Last year, a bunch of us got together and committed to try to make a new goal each month in 2024. Personally, I tried out stuff like journalling in the morning, stopping snacking by 3 hours before bed, and messaging a friend each day – and for the most part I managed to use the format to make each month an opportunity to make a new resolution (rather than waiting until 2025).
So once again, at the start of each month in 2025 I intend to set up a new goal for a new habit. I’ll deliberately set it to end at the end of the month, so if it doesn’t work well, it’s out of the way then (though I expect that I’ll keep some of them rolling after the end of the month in the end, for at least some amount of time).
Want to join me?
Rules:
Post here and let me know you’re in!
At the start of each month (say before the 7th of the month), post about your new goal. If it’s private, you don’t have to share all the gory details – just whatever you’re comfortable with. You can set the goal’s end date to the last day of the month, so you don’t have to be committed to it any more than that. Everything about the goal is up to you!
Feel free to create yourself an “index post” that you’ll update to keep track of your goals/posts and make it easy to see what you’ve done overall. I can link to that in the Hall of Participants if you like!
Share your progress updates every so often. Have you found a perfect goal? Have you struggled with something? Did something turn out to be a non-starter? Whether it’s good or bad, just share a little about the process for accountability’s sake, if that works for you.
You might want to create a goal to help you remember to make your goal at the beginning of each month…
No shame and no brow-beating! If something doesn’t work, that’s fine. If you derail, that’s fine (derailing is not failing, anyway). If you forget a month or your goal is such a bad fit you have to end it early, or a life thing gets in the way, it’s all fine. The spirit is experimentation and accountability… but flexibility is important too.
Join whenever you can or want to!
NB: This is separate to my New Year’s Resolutions thread, and you don’t have to do both or anything. I’m just taking any excuse to make some little changes and get myself enthusiastic about them, as well as nail my colours to the mast for one really important goal.
I will be trying to participate more reliably this year. Most of my goals will probably be somewhere along the same theme, as per my post here (which also explains my goal for January).
For January, I will be trying to submit birding checklist with eBird more regularly. Transferred manually from the “total checklists this year” (tried various ways to automate, none worked). Autoratcheting to 15 days. The idea: to break the trend that I am mostly submitting checklists when I am in exciting “exotic” places and go for weeks without observations when I am in the home mode. Backyard observations from the kitchen window still count.
I’ve selected my first goal! I’ve been having trouble keeping up with chores and finding my chore app overwhelming. I want to do a bit of a reset on that, and also just establish a habit of fitting in one chore no matter how busy I am. It’s got to be possible!
As a bit of an explanation for my first month’s goal: I would like to get 2024 paperwork out of my office and filed away as soon as possible. Obviously, I can’t take care of all of this for December yet since paperwork takes time before it even gets to me, but based on what I currently have in my office, I should be able to get everything through the end of November done.
Fine print: I put the should in there because physical paperwork is the devil. There could easily be something that was lost, destroyed, not filled out in the first place, or next spring a driver will sheepishly come to me and say they deep-cleaned their truck and found a six-month-old scale ticket under the floor mat. I also obviously cannot close out loads that have not been paid. So, the metric I will be using is the number of bills of lading through the end of November that I currently have marked as not filed. That number is currently 559. So by the end of the month, I should have the paperwork that I have for these loads sorted, and payment status verified. If a load is still marked as unpaid, or has missing paperwork noted, I’m not going to count that against myself for the purposes of this goal, even though that is still something I need to deal with.
intensity (avg. 35 minutes of "Garmin Intensity minutes per day)
Technically this isn’t new to this year, but I’m pretty new to Beeminder and I like the idea of reviewing and iterating every month, so I’ll keep working with it and see how realistic it is.
I’m not really a New Years Resolutions kind of person, but this sort of experimenting and trying new things is absolutely up my alley! I’ve been a bit stale with my beeminder goals over the last year or so (2024 was not my year) so it’ll be good to rethink some of them and see what comes up. Here is my metagoal, although I don’t know how to make it all cute and steppy like Nicky’s: newmonthresolution – lanthala – beeminder
January: free_evenings – lanthala – beeminder
This is yet another variant on my “get my bedtime stuff done before bedtime” wish; I’ve given beeminder a lot of money over the years for those goals. This version is do-less, and I’ve started with “no more than 1 beeminder goal red at 8pm per two days”, which feels pretty doable. We’ll see how it goes!