Resolutions & Goals for 2022

It took me awhile to nail down my “big three” resolutions this year. The things I want to accomplish are very broad daily habit and routine changes, and in order to be a “resolution”, they have to be specific and measurable. I also have to have a solid, workable plan in place that will allow me to reach them before I can elevate a goal to “resolution” status. Setting myself up for success, so to speak.

What I ended up with (along with a longer list of smaller goals), is these:

Write Daily: 10 words minimum of fiction or poetry
Read Daily: 100 words minimum of fiction or poetry.
Move Daily: 5 minutes minimum of meaningful movement that makes the body stronger or more flexible

The minimums are intentionally low, because the amounts aren’t really the point. The point is to establish daily habits that can be reached even if everything in my life is going badly for some reason. The larger result will be to shape my days to include the things I feel are most important to my overall mental and physical well-being, eventually without having to put much thought into it at all.

I spent a lot of time last year lamenting the fact that I just don’t have time for everything I want to do. And that’s true – I’ll be cutting some things out of my schedule this year to ensure I can meet my goals, but the thing I really want to keep in mind this year is that nothing takes as long as I think it will. Instead of focusing on how much time I don’t have, I want to make good use of the time I do have. And that includes not wasting so much time worrying about whether I actually have time to do these things, because they’re already built into my daily schedule.

So that’s my plan for the new year. Write, read, and move in ways that will foster more of the same. I’ve been so frustrated that I haven’t been doing more of the things I love just because I either “don’t have time” or am just too lazy to start. I think that making these a priority, even on the weekends, will put me in a better, more positive frame of mind overall, and lower the stress level I’ve been dealing with for awhile now.

To faciliate the new plans and routines, I’ve been switching to a new planning system. My old one involves several different apps and planners, and the new one brings pretty much everything together into one system that allows me to see the bigger picture more clearly. I’ve been using ToDoist and Cozi, plus my own daily planning sheets on my tablet. I’m consolidating the ToDoist and Cozi information into the My Life Organized system, which is not only more comprehensive, but it’s a one-time buy rather than a subscription service. So win-win! I’m keeping the daily planning sheets on my reMarkable, because there’s something about writing out my general to-do list by hand that makes it stick in my brain better, but I did get some new templates to make that easier and more organized as well.

So – the resolutions are made, I’ve already rearranged my late-night schedule during the week to cut a few things out and open up time for both writing and reading, and my exercise times are scheduled as well.

I just need to figure out the weekend schedules, and then I’ll be well on my way to success.

One of my lesser goals this year is to get back to regular blogging, and I’m working on finding a regular slot in my schedule for that as well. So with any luck, regular blogging will resume next week. Not just here, but on my other neglected blogs as well.

Who knows? Maybe the pups will be able to keep up with their blog this year as well. We shall see!

Wishing you a 2022 filled with all the things that make you happy, and healthy ways to cope with those that don’t.

Jamie DeBree

Writer | DBA | Dog Wrangler

Resolutions & Goals for 2022