals here, but that’s TMI. Ha!

There you have it — my goals for 2019. Again, I’m posting them here partly to channel the power of public accountability, and partly to encourage and inspire you in your own goal-setting.

Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash

It’s 2019, people. Don’t wait for life to happen to you — make the decision to happen to life!

Let’s do this.

Categories
Goal Setting Goals Productivity Self-Actualization Wellness

You Hate New Year’s Resolutions Because You’re Doing Them Wrong

There’s one part of SMART goals that still doesn’t get enough love.

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“80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by February.”

“Only 8% of New Year’s resolutions are successful.”

Like me, you’ve heard these depressing and oft-repeated statistics. Quite possibly, you’ve joined the ranks of the intellectually enlightened who scoff at the naivete of annual resolution-making rituals and pragmatically embrace their deficiencies instead.

And then there are some among us whose hatred of New Year’s resolutions seems almost visceral. The mere mention of resolutions is enough to produce a scowl of disgust and a healthy rant to boot.

Why all the hate?

I believe the main reason is that at one time or another, these cynics tried setting resolutions themselves. Lose weight. Work out more. Save more money. Spend more time with family. Be a better human being.

At the outset of these resolutions, there was hope. There was optimism. There was the promise of real and lasting change. Often, the resolutions were announced with fervent passion and great fanfare to family and friends.

And then inevitably, the resolutions failed. Old habits crept back in. Resolve weakened. And before they knew it, the ways of December had returned.

Disappointment, humiliation, and frustration followed. So, like a jilted lover, these resolution-makers vowed “Never again.” Never again will I set myself up for such personal disappointment or public humiliation. Never again will I waste time with this foolishness.

I can’t fail if I don’t attempt, goes the subconscious logic. It’s a form of emotional self-defense. It’s what Carol Dweck calls the fixed mindset, when we allow the fear of failure to prevent growth.

I have good news for these doubters, however. The good news is that New Year’s Resolutions can and do work. You only hate them because you’re doing them wrong.

“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” — Zig Ziglar

A quick note on semantics. If you’re a resolution hater, try replacing resolutions with goals. For some, resolutions are more easily associated with the sorts of vague, nebulous platitudes that inevitably end in failure, while goals align better with targeted, specific growth or change.

Now that we’re clear on language, we need to address the most underrated and yet most powerful part of goal-setting: numbers.

You’ve likely heard of SMART goals, so let’s begin there. You’ve heard that effective goals must be:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Realistic & Relevant
  • Time Limited

It’s a fantastic formula, and I do believe each piece of that formula is critical. Yet there’s one bullet that — based on personal experience — dwarfs the other four in importance.

Measurable is EVERYTHING.

If your goal doesn’t have a number in it, it’s worthless. If you have no way to quantify your goal or check for success at the end of your timeline, you are literally wasting brainpower even thinking about it.

I believe this needs to be shouted from the rooftops. Stop wasting your time setting goals — any goals — that don’t contain numbers.

Instead, set goals that are measurable, quantifiable, empirical. Start obsessing about data. Track your life in every area that’s important to you.

To show you what I mean and how I’m applying this, here are some of my measurable goals for 2018:

  • Financial: Reduce the amount owing on our HELOC by 25%. (End of February: +10%.)
  • Marital: Complete 36 ‘State of the Union’ update discussions with my wife in 2018. (End of February: 6/36.)
  • Paternal: Complete 12 monthly stepdad summits. (End of February: 2/12.)
  • Physical: Complete 45 push-ups in one set. (End of February: 35.) Earn a time of under 50 minutes in a 10 kilometer run on April 22nd. (Result to come.) Work out at Anytime Fitness 156 times. (End of February: 26/156.) Run a total of 156 km. (End of February: 9.8/156 km.) Record less than 120/80 BP. (End of February: 125/86 was best reading.)
  • Professional: Complete year 1 of MEdL degree. (End of February: 7/12 months completed.)
  • Self-Improvement: Finish reading 12 books. (End of February: 1/12.) Purge 52 items of clothing. (End of February: 8/52.) Complete 52 bedtime journal entries. (End of February: 25/52.) Write and publish 52 blog posts. (End of February: 6/52.)
  • Social: Complete 10 father-son conference calls. (End of February: 2/10.)

I lay out all of these goals and more in a spreadsheet, and now check these goals more often than I have in five years of following the practice. They keep me grounded, focused, and motivated. I press on in each of these areas partly because I can see progress. I feel momentum. I see reasons to be encouraged.

Think back to some of the classic New Year’s resolutions we’ve all set for ourselves in the past. Lose weight. Get in better shape. Save more money. Spend more time with family. Be a better human being.

Those goals have little chance of success because they’re difficult to track. You’re not going to stay motivated to make better choices for 365 days based on eat healthier. But you ARE going to stay motivated so long as you can measure and track incremental progress.

So start journaling everything. Obsess with data. Take five minutes each morning and update your life’s activity in all the areas that matter. And I promise that you’ll see results like you’ve never seen before.

There’s no time like the present to stop hating resolutions. Embrace goal-setting with all you’re worth. And if you care about success, make them measurable.