Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had an amazing 2012 and an even better year in 2013. Obviously we proved all the Mayans wrong with our continued existence. Even though Obama won re-election the streets were not filled with blood and life more or less continued just the way it has. I’m not a psychic so I won’t bother making predictions for the coming year with the exceptions that things will continue to get more expensive, you’ll still have to pay taxes and death won’t be cured. The world will continue so cheer up and lets enjoy our time on this rock. Personally I intend to make 2013 my best year yet. Now lets get down to the real subject of today’s post and that is setting goals for the new year and measuring the success of last year. To do this I’ll share some of my goals for the upcoming year and my success and failures of the last.
Two Types of Goals
When I set goals I like to break it down to basically two types. Mini and Maxi goals are the two kinds I set, and they should compliment each other. So I tend to make two, or more, goals for anything I want to achieve. I begin with the Maxi goal, my pentultimate goal, which is the endpoint of a goal I want to achieve. It’s what you would normally put on your bucket list, things that are hard and usually take a long time if ever to acomplish. The problem with this type of goal, normally, is that it’s too big to grasp. It’s the equivalent of hopping in a kayak and paddling to China. The destination is too far away, too easy to get off course. Which is why for every Maxi goal I create mini goals to get me there. Mini goals are pit stops on the way to your ultimate goal, they compliment each other and give you small success’s. It’s these small victories that you achieve often that keep you positive. They let you know that you are making progress towards your real goal. Pick as many mini goals and even more than you think you will need. The more mini goals you set the more you will complete and the more success you will have. To keep from getting overwhelmed don’t try for too many Maxi’s at once. By only choosing a few at a time you can focus on them and make faster progress.
Measure Measure Measure!
You can never know success without measurement. Without it you cannot know how far you’ve came nor how far you have left to go. Measure often and decide whats best to measure. For instance in weight loss inches are often more accurate than getting on a scale. Find out what is most accurate to measure your progress on your goal and document it. In your documentation adding a social factor helps a lot. If your goal is to eat healthier try posting pictures of everything you eat on Facebook (or twitter or a blog etc.) Knowing you have to take a picture of that jumbo bag of M&M’s before devouring usually makes you think twice. On top of that there’s positive reinforcement. When you post your successes you will get compliments and acknowledgement. Everyone likes a pat on the back and reinforcing good behavior is more beneficial than even punishing bad ones.
2012 Goals results
I made a list of Goals to accomplish back when I first started Survivalpunk (Here’s the whole list). Now that the year is over I’ll will go over the list remove items I accomplished, reassess items to see if I need to remove due to lack of interest or set them higher due to more interest or success. Some of the items on the list are bucket ones and not meant to accomplish this year only work towards. Others were thrown on there to be funny. The list is 49 Items long and of those 49 Ive completed I’ve completed 6. I’ve worked towards others and made progress others I have lost interest in. Two of the big ones for me personally, Meeting Jack Spirko and being a guest on TSP, are accomplished. When I started Survivalpunk two of my goals were to make $100 in income and to get some free gear. I have just completed the $100 goal from a variety of sources combined. It represents to me that my dream of making money and going to working full time on Survivalpunk are a possibility. I took what was a domain and an idea to express my take on survival to bringing me a few extra bucks in less than a year of hard work. For the idea that I could get a company to send me something for free to review I figured would be a hard goal. Instead I could probably get way more than I do. For example during my National Preparedness contest in September I gave away thousands of dollars of amazing gear. More importantly in working with the companies I’ve met some great people which I have enjoyed more than free stuff. Some of my failures were that I never got around to gathering acorns to brew beer with. At this point I’m thinking about buying some acorn flour and trying with that. At first I had made some great progress on running a 5k I ended up shelfing it and loosing that progress. On that it’s back to square one.
What to expect in 2013
I’ve not yet formally laid out my goals for 2013 but know a few things that will be on there. I will be working on setting up the paid advertisers program for Survivalpunk and actively seeking paid sponsors. The next goal for the site is to bring in 1k in revenue from Survivalpunk. Not that I’m completely focusing on financial goals but I see no reason why I can get paid to do what I love. It’s no secret that I want to make Survivalpunk my full time “job”. I also promise to start proof reading my articles before I publish them. Most of the time I knock them out before bed and throw them up. All my grammar Nazi friends (Emmy, Sarah and Krista) give me crap about all the mistakes. To which I’ve always replied I don’t have time to proof read and then ask them hows they’re blogs doing? Oh right they don’t have one. The main focus of this coming year is to put in some serious time taking instruction classes. I want to double my efforts this coming year and get more formal training. I know I plan on taking James Yeagers Tactical Response fighting pistol and rifle courses along with some cheaper ones offered by local schools. I plan on making it to Dave Canterburys basic survival course this year. Besides training I plan to get out more and make more and get more involved in local groups in the areas I want to improve in. Although my goals are not yet set I plan on making the year the best year yet. 2013 is the year of Survivalpunk, when 2014 rolls around and I look back I want to say I had a blast!
What are some of your successes of 2012? What about your failures? Are you looking forward to 2013? What are some of your goals? Let me know in the comments!
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