Paul Mcilwaine

New Year Goals

25 Jan 2021

The concept of new year goals has always demonstrated to me at least from watching others that they are doomed to fail, and yet here I am with my own “new year goals”. Unlike some at least my “new year goals”, aren’t set because of the new year itself but rather due to the fact I had considerable time off during that period to reflect and see what I wanted. I also didn’t start on January 1, but rather January 3.

Before I go through my goals, lets be clear. I am not really doing a goal. That is I want to do X, but rather I am habit forming in order to get to X.

Learning Italian

Goals

I have 2 big reasons for learning Italian and they all stem from the fact I live in Italy. My reasons are:

  1. I am unable speak with people here without my wife being present (this is not 100% true, very basic things I can pick up)
  2. I want Italian citizenship

So how am I going about this?

  1. I wake up early; that is before 6am.
  2. I read an Italian grammar book as I know my grammar is horrible and without understanding grammar I can learn the words, but I know I will struggle to progress.
  3. Duolingo, not only is this competitive, but its repetitive.
  4. Read and study the A1, and A2 books I have. I need to obtain a B1 level certificate for citizenship.
  5. When I am done I see my streak as you can see on the calendar above. I mark it off.

Isn’t this just a goal? Yes but its also habit, the habit has a cue, a routine and a reward. Cue, wake up early, routine steps 2 to 4 and, reward 5.

Of course going forward I need to extend this to achive my goal, and system which is ensuring I am speaking with people.

Exercising

I realised at the end of last year I was seriously unfit, I struggled to carry my daughter for longer periods of 10mins walking. I was getting back and neck pain, and generally felt sluggish (getting off that couch was like a marathon).

So what am I to do?

My goal here is really to keep up with my daughter who is getting older (seemingly fast), but also to ensure I don’t feel like I am falling apart.

  1. After I finish my Italian hour, go an exercise
  2. Alternate what I do each day, 1 day is upper body 2nd day is lower body
  3. I spend about 30mins on this
  4. Mark what I have done on my calendar, take a photo of progress.

The last seems a bit strange, the photo is for me, its just to give my a glimpse when I look back from where I was to where I currently am to show that I am making progress.

Again I have a cue, as soon as I finish my Italian hour, begin exercising. My routing is dependent on what day it is , and I have a reward, my my progress by crossing it off on the calendar AND taking a photo so I can see progress over time.

Blogging

I want to get better at writing, and many times I have had a goal of writing a blog, and always failed. How will this be different?

Well my goal was always to blog. I now want to say I am a writer (not that I want to publish). I will accomplish this via

  1. Setting an alarm for 8.30 am Monday (every time I work)
  2. Write a blog post within 1.5hrs I have assigned myself
  3. Publish blog

This is my first blog post to ensure I keep this system alive, I hope it sticks like the others.

Again I have a cue, an alarm for Mondays at 8.30 am when I am working. A routine, write the post within 1.5hrs. A reward, publish it to my blog.

The idea is over time I will read my posts, potentially submit to social channels to gain audience and learn to write better.

Reading

I have to admit out of the other “goals” this is more goal oriented, there is a specific thing I want to achieve . This is due to the fact I have a habit on this already. I want to read 30 books this year. This actually seems very attainable, as last year I read 50 books. I set the goal to 30 books as I want to read different types of books some of which I know will be much slower reads, I also will not have several weeks in which I can just sit and read due to not working (I had between December 19 to Febrary 17th break between jobs).

My habit has been formed as you can see the in below screenshot.

My reading progress

I hope with these systems in place I can reach my goals, and form new habits that will allow me to change the goals but not the underlying systems.

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