New Year, New Goals
Reflection on Chapter 5: How Do I Teach Myself a New Skill?
Each blog post in this series will take a moment to reflect on the questions at the end of each chapter. Feel free to join the conversation by responding in the comments with your answers to the discussion questions (with plain text or a link to your post).
Here is the question for the fifth chapter:
What was one New Year’s Resolution that you didn’t follow through on? How would you approach this resolution differently to achieve your goal?
I suppose it's time for a humble brag, I succeeded in nearly all of my resolutions and goals. After reading Atomic Habits by James Clear at the end of 2021, I reframed my approach to focus on building habits to reinforce the identity of who I want to become instead of assigning arbitrary numbers to goals and abandoning them by May (or February). I even went full-blown nerd and created a personalized planner to help remind me of these habits daily. With these systems in place, I exceeded my reading goals; completed half of an instructional design graduate program, transitioned into a new career; and engaged in daily tasks of engaging in mindfulness, completing one act of kindness, and writing a reflective haiku (some of which have much more colorful language than others).
The one goal I made little progress on was my exercise goal. I lost some weight because of dietary changes and an (inconsistent) workout regimen. To achieve better results on this goal, here is what is different in 2023:
One major change in circumstance that will help is that I am out of the grueling, soul-killing, time-sucking task of a major career transition that took a great deal of my time and energy last year.
I redesigned and digitized my Platypus Planner with Affinity Publisher (shown below) to emphasize physical activity.
I have the equipment I need to exercise. My office now includes an exercise bike, dumbbells, kettlebells, and a desk treadmill.
References
Hobson, L. (2021). What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming an Instructional Designer. Independently published.
Schein, E. H. (2017). Organizational Culture and Leadership (The Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series). Wiley.
