New Year's 2020

 Dear friends I haven’t met yet,

     Today, let’s talk about making achievable big goals. I have a lot of big goals for myself that I took a lot of time figuring out what all of them were, even the dream-level stuff. I can’t help you think up big goals right now, but if you want to brain storm that for the first time, I encourage it. Get it all out on paper or in a document or in pictures if you’d like, all your biggest goals with the smallest details.

     Late last year, I sat down and figured out all the goals I had for life at the moment, including ones I didn’t plan on pursuing right away. Then I broke them down into their smallest steps I could think of in the moment, and furthermore I tried to break those down into habits like “write every day” or “practice once a week.” The list of those goals, big and small, are what I’m basing my new year’s on.

     This year, I have five goals I wish to accomplish in my life. The revised version is: Help my partner buy a house, achieve a new spiritual level*, finish the draft for my novel New Flame, run a 5k (alone if I need to,) and learn a dance. After figuring out what those were, I discarded buying a house for this exercise because the timing depended entirely on when we had the money. Then I broke them down into the smallest habit I think would help to the best habit I wanted to have this year. For instance, for finishing my draft, I had these three things:

1. Make progress in novel daily, 6 days a week

2. Write half an hour every day, 6 days a week

3. Write an hour every day, 6 days a week.

And after combining “learning a dance” with “running a 5k” into the single category “exercising,” I made a vague set of goals since I can’t foresee my circumstances until or after I buy a house. I’ll get more specific when the time comes.

1. Find and do exercises (such as yoga) a set number/week

2. Find and do cardio (such as dancing) a set number/week

3. Increase cardio to include running a set number/week

     After I did this for my spiritual goal as well, I broke down the habits into “building old” and “making new.” For me, I was already writing 6 days a week most of the time, so I counted all the writing goals as “building on old” and since I am not currently exercising at all, only the last exercise goal counted as “building on old.”

     Next, having roughly three sets of habits to build on per goal, I decided that I could work on two habits at a time, usually only one new one and one old habit at a time, and work on cultivating habits for one quarter per goal (having solidified them before moving on.) Then I divided the year into something like this:

     You may notice that this table covers all my goals and habits, but only goes to September. That’s because I’m ready for things to change or go wrong.** If, for instance, I need an extra month to get the hang of writing a whole hour daily, I can shift all my goals to take April to really nail that habit down, and still be on track for all my goals for the year. If everything goes right, the last three months I’ll have optimal habits to achieve my goals of writing a novel, attaining new spiritual heights*, learning a dance, and running a 5k.

     As time goes on and more stability surrounds my life, I hope to get more specific—such as how far to run each week, what type of exercises to do, and what kind of writing I’ll be focusing on. For now, though, this is what my upcoming year looks like.

*While my spiritual goal is as specific and attainable as the other ones, and the habits also build on themselves, I’m leaving most of the specifics out for the purpose of this blog.

**In fact, something HAS gone wrong. In January, I have been sick for weeks, so I’m pushing all my goals forward already. Luckily I was prepared for this!

• Zero no Tsukaima by Noboro Yamaguchi
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