New Year Resolutions: 2013

After finally deciding last year that it wasn’t possible for me to accomplish any of my resolutions because I never wrote them down and thus never actually remembered what they were, I actually accomplished some of my 2012 goals. Hopefully in 2013 I can be a little more successful with some minor changes to last year’s method.

Last year in a nut shell. Started running, a lot actually. Ran my first 10k, the only race I ran. Hit my goal weight. Stopped eating as well as I had been. Joined a gym. Started slacking on my running. Eventually stopped running. In a lot of ways I made quite a few lifestyle changes, some of which stuck for longer than a couple months. At the very least I gave myself enough confidence that I can be successful if I just organize and track the things I want to do. So here’s a summary of what I’m looking forward to in 2013.

 Health and Running

If nothing else came from 2012 then at the very least I’m no longer afraid of running. I know I can do it now. I just need to find a method to make sure that I don’t lose any momentum I gain. The main way I’m attacking this is to sign up in advance for some races, incrementally increasing the length along the way, culminating in a half marathon in Duluth near the end of June. Since I haven’t signed up for them yet, this technically could change, but here’s what the plan looks like.

• February 9 – Valentine’s Day TC 5k
• March 16 – Get Lucky! 7k
• April 27 – Get in Gear 10k
• June 22 – Garry Bjorklund (Grandma’s) Half Marathon

This might be a little lofty, and this may be counter to my standard mantra of not setting unachievable goals, but if I don’t shoot for something a little high, I definitely can’t accomplish it. In terms of frequency I’m going to shoot for pulling on the running shoes 3 times a week (Mon.-Sun.) with a minimum of twice a week.

Since the gym is generally pretty demotivating for me I feel like I need to set something up to make sure I get value out of my membership. I joined in late August, about the time my fitness level that I achieved from earlier in the year began to deteriorate. I like to blame this on a mental block to the gym but in reality this is a chicken/egg kind of thing. In order to maintain my insurance and work rebates I need to attend at least 12 times a month. So obviously this is going to break down into some sort of 3 times a week attendance rate with the initial goal to be 2 running sessions and one lifting session, and hopefully expanding to lifting twice a week to make up for the fact that I will want to run more outside once the weather gets nicer. If I start finding value in the gym, enjoying it, or just maintain my membership throughout the whole year then I assume I would feel like I’ve accomplished my gym goal. If I miss the target a couple of months that won’t be terrible, I will try not to feel guilty for missing it but I will also not give up on a month once it becomes apparent that I will miss it.

One of my biggest nemeses to my weight goals of 2012 was sweets. This is not something I expected since I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth (I gave away all of my halloween candy as a child.) So for 2013 I WILL NOT EAT ANY SWEETS. I hope that last line had a second to sink in, it’s obviously a lie. My goal is really to just be more aware of junk food. I will not buy an apple fritter EVERY time I visit Caribou, for instance. I intend on 95% of my sweets/junk food intake to occur on Sundays (or my cheat day from my diet, whichever day that ends up.) I’d like to limit my Caribou visits to one weekday and on my cheat day, twice a week at most. Also, if I’m going to break down and eat junk, it damn well better be good junk. No more of the store bought, processed, nothing but sugar shit. It better be worth it. So outside of the occasional apple fritter or raspberry white chocolate scone I’m going to try to only eat things that I, or somebody else put some effort into, like cinnamon apple bundt cake.

The last of my health specific goals is about weight. I clocked in at the start of 2012 at right around 200. I bottomed out in the low 180s and finished up the year in the low 190s (damn holidays.) So this year not only do I want to reach my targetish area, but then i want to find a way to maintain it. I have some dates and plateaus that I’d like to be at, but what it boils down to is this; at the end of 2013 I want 180 to be my trigger weight, the weight at which I say “oh shit!” and start to refocus on diet/exercise, so I’m shooting for 169/170 after a long run, dehydrated and sweaty, 178.5 after a cheat day knowing that it will return to normal, and 175 +/- 2.5lbs as normal. That’s it, cut and dry.

 Financial Responsibility

Since I haven’t had specific goals in the past this will be a little bit more broad, with hopefully some small measure of success this year and the opportunity to be more specific next year. I have some slightly more specific guidelines documented as well. I already feel fairly comfortable with the method I use for budgeting my incoming money for the purposes of paying my bills. The only reason I ever don’t pay my bills on time is when I have a brain fart and think that I scheduled the payment but really didn’t. I’ve even began transitioning some of my bills to auto payments, where it makes sense, even with my general uncomfortable feeling around this (which was promptly proven to be accurate by TWO different companies incorrectly billing me.) I have two main focal points for 2013.

• Limit impulse purchases – Immediate satisfaction and ease of purchase are the major culprits here. Amazon Prime, which very convenient is not my friend. I love it. Click and two days later it’s at my door. So this year I’m going to create an Amazon wish list specifically for the purpose of a buffer period. Anything that I would have one-click purchased in 2012, I will just add to the buffer in 2013. If after two days I still think it’s a good purchase, I’ll buy it, otherwise I will transition it to my actual wish list and move on, but at least it may limit my actual impulse purchases.
• Earmark funds for debt reduction/savings – For the most part I could list out all of my known income and expenses for the year right now and be within shouting distance of actual at the end of the year. Based on this I can pinpoint a couple of opportunities where I have income, that I can just remove from the equation when it comes to my budget in a way kind of making it seem like “found” money. My goal is to use this money to increase my net worth from where it is at the beginning of 2012 by the end of 2013.

Read More

Of course, the obligatory read more goal. Last year I set the general goal of 18 books read, I actually finished 17 books, including all of the currently completed books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, the books that the HBO Original Game of Thrones is based on (averaging 800+ pages.) Even though I feel like I can shoot way higher, I don’t think it’s necessary so I’m going with 18 again this year. Instead I’m going to focus on not allowing one disinteresting book to stop me from reading. I spent two months not reading because of the intro to one book in 2012, and I still hit 17! So I’m going to try to get into reading two books at a time this year. If I find myself focusing on one, and starting another in it’s place, while ignoring the other, it will be time to move on. Along with this I’ve picked a couple of books that I’d for sure like to get to this year:

• Omnivore’s Dilemma – This is the book that stalled my 2012 reading, I’m going to try and conquer it while adopting my multi-book strategy.
• 4-hour Chef – I just want to make it through my own adventure in this book, not necessarily every page.
• Team of Rivals – The book the Lincoln movie is based on.
• Googled
• 11/22/63 – Steven King
• 2030
• Lay the Favorite
• 4-hour Work Week – I originally didn’t like this book, but after learning more about the author and loving his style in the other books he’s written I want to give it another shot. Redemption.

Challenges, 30-day or otherwise

After following along on Matt Cutts (Googler, blogger) journey to a better lifestyle through 30 day challenges it started to occur to me that this was a really good way to adopt habits. I’m going to use 30 days at a time (or shorter in some cases) in order to sort of test drive some lifestyle changes. Near the end of every month I’ll commit to next months challenge. So I don’t even know what they all are at this point. I’d like to do one each month this year, with a couple of shorter ones (things that seem like they might be exceptionally challenging) mixed in as well. Here’s a couple of things I’m considering to kind of give an idea of what I’m thinking:

• Wake up early – This is my January challenge. In short I’m waking up a couple of hours before I intend to leave for work. This allows me to have some time to do whatever I want, without already being burned out from a day of work. It also allows me to have a wake up time range, I won’t be feeling guilty or pressed for time if I hit snooze a couple of times, I just want have as much time to play xbox, blog, go to the gym, read, work on personal projects or watch things on my DVR. I’m going for a mix of productivity and relaxation.
• P90X for a month
• Vegan Week
• 10,000+ steps a day
• No Sugar or Caffeine for a week
• Be especially Frugal
• Read a certain number of pages from a book everyday
• Eat slower

These are just some ideas. One thing that I’m shooting for as part of a 365-day challenge is daily tracking. I bought a 3×5 Moleskine notebook that I’m using to keep track of each day. Writing down things like what I’ve eaten, start/end weight, how much I ran or other exercise, what time I went to bed and woke up along with how I feel throughout the day. Part of the reasoning behind this is that I feel like there is some sort of guilt associated to single-purpose apps. Apps for working out make you feel guilty when you don’t work out. Apps for tracking your weight tend to make you create a goal, this is supposed to help, instead I feel like I only want to use these when I’m making progress towards the goal, instead of having full traceability I only have data points when I feel like entering them. In a notebook, there is no target, it’s just everything and you can look back on all the data points and identify the patterns which allow you to actually make the right changes. Again, another somewhat lofty goal.

 Technology

Blog more. Duh. Every year I say that. I’m not going to define a target rate at which I will post, the guilt associated with missing a target is too demotivating. I have some built in topics such as a review of how these resolutions are going, previews/reviews of my challenges, ideas for personal projects etc. Hopefully I can do a couple a month just based on that, and more mixed in between those, but nothing set in stone. Besides blogging I’ve definitely carved out some time that can be used to make some progress on some of my personal projects, I’d like to get into a rhythm with this again too. Aside from any of the potential long term benefits that hopefully would come from one of my ideas sticking to the wall, I think this would increase my level of satisfaction with my day job as well, for now. Maybe I can find a way to work one of these projects into a lofty 2014 goal of self-sustainability and getting rid of that pesky day job anyway…

So 2013… Let’s see how this goes.

for more profundity or pithy humor follow me on twitter – @bicb