rethinking goals

I’ve learned a little something about myself this week.  If I set a daily easy goal, I have little trouble accomplishing it.  Even easier is if it is a weekly goal that requires a certain number of days (ie, yoga 4x a week).  It becomes a daily-weekly hybrid with flexibility.

But what about a goal like “write an outline”?  That’s a monthly goal of mine, but one that is coming dangerously close to not being met.  What I need to do is make it more actionable on a daily basis, so I have something to track over the month.  Since I’m still in the data extraction process, I can break it down into reading X number of reports a day.  When it comes to the actual outline, I can count the number of sections needed (it’s a research paper, so it’s fairly standard) and maybe plan for a certain number of sections completed a day.

The important thing is that I add some concrete accountability to my goals.  Otherwise, they don’t really get done (as I’m learning!). So tonight, I’m going to sort through what I have and have not done, and then work my way through the number of days left to work out some daily goals.

How do you work out your goals?

july goals check-in: week 2

I worked too much this week which didn’t leave much time for my goals:

1. Climb 2x a week. I made it to the gym once, which wasn’t bad after a long weekend climbing trip.

2. Practice yoga 3-4x a week. I think I did yoga once this week?  Not so great.

3. Walk to work 3-4x a week. I did this only twice.

4. Have a strong outline for my thesis. Still data mining!

always do what you are afraid to do

I spent the past week reading articles and posts about the economic downturn and its impact on people’s lives. It makes me start to wonder if leaving my job (right after getting a promotion + 10% pay raise) is such a smart idea. Certainly, my mom is freaking out about it.

In addition, I’ll be on a fellowship salary while in Mongolia, which is a major major paycut (like 75%). On the upside, the cost of living is much lower, so even though I might not be able to contribute to my retirement savings, I am not likely to go into debt.

I also plan to travel afterwards, which means I’ll be without any income whatsoever for almost 6 months (unless I can find something simple somewhere, such as teaching English).

Financially speaking, it seems almost silly. I’m taking a paycut, I won’t be contributing to retirement, and I won’t even have a salary for a while. I also will be eating up my savings quite a bit. If I were just out of college, it might make more sense, but I’m 30 and at a point where I should be more “settled” (as my mom likes to point out).

But some things, I think, can’t be measured in terms of finances (or even common sense, perhaps). Some things require a leap of faith and trust in long-term gain. This fellowships fills a critical gap in my work experience, and that it is with a prestigious institution will only open doors wider.

I am committed to my career path now. I could take an easier path and stay at my current job and still do relatively well. But I’d like to move beyond that and do something bigger. And for that, I need this fellowship and the future opportunities it brings. I also need some time to travel unencumbered with work constraints.

On the plus side, my financial issues will be clear. I’ll have renters in the condo, I’ll be debt-free, and I’ll sell most of my belongings. I’ll also have a healthy amount in my savings account. And, luckily, I’ve been very good about thinking about retirement savings for the past 10 years (thanks mom!), so I’m in very good shape now so that one or two years missed will not be a real problem.

And being in an LDC means I don’t have to worry about as much stuff. If anything, that’s the best part about this!

So it’s really not that big of a leap of faith, and from my perspective, not at all nonsensical. It is, however, a step outside the comfort zone. But as I think about more, I am less and less afraid of making a bad choice. For now, I am confident that this is definitely the next step for me.

july goals check-in: week 1

1. Climb 2x a week. I made it to the gym once, and then I went on an outdoor climbing trip for 3 days. Check!

2. Practice yoga 3-4x a week. I only made it twice this week, but that’s mostly because of going out of town mid-week.

3. Walk to work 3-4x a week. I did this either 3 or 4 times, so check!

4. Have a strong outline for my thesis. Am still working through the research part….

mid-year resolutions check-in

So my mid-year check-in should actually have occured mid-May, but better late than never!

The goals I set for this year and how I’m doing:

1. Take the lead class in February. This did not happen due to an injury. I’m now eyeing August for this.
2. Pay down all my debt and start aggressively saving. I’m a month away from being debt-free and I’ve got a decent cushion in savings. I also started contributing to my 403b.
3. Practice Level 3 yoga regularly. Not there yet. Maybe by the end of the year?
   
4. Take a vacation. A real vacation. I went to Malaysia and Cambodia and had a great time. I’m also going on a climbing trip this weekend, and hopefully going to San Francisco and Utah later this year.
5. Finish classes and my thesis and graduate! Finished my classes! And am on track to have a draft of my thesis by mid-August.
6. Learn to manage anger properly. Hit or miss with this one.
7. Lose 10 lbs. I will not repeat the plan I had for this; suffice to say it was highly unrealistic. I haven’t actually lost any weight since the beginning of the year (but haven’t gained any either!), so I’m trying to buckle down on this.

Resolutions #2, #4 and #5 are on automatic, so I’m not really thinking about them except to keep doing what I’m doing.  #1, #3, and #7 are part of my current monthly goal setting, so I am focusing on the month-to-month.  That leaves me to develop some strategies for #6.  Help?

In addition, I have to add a few new goals:

1. Learn Mongolian. I have to at least be familiar with grammar and basic vocabulary.
2. Develop my project(s). I will have two projects in Mongolia, so I need to work out some detailed plans for them (which includes additional funding for one of them).

july goals

My July goals (the first three are adapted from previous months):

1. Climb 2x a week. I’ve stopped being overly ambitious about this, and am just going to aim for 2x a week. By the end of the month, I will be flashing 5.9s.

2. Practice yoga 3-4x a week. I’ll include restorative and nidra yoga in this, once a week. I am really trying to make my yoga practice stronger because I’ve noticed some definite improvement in flexibility lately.

3. Walk to work 3-4x a week. This is proving to be a great frugal hack, since I don’t have to pay for transportation.

4. Have a strong outline for my thesis. Breaking this down further - finish research by the 18th, giving me two weeks to develop an outline that I can write the thesis from.

And in other news, I’m in three carnivals this week:

Festival of Frugality at Budgets are Sexy

Carnival of Money Stories at My Good Cents

Carnival of Personal Finance at Greener Pastures (love this theme!)

june goals wrap-up

So in the past week, I made it to yoga 4 times, climbing 1 time, and I walked into work twice.   I wasn’t much of an early riser either.  So I only hit 1 of my 4 goals, and was halfway there with 2 of them.

So to wrap up the month:

1.  Wake up by 7 am every day. This one was so-so.  It’ll be a goal for next month.

2.  Go climbing 2-3x a week. I only made it once a week the whole month.  Definitely need to add this for next month as well.

3.  Practice yoga 2-3x a week. I think I hit this every week, or at least 3 weeks out of 4.  Not bad!

4. Walk to work 3-4 days a week. I got pretty close to this one - I think only week 4 was missed.

Overall, it wasn’t too bad at all.  I’ll be setting my July goals too.

june goals check-in: week 3

Checking in with my June goals:

1.  Wake up by 7 am every day. I was hit and miss with this one all week.  Half a check?

2.  Go climbing 2-3x a week. Once again, only went once.  I must be better about this!

3.  Practice yoga 2-3x a week. 3 times this week.  Check!

4. Walk to work 3-4 days a week. 4 times this week. Check!

musings on debt

So I am not an enemy of debt.  I find that having a little bit of keeps things in check.  And being open to taking on debt means allowing greater opportunity.  The trick, I’ve found, is not to be owned by the debt, at least not for a long period of time.

I’ve had a changing relationship with debt.  On the one hand, being in debt means that I don’t extravagantly spend like I used to.  On the other hand, one does start thinking about how the debt repayment funds would be much more useful in savings…

I used to live well beyond my means, taking on debt without really caring about it.  One day, I sat down and tried to figure out exactly how much in debt I was.  I was really surprised.  So I started tracking it, in the hopes of paying it off.  I realized that the payoff couldn’t really happen unless the spending habits changed.

But the spending habits don’t change until you start thinking about where you want to be in life, and where you want to go.  Until I started thinking a bit further into the future, I didn’t really think about what being in debt really meant.  And in the same vein, for people who aren’t in debt but also aren’t saving.

I realized one day that I want to travel.  I want to be able to work part-time.  I want to have a job that pays pennies but gives me an enormous amount of personal gratification.  And these aren’t really things you can do with debt.  And it was at this point that the debt took over my life, and I was consumed by the need to pay it off.

After a few months at the extremes, I found my way to the center.  I am no longer consumed by the need to pay off my debt, but I’m also not spending like I won’t live through the week.  I have a much healthier relationship with my debt, and my finances overall.

Of course, now that I’m past the crossover and well into the final stages of payoff, I’m a bit obsessed again.  But with a final payoff date of early August, it’s so close I can taste it.  I’ll forgive myself a little obsession again.

Just a little peek at my success - in just over a year and a half, I will have paid off the equivalent of half of my salary.  No small sum!  At the same time, I’ve managed to fully fund my Roth IRA every year.  I’ve also started putting money towards my 403b (about 2.5%).  And I’ve got a few grand in savings.   And I never let myself feel deprived - I am as socially conscious of a shopper as I can manage, my work wardrobe is up-to-date, and I’ve taken 4 international trips in the past 2 years.

Now I am aggressively saving, because I have some ambitious plans for the next 10 years!

my 10 year plan revisited

A while back, I wrote about my 10 year plan.  I never expected it to be set in stone, but I didn’t expect it to change already.  I also didn’t expect to accomplish some of the goals so soon.

So my new 10 year plan:

1.  Hike Mt. Kilimanjaro.  I thought I would do this in 2010, but now I have different plans.  This will have to wait, hopefully not too long.

2.  Get a PhD.  I am still hoping to consider this.

3.  Get published.  This should happen this year!  And hopefully a few more times in the next couple of years.

4.  Take a crazy climbing trip.  I still would love this - perhaps in the Altai.

5.  Get certified in yoga teacher training.  I think I will do this in the spring of 2010 either in Dharamsala or Kerala (India).

6.  Go to Mongolia on a Fulbright.  This will happen next year!

7.  Visit China (particularly the Great Wall).  Ideally, I’ll be able to do this after Mongolia.

8.  Take a ride on the Trans-Siberian Railway.  The plan is summer of 2010.

9.  Work at the Google Foundation.  I am still considering this, though a few other places have come to mind as well.

10.  Be out of debt and well into savings.  I forgot about this, but it will happen this year… though I imagine a good chunk of the savings will be used up during my travels over the next two years.