I didn’t set any goals or resolutions for 2022, the world just seemed too chaotic to plan very far ahead. This year is looking a little more coherent, so I figure… why not tempt fate? 😂

Looking back over my previous resolution posts, there’s a lot of repeats over the years. I suppose that’s normal, but it is a little discouraging.

So I figured I’d make a quick list of things I know will fail:

• Promising to do things on a schedule
• Setting time-gated goals with set start and end points
• Vowing to do ‘a little bit each day’
• Trying to do everything at once (multiple small daily goals)
• Trying to do one thing at a time (one monthly theme)
• Having a ‘fail’ state

Where does that leave me?

• Goals that can be done in little or big chunks as the mood takes me
• Unscheduled work that I don’t have to wait to start or that I’ll give up on because I won’t finish in time
• Picking goals where any sort of progress is a win, thus removing the ability to ‘fail’ at them

Which sounds nice, but how do I translate that into a list of things that I can work towards?

Big Giant Goals

Just about all of my old resolutions fall into one of these categories:

• Being healthy
• Being decluttered / Owning less things
• Being organized / Being able to find the things
• Being creative
• Learning things

Each year the actual goals were a little different, but were all meant to bring me closer to where I wanted to be. If I can say at the end of the year that I’ve improved a little bit in any of them it means I’m in a better place than I was at the beginning.

Does it really matter how I get there?

…maybe?

Each one of those things has so many possible paths forward, it’s really hard for me to pick one. And historically, whatever I do pick will be forgotten or sidetracked before April rolls around.

So phooey on it! I’m not even going to start making the lists, much less picking anything. I’m just going to make an insert for my bullet journal/planner that lists the five themes and then start a ‘I did this’ post to track progress.

A hidden post that won’t show up until the end of the year (thus reducing any guilt over ‘failing’ to get things done in a ‘timely’ manner).

But that’s not S.M.A.R.T!

It’s also not any of the other goal setting methods I’ve ever tried. And I’ve tried a lot of them over the years, all with various levels of frustration.

Because none of them work well for me. (Obviously 😅)

But not setting goals also leads to rather aimless years, which is also frustrating and something I’d like to avoid. Thus my current iteration of ‘let’s feel productive in 20XX!’.

Will this work? I have no idea, but it seems like it might… so off to the races we go! 😂🙌