 I relate to this tree so much What a weird darn year, am I right? It went like this:
New Year’s Eve: ALL THE PLANS ALL THE THINGS First Quarter: Guess what I have COVID Second Quarter: Never mind, I got my dream job and I’m going to grad school Also it looks like I might get a birthday this year after all! I didn’t tell you all about this at the time, but the first weekend of January I put on an invitation-only workshop. I kept talking about “The Plot Twist.” I knew there was something coming, but I didn’t know what (obviously, or I would have tried to get to the ISS ASAP). O hai plot twist I’ve given up really trying to anticipate or plan in great specificity. It both does and does not work, as I’m sure you can all agree. What I said in my workshop was that the only way to make progress on the personal level is to somehow try to ignore the news and avoid letting current events mess with your plans. How possible is this, who knows, but I suppose we are all equally positioned to find out now. This year I decided to do both annual and decade goals. My husband and I stumbled across some papers with our ten-year financial goals, and we had the funny realization that we had hit them on schedule with about a +1% margin. We were talking about making new goals for the next ten years literally the week before shutdown... and then I got deathly ill, and then the dream job opened up while I was still dissolving into the sofa. We still need to get back on that. ...or, do we? We’re making more than we ever have, either of us, and we’re also spending very little since we’re trapped in our dinky apartment. We’re living on probably less than half our income, not sure since we haven’t bothered to crunch those numbers yet. Maybe we just shrug and keep saving for a while. This Is Strategy, my friends. Make a decision and GO. Refine as necessary. Personal: This year I chose body transformation as my major personal goal. Should have been more specific. Can I have POSITIVE and USEFUL body transformation this time?? Career: Learn to do webinars. Whoa, was this ever on the nose. It seems like all of a sudden my entire life is webinars. My team suddenly had to learn to do virtual speech contests with less than a week’s notice, and we led the district in that effort on the technical side. I have now used every available web conferencing platform, and I have seen and heard probably every possible glitch and snafu, including accidentally overhearing people yell at their kids or use a toilet. The next step would be to host my own online workshops. We’ll see. My “career” goal seems to have been somewhat co-opted by my sudden acquisition of a traditional full-time job. Physical: I survived COVID-19 and that’s about all I have on that subject right now. Home: Automation project. This has new urgency, since we both are WFH now and we do a 9/80 schedule. Monday through Thursday are long days with barely the time to work out. Doing laundry and getting groceries are more complicated now than they were before. Plus we have had to find room for our extra food supplies in the second-smallest kitchen we’ve ever had. Couples: Build an app together. Not sure if this will happen now that I’m working from home as well and my hubby just filed for his sixth patent. That’s okay, though, because our lives have changed so much during the pandemic. Last year, he was on travel over half the time and we hardly saw each other. Now we’re both working out of our living room and we’re together 99% of the time. App or no app, technically we *are* working together on a technology-related project, which is... our day jobs. Stop goal: Stop procrastinating on text messages and voicemail. I was doing all right until I got sick. Now I have a backlog of DMs. Still focusing on this and trying to reframe it. Lifestyle upgrades: Probably gum surgery. Let’s just say I am forming actual friendships with the people at my periodontist’s office. I have an appointment on 7/2 where I will find out the long-term strategy and next steps. Do the Obvious: Plan around constant travel? Well, maybe. Travel has resumed at our work. The change here is that I may be the actual person booking the tickets for my hubby’s work trips now, which is ironic. Ultralearning: Dutch language. I haven’t done much with this yet. I *have* suddenly found myself in the midst of an ultralearning situation, which is the fact that I need to get up to speed with several software titles for my new job. I am still very much in the “learn something new every day” phase. I’m also looking into grad school. If I want to learn Dutch, in other words, I’d better get started quickly. Quest: 50 for 50 ultramarathon! (2025). If this happens after COVID it will be a grade-A miracle. Wish: Publishing deal! I literally just took a publishing workshop. I think I’ve figured out a new angle for my book proposal post-COVID. This is going to be challenging to do, now that I am working full-time again, but I haven’t written it off. Wishes are for wishing. As for our ten-year goals, the financial aspects are probably more achievable than ever, but the travel/outdoor goals may be less so. We’ll just hope that these things can be back on the calendar within the decade. How are you doing on your own goals? Are there any areas of your life that are going unexpectedly well right now? Are you as glad as I am not to have died of COVID-19? 2020 Personal: Body transformation Career: Learn how to do webinars Physical: Weight at 125 lbs. Home: Automation project Couples: Build an app together Stop goal: Stop procrastinating on text messages and voicemail Lifestyle upgrades: Probably gum surgery Do the Obvious: Plan around constant travel Ultralearning: Dutch language Quest: 50 for 50 ultramarathon! (2025) Wish: Publishing deal! 2030 - Ten Year Goals and Resolutions Personal: Silver Fox project Career: Published author Physical: 50 for 50 ultramarathon! Home: Buy a house to live in Couples: Camping, hiking, backpacking, and bicycling together Stop goal: Stop procrastinating in general Lifestyle upgrades: A garden Do the Obvious: Plan around constant travel Ultralearning: Write screenplays Quest: Visit Antarctica Wish: Millionaires!  There is something about being midway through a special event like World Domination Summit that makes it so fun to wake up. You have at least one previous day to mull over, and still at least one more day of exciting things to anticipate.
We got to sleep in a little, since the first event wasn’t until 10 am, and something funny happened right away. I was doing “Laughter Yoga,” the purpose of which is to laugh even if you have to start out faking it. I was sitting at the dining table with my headphones on, clearly on a call, when my husband walked out into the living room after his shower. Au naturel. I knew he wasn’t visible on camera - but he didn’t! I don’t know if there is a yoga name for the physical motions that he did, but there definitely should be. Let’s just say I didn’t have to fake laughing for the rest of the session. After laughing yoga, QT picked us up, and we ordered lunch while we set up the big screen at her place. Our first group session was Ben Allen’s workshop on Micro Books. We all took vigorous notes. He is an incredibly charismatic and fascinating presenter. His premise is that both readers and publishers are looking for books under 25,000 words. It’s much easier to test an idea with an audience if you can write and publish something quickly, while it’s still relevant. You can do a series on your topic that is more targeted to your readers’ needs, while also earning more and seeing results sooner. Obviously I have a ton of ideas for micro books of my own. This feels like something I could manage while working full-time, especially since my 9/80 schedule allows for predictable three-day weekends. We had a half-hour break before our next meetup, which we used to compare notes and talk about our book ideas. QT wants to do a book with her sister, who said Yes before the call was even finished, and doesn’t that make you cry?? Next we did a session called “The Anti-40-Hour Workweek.” The idea is how to build your income and work life around your chronotype, mental bandwidth, and physical energy levels. QT and my husband are both Bears and I’m a Dolphin - more on this in another post - and this sort of explains everything! We did breakout sessions and brainstorming direct actions we could take. I typed up a whole list of things I can do to support getting more sleep and freeing up more time on weekends. It’s a bummer, but as a COVID survivor I will just have to plan around my energy level more than I did in the past if I ever want to do anything cool. We had a break before our next session, which we spent eating cake and watching a Masterclass. (Or, it’s on in the background while I multi-task, working on this blog and my tech newsletter). Deadlines, deadlines... Our next session was “Rewrite Your Future History.” We did three versions of our timeline for the next five years. First, whatever would be default mode if nothing changes. Second, what if everything quit working and you had to make a sudden change. Third, what you would do if money and time were no object. This was a trippy experience for me, because my default position is actually great! I wasn’t particularly bothered by the prospect of everything collapsing and having to start over, because I’ve done it before several times and I always have at least Plans A through G. We’re already in TEOTWAKI-lite mode. At this point, I believe that I thrive on crisis, and it’s an opportunity for me to come out ahead while other people panic and make poor strategic decisions. What was alarming to me was actually the “if money and time were no object” scenario. We did breakout sessions where we described our third timeline, working backward from the “I’m traveling the world after winning the lottery” scenario. This is hard for people! I found that it was easier for me to help other people come up with a more vivid and detailed vision for themselves than it was to concentrate on my own timeline. Hmm. That would make it more of a fun ideation exercise than serious inner work with an implied commitment, wouldn’t it? This was a great session and we were all buzzing about our plans. Then we ordered dinner and got ready for our last session. We ended the night with “10 Fun Games to Play on Zoom” with Caelan Huntress. We thought it would be a casual hangout, but it turns out that it was run by one of the most polished and professional presenters we’ve ever seen. He managed his hour so well that he made it look easy - which we know it isn’t - and not only ended on schedule, but actually managed to fit all ten games into one hour! It felt like a game, and also a game-within-a-game, as we took notes and focused on how we could use these games with our families and at work. We even learned some app features that we hadn’t seen yet, which is nuts since we’ve all been living on Zoom lately. If you’re doing a lot of Zoom stuff professionally, you should check him out. One of the games was “Terrible Gifts,” in which one person pretends to give the other the worst present they can think of, and the other pretends to accept it with enthusiasm and gratitude. I “got” a porcupine that had been in an oil spill, and I said I would give him a forever home and take him into the bathtub with me. Then we decided I could replace his collar with one that I knit from my own hair. Should I call him Porky or Pokey? This was a weekend that felt like a week! We got to catch up with old friends, laugh a lot, and learn some technical tricks that we will use right away at work. I think all three of us feel like we have redirected some of our goals and plans for the rest of the year. I’m getting out my hula hoop and reminding myself that another way of doing things is possible - well, lots of other ways - and probably the WDS way is the best way.  This is technically our fifth World Domination Summit, a placeholder until we can hopefully hold the 10th and final WDS next year. Our first event in 2016 completely changed our marriage and our life. Ever since then, we’ve done all our goal-planning around what has become the center of our year.
Since our first WDS, we paid off all our debt, radically downsized, started living on half our income, went car-free, packed up everything to move to the beach, we both have our dream job, my hubby has just filed for his sixth patent, and now I’m planning to go to grad school. It’s hard to imagine where we’d be without WDS as an energetic recharge and such a big part of our strategic planning. This year, rather than a full week including a family visit, running around Portland at all hours, going to Powell’s Books, and all that... we managed to condense the event into two days of volunteer-led Zoom calls. Starting off the day at 9 am was a treat, a fascinating view into Chris Guillebeau’s living room. We also started seeing names and faces we recognized from previous years, and every time we’d be like HEY!!! The next meetup I did was on the “Eight Play Personalities.” It started on a somewhat downbeat note, as people related about all the activities we can no longer do during the pandemic. We missed each other, we felt cheated to have to postpone WDS, some of us were very isolated indeed and not getting human contact. Ahh, but THEN! WDS magic kicked in as everyone started sharing ways we played when we were kids. Instantly the mood swiveled to excitement and hilarity, especially as one person’s favorite childhood activity was ‘playing in the mud.’ We started remembering that once upon a time, we knew how to enjoy ourselves. We all had dozens of ways to bring those feelings back into our stressed adult lives, usually without spending money or having to leave the house. As we started brainstorming how we could fit more of these once-cherished frolics into our workaday lives, it seemed so simple. Note that creativity, joy, curiosity, awe, and laughter can’t share the same space with stress, anxiety, dread, or boredom. Which one is going to be the default? What did you do for fun as a kid? Are you still doing it sometimes? Are you making time for the things you enjoy now that you’re a grown-up? If not, what are you going to do and when? I chose hula hooping as a break, something I can probably only do for a minute or two anyway right now. We ended on a high note, just in time for QT to pick us up, grab curbside lunch, and take us over to her place. The first meetup we did as a quaranteam was “Celebrating Failure to Skyrocket Success.” At first we were trying to parse the title with the emphasis on “failure to skyrocket” - which seems like an issue common to overachievers and also something particularly relevant to the aerospace industry. For an event on failure, the mood was mostly cheerful. The main theme seemed to be someone judging themselves extremely harshly for a personal standard that didn’t necessarily matter to anyone else. This is what makes fail stories so funny and relatable, because it reminds us of our own overreactions to our own petty mis-steps. I shared how I accidentally unmuted myself at my new job while I was picking up my parrot. Roughly 35 people got to hear me saying, in cutesy pet voice: “Come here, baby” followed by smooching sounds. Including my new boss and my HR rep. Which is even funnier considering that everyone on the call knows that my husband and I both work at home, in the same department. I only just now realized they might have thought I was talking to him. How would things be different if we focused more on our strengths and enjoying what we do well, rather than beating ourselves up for minor mistakes that other people might not even notice or care about? Our next meetup was “Visioning for Leaders.” We did breakout sessions with a partner. We clicked so well with our partner, who lives on the East Coast, that we traded email addresses and she wrote back to us right away! Love this idea: a manager in the staid field of finance who wants her entire team to go paperless and have flexible schedules - because she wants to work on the beach! We were like, If you can do it in your industry, anyone can, and guess what, you are exactly the person with the power to shrug and say, Why the heck not. What if *your* boss secretly wanted everyone to have desk independence and wasn’t sure if everyone would be on board? We suggested that she start by telling her team about her vision of herself working from a beach chair, then ask everyone what their motivating image was. Now, how do we work backward from there, and can we do it by next year? We didn’t have anything else between this meetup and the closing ceremony, so we hung out and talked about our goals. Last week I was wrestling with impostor syndrome and feelings of inadequacy in my new job, perhaps exacerbated by the fact that I am now surrounded by people with doctorates, patents, and academic publications. After just one day of World Domination Summit, I am reminded that I was hired for my considerable gifts in ideation, one of the things I find most fun and awesome in life. My job is literally a wish come true. I have tons of positivity that I should be bringing with me. What are you best at? What do you enjoy the most? If you aren’t living your wish right now, what would that look and feel like?  It happened again. I was just publicly recognized for a goal that took me four years to reach. Immediately I spun into the emotional state that I call the goal hangover.
Goals suck, by the way. We’re supposed to “find our passion” and make a “bucket list” and a “vision board” and then celebrate when we make all this stuff happen. For the record, the first three parts of that process definitely work as advertised. The trouble is the celebration part. How can I celebrate when I now have NO GOALS?? Right now, I’m on a goal cycle in the 3-4 year range. I’ve been in this situation several times with wildly different types of goals, and I’m starting to learn to expect it. I went back to college after my divorce, got my bachelor’s... and then spent months recovering from a respiratory infection I got my driver’s license at age 29... and then had to commute on the freeway an hour a day I ran a marathon, got the race medal... and then borked my ankle and spent months in physical therapy I tackled my paralyzing fear of public speaking, earned my Distinguished Toastmaster award, and then... NOW WHAT? This is something that tends to be an open secret for newlyweds. There is an entire industry built around Your Special Day, holding wildly expensive and impractical wedding ceremonies. But then - ta da - you’re married. The premise of marriage is that no day is special; you’re just living a new and different default mode. (I super-love being married and I think our wedding ceremony was pretty modest - we mainly wanted an excuse to go on a honeymoon). Marriage includes a bunch of stuff that a wedding typically does not: clearing hair out of the drain, loading the dishwasher, filing taxes, and debating whether to talk to the neighbors about one of their weird loud habits. Marriage is only one example among many of how what was once a lovely fantasy becomes the new baseline, the pretty ring on the vision board now just an ordinary fashion accessory. Every goal is like that. You strive and strain for it, and then you reach it, and then it simply becomes a thing you can do. It’s a skill, a memory, or something you have worked into the shape of your body. The trouble with goals is that for those of us who thrive on challenge, reaching the goal means the end of the challenge. It’s a bit of a letdown. What am I supposed to do with my spare time now? Sort laundry and watch TV? So you’re telling me that my reward for reaching my goal is... nothing?? Well, the medal or the trophy or the diploma or the... Ordinary state of goalless being Probably most people are more comfortable not having the stress of an impending goal. Most goals are very practical, like paying rent or getting the car fixed. I realize that lacking a goal is a strange problem to have, a problem of privilege - And indeed, I use some of that privilege to try to help others acquire some privilege of their own - And yet I find the prospect of having no goals to be disappointing, dull, and boring. When I was several days into my case of COVID-19, I felt that I might die. I might die quite soon. It felt like such a pitiful waste. I lay there for days, thinking about my stupid day planners and my stupid goal lists and my stupid resolutions. It occurred to me that there would be no lasting legacy, that when someone else went through my stuff, they’d throw it into a bag and get rid of it. Rightfully so. I had very little to show for my time on this planet. Even though I’m a whole body donor, they probably couldn’t even use my poor organs. At that point, I decided to trash my existing goals. I decided that the old me had officially died and that, if I ever managed to get up out of my sickbed, I would start fresh. Being very ill is the most boring thing in the world. It’s hard to sleep and there is very little to attend to while awake. Too sick to read or watch a movie. Too sick to do much of anything but let your mind wander. That’s when I started pondering over the idea of what I would do. What would you do if you actually had a fresh lease on life? A real chance to start over? One of the first decisions I made, after choosing to trash my previous goals, was to act on my intentions more quickly. If there was a book I wanted to read, I would start it right away, rather than add it to a list. If there was a movie I wanted to see, I’d watch it that night - and be grateful when I could track a plot for longer than five minutes without getting confused. If I was thinking about someone, I would reach out right away and write them a note. This is a way of having “goals” without having a backlog, a paradoxical way of having few to zero goals. Just do everything in the current moment. That, though, didn’t seem inherently challenging enough. Was that all I was going to do for possibly the next forty years of my life? Read, watch movies, and text people? Sure, that was more than I could handle at the time, but I knew if I survived intact I would presumably want more than that one day. Could it be a physical goal? I had no idea, but I did know I had it in me to do whatever it took to get my physical stamina back. If it takes five years, I’ll do it, because what the heck else would I do? Could it be a mental goal? I didn’t know, but I did know I really, really wanted to be able to read again and I would never quit trying. (It worked). I did choose something. In fact, I chose a few things. I decided that I wanted to get a normal job again, and go to grad school, and that I still wanted to try for the ultramarathon. If I lived. These were some of my deathbed realizations: that I’m a challenge-oriented person, that challenge is what keeps me happy and motivated, and that I want to be where the action is. I want to do the obvious things, the things that are of a large enough scale to be worth my attention for the next few years. What are yours?  I prefer posting my first quarter check-in on any day other than April 1, because it makes everything I say seem like a potential April Fool’s joke, but not this year. I’m only bothering at all because I’m thinking ahead, hoping that I will live another quarter and that one day all of this will be behind us, collectively. Five years from now we’ll be living in a different world, so let’s make it a better one and start planning.
Starting with: what theme song will you play on the first day out of isolation? What outfit will you wear? Where will you go and who is the first person you will see? I’m going to play “Walking On Sunshine” and walk down to the beach, where I’m going to get a non-dairy strawberry ice cream. Then I’m going to get my phone screen replaced and reschedule all my periodontist appointments, because priorities. Thinking about all of that right now is distracting me from the biggest thing on my mind, which is that I just found out I was exposed to COVID-19 and now I’m starting to feel ill. I have a phone appointment right around the time this will post, with no idea whether it’s possible to get tested in my area, how long it would take to get results, and whether I infected my husband. This tends to have a way of putting things into perspective. I’ve spent the last few years of my life focusing on goals major and minor, trying to transform myself from bookworm to badass. I ran a marathon, ran adventure races, climbed a rope, jumped over open flames, took martial arts and learned knife fighting, worked on my public speaking skills... only to find out that I already had the skills of hiding out in my room, reading all day, and avoiding people that I would actually need to fight the great crisis of my generation. All that work for nuthin. What really gets me is the thought of dying of a pandemic when I am a full body donor. Now nobody will want my organs and that is making me feel some kind of way. In the back of my mind I thought giving away my corneas would make up for never having created a legacy that would outlast me. Now it’s feeling like the time for dithering is done. Will I be more than a sad statistic one day? The truth is, this year was going badly for us already. A month ago I thought I had a lot to complain about. In the past four months, I’ve been in urgent care three times, had an antibiotic-resistant staph infection, had surgery to remove a cyst from my chest and got four stitches, had three grueling periodontal procedures (after two oral surgeries last year), spent the night in the ER when my husband had a severe eye injury... and then we both had the flu for a week, and then we had to put our dog down. Poor Spike. We were definitely feeling like we needed to send 2020 back and ask for a do-over. Honestly self-isolation has not just put it all in perspective, it’s been almost relaxing... though of course the perspective is changing every day. New Year’s Eve feels like nostalgia and wasn’t it just a minute ago? In reading through the goals I posted so giddily only three months ago, I realized I had forgotten that I made decade goals as well. *snif* Personal: This year my goal was “body transformation,” or getting back to the Healthy Weight for My Height. I have succeeded in losing 6 pounds so far this year. Now that we’re all in quarantine and the grocery stores are picked clean I assume that this is a goal that will sort of achieve itself. I’m just going to call my new decadal personal goal: Living to be at least 55. Career: My career goal for 2020 was to learn how to do webinars and that is basically all I have been doing with my time. We’re partway through having to switch our Toastmasters public speaking competition season to 100% virtual, and guess whose team got to go first and lead the transition planning. I have now spent at least an hour on no fewer than five online meeting platforms, and I know all the tips and tricks. For 2030, I want to be a published author... and my book is going to look a little different now than what I had in my outline. Physical: My physical goal for 2020 was to get my weight back to 125. Allow me to be a little more specific on that and say that it appears extra body weight is a risk factor for full-blown COVID-19, it certainly isn’t doing anyone any favors, and while my main motivation is to simply survive, I am doubling down on my commitment to get my body back. My decade physical goal is to run a 50-mile ultramarathon. If I get through this thing, distance running is one of the only physical activities that is allowed under isolation, and I’m going to be so happy to be able to run the first mile that I might just keep on going. Home: We decided to start saving to buy a house. Since there is now literally nothing to buy but groceries, our, um, savings goals are right on track? For 2020, I was working on automating more household chores as part of my book project. I’ve had plenty of time to do this research and I *still* can’t get the stupid hard water buildup off the shower doors. Couples: Our couples goal was to build an app together. Not sure if this will happen, as he has been working 50+ hours a week. Over the next decade, we had a shared goal to do more camping, hiking, backpacking, and bicycling adventures together. He had been traveling over half-time and we were missing each other and wishing to spend more time together. We have actually ridden our bikes together with backpacks on because we’ve been terrified to take the bus and we needed groceries. Um, ta da? Stop goal: My “stop goal” for 2020 was to stop procrastinating about text messages and voicemail. Yep, another success. I’ve been in touch with people I haven’t heard from in years and realizing how much I’ve missed them. My ten-year goal was to stop procrastinating in general. Now it seems like there’s nothing TO procrastinate and everyone in the world just got a giant reset. I talked to one of my hoarders who has been evicted at least once, and she said she “finally broke through her block” and completely cleaned out her place! Lifestyle upgrades: Our ten-year lifestyle upgrade goal was to have a garden again. This seems like less of a hobby now and more like a civic duty. We’ve already been talking to a couple of friends and family members about putting in or expanding gardens in their space, so in a way we’re doing this virtually. For 2020, it was a bummer to think about but my big lifestyle upgrade was “probably” going to be gum surgery. Now my fourth of four scaling and root planing appointments has been rescheduled indefinitely. I actually found myself saying recently, “Thank God I had that root canal last year.” My NEW big lifestyle upgrade for the year will be to walk out our front door. Do the Obvious: The most obvious thing to do in my life right now was to plan around constant travel. That changed almost immediately to “zero travel for who knows how long.” I was right about one thing though: No normal weeks. Ultralearning: This was the first time I tried to set up an ultralearning project. I was going to learn Dutch. Then, suddenly, someone else was in the room with me basically every minute of every day and this sort of got derailed. Will I start again now that I have no excuses? Depends on how sick I get, honestly. It’s lovely to picture open borders and a reason to travel to the Benelux countries and casually speak Dutch with the people I meet. For 2030 I had planned to learn to write screenplays. Now I’m wondering how to reinvent the entertainment industry to be contact-free. Quest: My quest was to train for an ultramarathon between now and 2025. Now I will be delighted to LIVE until 2025 and running fifty miles seems like a testament to survival and the fighting human spirit. My decade quest was to visit Antarctica, and I wish I was already there... Wish: My wish for 2020 is to get a publishing deal. Our wish for the next decade is to become millionaires! Why the heck not. Honestly why not wish for anything and everything right now. Goals, wishes, quests, visions, and dreams are technicalities. They’re a game. You win if you set yourself up to win, such as, I wish to find a penny. Something specific. On technicalities, I’m accidentally crushing several of my goals this year. 2020 Personal: Body transformation - IN PROGRESS Career: Learn how to do webinars - SUCCESS Physical: Weight at 125 lbs. - IN PROGRESS Home: Automation project - IN PROGRESS Couples: Build an app together Stop goal: Stop procrastinating on text messages and voicemail - SUCCESS Lifestyle upgrades: Probably gum surgery - IN PROGRESS Do the Obvious: Plan around constant travel Ultralearning: Dutch language Quest: 50 for 50 ultramarathon! (2025) Wish: Publishing deal! 2030 - Ten Year Goals and Resolutions Personal: Silver Fox project Career: Published author Physical: 50 for 50 ultramarathon! Home: Buy a house to live in Couples: Camping, hiking, backpacking, and bicycling together Stop goal: Stop procrastinating in general Lifestyle upgrades: A garden Do the Obvious: Plan around constant travel Ultralearning: Write screenplays Quest: Visit Antarctica Wish: Millionaires!  Two months have elapsed and I am totally not getting anywhere on my main goal for the year.
This is the important part to remember, because it’s not the nature of the goal itself that is the issue; the issue is that if I choose something for myself, then I need to know whether I am going to get it or not. Am I making stuff happen, or not? Is what I am doing getting me anywhere that I want to go, or not? Am I making false assumptions as to what it takes to make my goal happen? Do I actually know what I’m doing? Have I been taking advice from “experts” and believing that it will work, when it actuality it doesn’t? A month is both a very short period of time and also a really long chunk of time, depending on what you’re doing. If you skip brushing your teeth for a month, you’ll definitely notice, so will people around you, and your dental hygienist is going to tell you all about it. Same if you decide not to wash your dishes or anything else related to cleanliness. On an academic calendar, a month is a huge chunk of a semester, term, or quarter. You can probably still pull at least a minor success out of the bag if you refocus and work hard, but skipping a month of study is making life harder on yourself. If you’re trying to pay off debt or save for a big goal, a month isn’t necessarily going to make a huge difference. While it is one more month of stress and not yet being able to experience the victory feeling, in the grand scheme of things it’s okay. When you’re seventy, you probably won’t remember exactly which month you made your savings goal, and maybe not even which year. If you’re doing another big project, like remodeling or landscaping, a month also isn’t going to make a huge difference. It is virtually impossible to plan well enough on a large-scale project to finish on a precise date. I’m thinking about these things because I am trying to put my project into perspective, yet I am so frustrated with myself that this is hard to do. What I am trying to do is to burn off the extra weight I put on over the past two years. I had a goal to lose five pounds a month, which is a very modest goal. It’s considered safe to lose two pounds a week, so I could have hit 8 or 10 pounds a month without putting myself in any kind of danger. (Why are we actively encouraged to think of weight loss as potentially dangerous, yet we are definitely not allowed to think of weight *gain* as dangerous?) I feel a sense of urgency about my goal, because I have a health issue that is being exacerbated by my weight gain. It’s actually been getting significantly worse. When I think about dealing with this problem for even another week, I feel almost panicky, and when I think that I added another month to my stress and suffering it makes me want to throw a brick through my own window. My problem is night terrors. I had a couple in December and January, and I wasn’t happy about that at all. Then it happened again in February, which why wouldn’t it if nothing else changed? Then one day my husband asked me, Do you remember what happened last night? *cue horror movie music* Um, no? Okay, apparently I woke up screaming, tried to get out of bed, had an entire conversation with my husband, and went back to sleep. No memory was formed on my end. As far as I was concerned, I had a completely normal night. This is the worst-case scenario, that I’m causing someone else to suffer because of my problem without even knowing I’m doing it. So, so not a great sign. I told him if it happened again, to definitely ask me about it, and I would make an appointment with my doctor. On that note, I found a recommendation in my health records to get my weight down through diet and exercise. I just stumbled across it. Nobody called me or sent me a letter, I didn’t get a notification on the app, and no health professional mentioned it to me during any of my office visits over the past year. Officially, though, health advice corresponds with what I have already been trying to do. Am I mad? No. Did this hurt my feelings? No. Do I want to rebel because how dare someone else tell me what to do? No. Really it just makes me wonder, how many other people are failed when they pass some health threshold without realizing it. I wish I had known when I was younger that losing weight could help me get rid of my migraines! It makes me question the entire system. Why are so many people having so many health issues, so many issues with their quality of life, when health care costs so darn much? Is it actually doing us any good or are we just getting pushed to take more prescription medication? I lost five pounds. It wasn’t enough to get back under the threshold for night terrors, which I had successfully beat for four years. Then I blew an entire month barely maintaining. We had guests for the weekend, went out for Mexican food, and I gained four pounds overnight. It took me two weeks to get it back off. *facepalm* This is why I find the whole issue so distracting and frustrating. I don’t know whether it’s my underactive thyroid, or my age, or some other factor, but it seems to be much easier for me to put on weight now than it was when I was younger. It also seems to take superhuman effort and a million years to reverse the process. What I want is a whole list of great stuff. I want to reach my goal so I can go out and buy several pairs of pants. I want to start running outdoors again without worrying about putting extra stress on my ankle. I want to sleep normally without sleep-screaming and waking my husband up on work nights. I want to “check the box” and be done with this goal for 2020. I keep reminding myself of my goals, even as I feel discouraged, troubled, and generally irritated with myself and my glacial rate of progress.  Not according to plan but nothing we can’t handle Groundhog Day is my second New Year. First you have 1/1, then you have 2/2, right? It’s also a great way to tie in the Harold Ramis movie and themes of fighting boredom by learning all kinds of cool new skills.
I need a second New Year because January somehow always seems to be a disaster. It’s like chaos is determined to disrupt any plans and projects I might try to make. Since there will never be a perfect, uninterrupted streak of routine and a smooth supply of both mood and motivation, might as well accept it. Skip January and wait until it’s finally February. Which it is! I’ve done what I planned to do, which was to waffle around and come up with a loose outline of how I sorta roughly plan to attack my goals and projects for 2020. Ultralearning: My ultralearning project for 2020 is to get to A1 level in Dutch. I am on track! I downloaded an app and loaded up the lessons, and, toughest part of all, I figured out a time of day when I can practice. Mealtimes? No, mouth full of food. Evenings? No, husband is home. I’m going to do my lessons either first thing in the morning, or while my hubby is in gym class on weekends. I already know some basic greetings and pronouns, and the app says my accent is good! Now that I’m over the part where I debate scheduling with myself for weeks, I’m having fun and looking forward to each lesson. Personal: My big personal plan for 2020 is to Get My Body Back. (Recovering from surgery in December). New urgency behind this as I had night terrors twice in January, and one of those definitely woke up my husband on a work night. Unfair. Years of tracking my metrics have led me to the conclusion that I only experience night terrors when I: [eat after 8:00 PM] + [weigh over 135 lbs]. + [did not do at least 45 minutes of cardio training that day]. While I always feel stupid when I eat something late at night and then immediately have night terrors, I have other reasons to feel that my current body composition is not serving my needs. My “low-side compliance” bare-minimum goal is to lose five pounds a month until I hit goal, and I am on track for that. Career: My career goal is to learn to do webinars. This may be escalated on the timescale because, due to misfortune, I lost out on a speaking opportunity. Instead I may be able to present the same workshop online. With an external deadline involved, I may be able to find support to learn what I need sooner than I would on my own, i.e. late November. Home: My home goal is to work on automating more chores and researching methods for my upcoming book. The result of this is that the place looks great and hubby has been doing odd jobs like fixing door handles. Bustle is contagious. Couples: The only thing I really did as a couples goal in January was to take my husband to the emergency room when he got a corneal abrasion. I did earn major wife points that night but I would recommend something, anything, else as a bonding experience. Stop goal: My stop goal for 2020 was to stop procrastinating on text messages and voicemail. I am really proud of myself for having a perfect track record on this. It has been challenging, though, as it seems that my rate of received text messages has literally tripled since I put the goal in place. Schtaaaappppp! Lifestyle upgrades: I put on my list that my major lifestyle upgrade for the year would probably be gum surgery. I went for a checkup with my endodontist, got a referral for a periodontist, called to clear the insurance, and actually scheduled the appointment. I keep reminding myself that the sooner I get an answer, the better, and the sooner I can put it all behind me. Also that there are few things more middle-aged than having one’s own periodontist. In another area, my hubby and I rearranged our living room (which we often do in January) and we love it! Do the Obvious: I put down for Do the Obvious that I should accept the reality of constant travel and No Normal Weeks. This has to be at least the fourth time I have smacked my forehead for picking the stupidest, worst slogan for my year. Let’s see, so far this year our dog almost died, my husband almost lost vision in one eye *the night before* my first big-time speaking opportunity, we both got the flu just as a major remodel began on the apartment downstairs, and, yes, he already has at least a week of travel on the calendar. “No Normal Weeks” [glares at self] Quest: 50 for 50! I have done no outdoor running yet this year, but I have put in considerable time on the elliptical and actually walked out part of my proposed training route, visualizing how much I am going to enjoy it. Wish: My wish for the year is to get a book deal. I have been unusually productive on the book outline itself and I feel a lot of momentum around this. For anyone else who is thinking about resolutions and goals and plans and projects, take heart. Whatever you are working on, it’s probably best that you do it seasonally and take a few months off each year. Accept the natural rhythms of your life. Allow yourself to start at zero, feel like you have no idea what to do, have no concrete plans or structures, and just LEARN about your project from a place of curiosity. If it’s something that will continue to appeal to you enough to do it, let it draw you in and become more interesting to you. Everything I do, I do with bumbling, fumbling, stumbling, ludicrous misunderstandings of what’s involved, missed deadlines, bungled introductions and mismatched networking, purchase of inappropriate supplies, and every other possible mistake. These are the compost of the garden of creativity. Even the most glorious botanical tourist attraction has a lot of bare branches in winter.  Your Goal Guide is a workbook aimed at people who know they want to do something, but they aren’t quite sure what. Debra Eckerling developed the concept after running goal-setting workshops and discovering that, guess what, most people don’t find the process very intuitive. If it were obvious, everyone would constantly be setting and achieving goals. This book, then, is designed for exploration, and it even has a road-trip theme to remind us to see goal-setting as an adventure.
I like to skip January when I plan my annual goals, because as much as I love making New Year’s Resolutions, I believe that January is a terrible time to try to get anything done. I set aside the entire month for poking around and doing a bit of research and experimentation on goals in each area of my life. By the time February rolls around, I finally feel ready to get started. I remind myself that it’s much more important to have my goal integrated into my life at the end of the year, when I’m likely to keep on going, than it is at the beginning, when there can be a temptation to obsess over unbroken streaks and then quit at the first obstacle. Your Goal Guide supports this approach. Using the road trip analogy, obstacles might be like taking the wrong exit, having a flat tire, or needing to stop for gas. We expect these things, so we don’t quit and go home the first time the plan is disrupted. We also recognize that we can only go a certain distance before we need to eat and sleep, where, again, we often design our resolutions with unrealistic expectations of our physical stamina. This book feels like the product of a lot of reality testing. The planning exercises are useful and they feel like they evolve naturally. I particularly appreciated Eckerling’s focus on research and her reminders to schedule check-in sessions. When the first month has rolled around, it’s a better idea to ask ourselves what we need, and then rework our plans, than it is to shrug and give up on our dreams. Don’t leave your goal on the side of the road. Pick up Your Goal Guide and don’t get towed! Favorite quotes: Give your plans a chance and give yourself a break. Remember, everything will get done.  Babbel Dutch Lesson One This year I declared that I want to learn Dutch. Why? Why not? I’ve studied several languages in the past, and I thought I would share my methods before I really get rolling.
Languages are ranked by complexity, and there are four categories. Japanese and Arabic, for example, are both Category IV, partly because they have their own writing systems. There are serviceable estimates for how many hours of study it takes to become fluent in various languages. Dutch qualifies as a Category I, and that’s why I’m comfortable choosing it as a project. Usually when people say they want to learn a language, instead of “I want to learn this language,” they say, “I want to get the Rosetta Stone” for it. I’ve heard this from dozens of people, but I’ve never actually met anyone who claims to have learned a language this way! I single it out because it’s expensive, and with the internet, there are tons of free ways to learn any language. There are two important questions to answer that have already come up in this post.
There are four categories of language comprehension: speaking, listening, writing, and reading. We tend to be better at some categories than others, even in our native tongue. Most people picture themselves “speaking” their chosen language. The basic problem with this, as I have found from experience, is that the better you sound, the more fluent people assume you are, and the faster they start talking to you! They will not realize that they should filter for you, so they’ll use slang, big words, and idioms. I’m a good mimic, so I purposely talk slowly and flatten my accent. If my vocabulary only has like twenty words, then I want to make sure that’s obvious to my listener. This is why, for my purposes, when I say “learn” a language I really mean I want to be able to read it. I would only consider myself fluent if I could listen to a casual speaker and grasp 80% of what they were saying. Fluency doesn’t mean we need to know a bunch of obscure surgical terminology or be able to have a conversation about numismatics - unless, of course, that’s the reason we’re trying to study. This is where most beginners could use more specificity. We think of learning a language as a bucket list type of a goal, but we don’t necessarily color in the whole visual. Who are we talking to, and what are we talking about? When we study languages in school, we start with grammar and classroom nouns, like ‘paper’ and ‘pencil.’ We might spend a year in class, get straight A’s, and still not be able to use the past tense. We get few opportunities to listen to natural speakers having casual conversations, which is probably how most of us would imagine fluency feels. What I’ve learned from travel is that almost all of my opportunities to practice speaking are totally predictable, utilitarian transactions. Buying stuff. Getting directions. Getting directions in order to buy stuff. Asking what ingredients are in something. I realized that I needed to spend much more time listening, like 3:1, rather than speaking. I also realized that I needed to spend about 5x more effort memorizing lists of nouns. This is where I get around to why I chose the Dutch language, out of all others, and how I picture myself using it. The first time I traveled to a country whose official language was not English, I was blown away to realize how many travelers there are from other countries. Wherever you go, if it’s a tourist attraction, there will be French and German visitors! I had the opportunity to try to help a French tourist read an Icelandic map, and I realized that the French I studied as a 12-year-old kid actually had a real-world application. It was more than a thing of beauty and complexity, an interesting puzzle; it was a legit code for altruism and human connection. Whoa. I went home and picked up a bit of French and German. As I did, I pictured all the friendly French and German faces I had seen on the trail and I imagined being able to trade travel notes and birdwatching tips. It was motivating. Adding Dutch, for a linguistics nerd like me, is a way to stretch my circle. The reason I’m focusing on a language for my first declared ultralearning project is that I’ve felt like I have neglected an innate talent. For other people, this might be something like drawing, singing, woodworking, playing guitar, dance, or a sport like tennis or swimming. I’m pretty terrible at every single one of those things, but language is something I can get into. Also, it’s supposed to help fight dementia. Why Dutch, just to meet backpackers in other countries? Because it’s a Cat I, that’s why, and the grammar is similar to English. Later I intend to bone up on my high school Japanese. I can still read hiragana and katakana, I’ve had a couple of quickie conversations over the years, and my accent is understandable. I’m pretty excited to take on more Asian languages - I’m just rusty. My ultimate fantasy would be to travel in every country on Earth, and spend enough time studying in advance that I could exchange greetings with someone there in their own language. That’s not necessarily a dream of unity, though. Why should someone else drop what they were doing just to entertain me? “HI! GUUUD MORGNIEEN” *tries to wave, instead makes rude gesture* “Uh, hi?... Do I... know you?” *rolls eyes* In the meantime, I’ve started my project. I’ve chosen my language and I know why I want to learn it. I can picture the types of transactions and conversations I might have. At this stage, I assemble my materials. I don’t believe in going out and buying “foreign language dictionaries.” I used to! I used to check them out from the public library in stacks up to my chin. Instead, I start with the Babbel app. When I feel like I know a bit more, I go to TuneIn Radio and try to find a local station. I try to sound out news headlines. The next step would be to find a language partner for chatting online, and that’s where I balked back before I became a Distinguished Toastmaster. That’s what is so funny about linguistics. A lot of us with a great passion for languages are actually really shy about using those languages to, ya know, talk? To humans? All right then. My ultralearning language project is to study Dutch until I can test at the A1 level. I’ll also try to find a real Dutch person who will chat with me in Dutch for a minute or two, next fall or winter.  Unbelievable! I thought when I saw this book. The great and powerful BJ Fogg has finally written a book!!! This guy’s research on habit formation is mentioned constantly by other writers, and I used to wonder how they were able to get this special access. How Tiny Habits finally got written is addressed in the book, and it’s like meta-proof that this stuff works.
Of course habits have nothing to do with how fascinating, moving, and endearing this book is. Personally I’m pretty good at starting and stopping habits, as soon as I realize what it is that I want to do. Tiny Habits had an interesting explanation for why that might be. I often do a little dance, make up a little song, jump up and down, or otherwise physically express how excited I am that I did a small thing, like hitting Send on an email that I struggled to write. Apparently this is the key to building a habit, teaching the brain that YES, this is the right step. Then I realized that I picked up this habit from my mom and it cheered me right up. This book is loaded with diagrams and exercises that I found truly helpful. It’s designed for someone to learn it and also teach it to others, such as a team at work. I particularly liked the brainstorming method of the Swarm of Behaviors. The lists of sample habits aimed at people in different situations is terrific, and I think the list of little ways to celebrate is best of all. Tiny Habits is based on years of extensive research, and it’s been tested on real people with real, shall we say, situations. It works on the tough stuff, like caregiving, grief, parenting for special needs, and health issues. It also works on the more light-hearted stuff, like wanting to eat ice cream every night. Amazingly, Fogg even includes research on how to help other people build their habits. It is no surprise that Tiny Habits hit the bestseller list. I fully expect this book to stay in print for many years, to go through multiple editions, and to help millions of people create positive changes in their lives. Starting with me, and, I’m hoping you’re next! Favorite quotes: There’s nothing wrong with taking bold action. Life and happiness occasionally demand it. But remember that you hear about people making big changes because this is the exception, not the rule. One of my personal themes for the last year has been to “strengthen others in all my interactions.” |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. Archives
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