Hello everyone and welcome to the New Books New Beginnings New Year Blog Hop hosted by the Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Facebook Group
Here are the blog posts for the Hop. You need to check them all out.
Now, for the blog post:
I was born in September, so I do the annual inventory everyone else seems to conduct in January, then. I started doing this because it was a more accurate accounting of my annual goals and progress since it would be another year of my life not just another turn of the calendar.
If you are one of those New Year resolution makers who find you are not really successful at following through, consider it may be 1. the timing, 2. the type of resolutions, and 3. your capacity to follow through on them.
The timing: because EVERYONE seems to make these resolutions for January, it can make you feel the pressure of setting your own goals for the following year. It may even influence the TYPE of goals you set for the following year. If your co-workers are all trying to work out or change their diet (2 common resolutions) you might feel more inclined to join them. But is that really what you want to do? When I set my annual goals in September, I am well and away from the hype of the new year and so is everyone around me. If I set goals at that point regarding exercise or food, I am doing that alone and for me, not to assist anyone else on their journey or be a team player. Not that I think that is a bad thing, definitely support those goals for someone else, but choose goals meaningful to YOU for your resolutions.
The type: You may or may not be aware of SMART goals by this point, but if you are not, here is a link to some information: SMART Goals-Quick Overview Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. The general goals people tend to set for the new year are rarely developed through this system. It's usually something general like-I want to read more books. I already have questions! What type of books, how many, when, what kind (e, audio, print), and more! The PDF attached as your takeaway is a SMART goal brainstorming activity with an example for a reader and an example for an author.
Capacity: This reminds me of several scenes in Star Trek where Captain Kirk would call down and say faster or more and Scottie would reply with, "I'm givin' er all I got, Capin'!" You are a lot like the Star Ship Enterprise. You only have so much capacity! One of the main reasons people fail to follow through on resolution is because they lack the capacity to do so. I once tried to give up fast food as a resolution. That worked for a week. This was during a time when my spouse was deployed, I was working 2 jobs and taking college classes full-time. A better resolution would have been to limit fast food and make better choices from those menus. I did not have SMART goals back then because no one had laid that out before. You cannot do everything on your own and you may not be able to make a drastic change just because it's January. I learned from that experience, but it wasn't until later when I realized I set myself up to fail by making a broad claim without consideration for why I was using fast food as my primary meal option, to begin with. Another common knowledge issue people have when it comes to these resolutions is making too many of them. Again, capacity! Capacity is the actual ability to do these things. You may be physically and mentally able-I'm sure Enterprise could have gone faster with some adjustments. Change is just that, an adjustment to what you typically already do.
Maybe I've made a case for planning resolutions in your birth month rather than January (sorry Jan babies), maybe not. Either way, this PDF might help you with planning and determining your SMART goal or goals.
Now, for those of you on the business end of things, you probably still need to use the SMART goals, but you would look at either the physical (Jan-Dec) or fiscal (when you set your business quarters) dates for those goals.