goal setting for 2018

I’m generally not one to set new year resolutions but it’s a time of year for reflection. At the beginning of this year I set myself 3 main goals;

1. Beat obesity (have a BMI of less than 30)
2. Cut my credit card debt in half
3. Maintain an average daily step count of above 10,000 for the year

I realistically only achieved the first one which I managed to do by June. I made progress towards the other two but I didn’t fully achieve them. As a career goal later on in the year I told myself that I wanted to speak at 1 international conference and I got to 2 which I’m happy with achieving. For 2018 maintaining a healthy lifestyle and looking after my debt should remain my focuses. Recovering from a broken ankle is going to introduce it’s own challenges. So I need to come up with ways to make these measurable.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle; failure here for me would be falling back into an obese category so at least that will be easy to measure and monitor for when I might be coming off track. Success is pretty flexible though. I would like to get back into weight training and I’ll need to experiment with finding exercise that works for me while I recover. Maybe my goal should be to find a new exercise activity and stick to it for 3 months?

Managing my debt; I’m already managing this a lot better than I have been historically and even if I do nothing progress will be made. I think the goal I’ll give myself is; make an extra payment towards my debt for 10 out of 12 months. I have automatic payments that cover my minimum contributions but I’d like to make extra payments to get this debt paid off quicker. I won’t completely clear out my debt in 2018, that’s too unrealistic of a goal but making extra contributions is achievable. Maybe reducing my debt by half.

Should I set any career goals? I’ve already been invited to speak at 1 international conference and I don’t want to overload myself with too much travel this year. How about community goals? How do I want my involvement with Sydney Testers to grow/develop? How about mental health goals? Maybe actually finish an online tutorial or read a particular technical book? I was thinking of starting a masters in Data Science but probably not for 2018, my recovery from a broken ankle and maintaining my health are more important for now. There’s also an interesting TED post on creative New Year resolutions which is good for inspiration. How do you make your goals measurable and accountable?