A new year means it’s time for new goals – or more importantly, a new goals project! Those who read my blog regularly will recall that last year, inspired by a friend who set out to perform 100 goals in 100 days, I began a project to complete 50 goals in the first quarter. The experiment was not only successful, but a lot of fun – and a lot of the effort put forth on last year’s 50 goals ended up having a pretty profound effect on the year as a whole.

This year my goals are just as random, and just as “off the top of my head” as last year. They range from changes in behavior, to tasks I’ve wanted to take care of but keep putting off. It should give me a lot to do these next three months – which since it’s the rainy, cold and dark time of the year out here in Portland, I’ve got nothing better to do. I recommend you do the same!

50 Goals For The First Quarter: (green = completed)

1. Write a blog post every week (monday)
2. Cook eggs benedict from scratch
3. Work-out 3 days a week
4. Get a massage
5. Join/Start a monthly book club
6. Take a photo every day (Flickr)
7. Loose 20 pounds
8. Limit bars/restaurants to friday and saturday
9. Write out first draft of “East”
10. Be able to do 100 push-ups
11. Take a yoga class
12. Go out to 3 shows of bands I don’t know
13. Produce large-scale photo for the bedroom wall
14. Ask two gals on dates
15. Create barbacoa tacos from scratch (including tortillas)
16. Cook roast-chicken dinner, stuffing, potatoes, etc.
17. Go on 5 hikes
18. Spend a day/night in a new town/city
19. Do apartment cleanse – books, clothes, video games, etc.
20. Go out to 3 new restaurants
21. Meditate daily
22. Create schedule for week, and review it daily
23. Pay for all non-business items in cash only
24. Get laid
25. Create really good pizza at home from scratch
26. Visit dentist for check-up
27. Take math course online for free at MIT
28. Sketch something weekly
29. Watch 5 South American films
30. Streamline and secure all social media & online memberships
31. Fix both guitars
32. Put $500 a month in savings
33. Create Business Catalyst YouTube channel
34. Devise budget and use Mint.com to manage
35. Create simple iPhone App
36. Achieve 10 business goals
37. Purchase buttons and fix coat
38. Learn 5 songs on guitar
39. Research online spanish classes and start taking them
40. Learn how to use all settings on Nikon camera
41. Get mom’s recipe for meatballs and cook
42. Make a delicious cappuccino
43. Get clean bill of health from doctor
44. Host “get-together” at my apartment
45. Plant herb garden
46. Acquire slow-cooker and cook pot-roast
47. Get T-Shirt store running on stand-alone URL
48. Have coffee/lunch with 3 peers
49. Attend 3 non-business related events/presentations
50. Inspire 3 people to create goal lists

Last night marked the end of daylights savings time, and as such, our clocks were moved back one hour. When I was a kid, I recall quite a bit of effort taking place to make this happen, as my parents would have to manually change each clock in the house by hand. I can remember sitting in public school, and the clock on the wall would suddenly begin it’s manual back-tracking, clicking off minutes by the second until it reached the correct time. These days, most of my clocks are not only digital, but connected to the internet in one fashion or another, and thus intelligent and capable enough to make the update themselves. I simply woke-up this morning, and time had changed.

However, this afternoon while reading in my living room, I began to feel a bit hungry, and looked to the clock on the stove to see what time it was. The clock read 5:30, and so I decided it was probably a good time to start making some dinner. I went to the refrigerator to collect the items I had intended to cook and placed them on the counter. I then decided, as is my custom, to put on some music while I prepared dinner. I walked over to my computer, and as I went to turn on iTunes, I noticed the clock on my computer, which had automatically updated itself over night, read 4:30. The digital clock on the stove, not possessing the intelligence to grasp daylights savings time had not been updated, and thus was now an hour off. I stood there in my apartment, looking at the food upon the counter, and gazing back and forth between the two clocks. Sure, I was hungry – but 4:30 is too early to start dinner. I was reminded once again how false the concept of time truly is.

Last week I was in Maui on vacation – my second trip to the island this year. While I certainly had a wonderful time on my first visit – as I had never been there before, there was a lot I wanted to do. I filled my days with sight-seeing and various day-trips to beaches and hikes and the like. This time, I intentionally planned very little. Most days consisted of waking up, going for a run with Jessica, drinking some good coffee, laying on the beach, swimming in the ocean, swimming in the pool, and eating tasty dinners, often at home or close to the condominium where we were staying. I can’t imagine I drove more than 10 minutes from the condo and its lovely private beach, once we arrived. The only thing I had planned for the week was an event on Saturday I had purchased tickets for Jessica and myself a few months earlier. It was a conversation between two of my favorite writers and spiritual teachers, Wayne Dyer and Eckhart Tolle. In preparation for the talk, I acquired Eckhart’s book “The Power of Now” on iTunes, and listened to it as I rested poolside, or in the comforting shade of a palm tree.

I won’t attempt to summarize “The Power of Now”, if you haven’t had the pleasure of reading anything by Eckhart, I recommend you do. There are many brilliant observations made in that book, but one of the seemingly simplest, yet profound concepts is the simple fact that everything happens in the now. Nothing has ever happened in the past – and nothing will ever happen in the future. All we have is an infinite now – this current moment. The reason this is such a hard concept to wrap our minds around is the fact that we’ve created numerous mental constructs to suggest otherwise. Instead of feeling the moment, we instead feel time, and count the seconds into minutes – minutes into hours, hours to days, days to weeks, weeks to months, months to years and so on. By creating time, we have negated the moment (the now) and solidified the concept of past and future into our daily existence. What’s worse, we have applied emotion and meaning to these illusory descriptions of the moment. It is Sunday evening as I write this post, which means tomorrow is Monday. Is there anyone reading this post who can not feel a difference in their mind between the words Sunday and Monday? This is an entirely human conundrum. Trees and birds do not recognize this change of days, the way they might feel the seasons or recognize a difference between night and day. Days of the week are purely a human invention, and while completely illusory – very much real in the sense that our daily experience is dominated by this structure.

Sitting in Maui, with no plans for the week, and no goals for each passing day – it was quite easy to “be in the now”.  I left work behind as much as a business owner can – and the warm air, beautiful colors and inviting waters helped remove any worries or regrets hiding in my subconscious.  I’m good at being on vacation – I’ve worked hard to be so – to truly relax and let the days pass.  However, I knew like everything, the vacation would have to end.  The question was how I could maintain that same feeling of being present to the current moment, rather than wrapped in the mental constructs of past and future, which almost always manifest themselves as regret or anxiety.  While flying back to Portland, I began to ponder how I could change my reality.

Over the summer I decided to stop working on Fridays. I had hired on a fulltime employee, and the added assistance he provided greatly increased my company’s productivity and profitability. The instant I decided to stop working on Fridays, the way Friday felt changed. It was now part of the weekend. Likewise, Thursday now shifted as well, as it was the last day of the “work week”. Recognizing the shift in my perception of the week forced me to look at how I spend all my time, and helped point the way to a possible solution to my new goal of breaking down these illusions of time.

I am very lucky that I work for myself, and as such, have complete control over my schedule (within reason). Even with this freedom from the typical 9 to 5 outlook, I still find myself falling into the same cycle and patterns most people live with. I still show up at work between 8:30 and 9 – and most days work till 4:30 or 5. I work on Wednesday, relax on Saturday. Over the next few months however, I want to begin breaking free from this construct as much as I can. Starting this week I plan to start getting up earlier than I typically do – ideally before the sun even rises – and carve out an entirely new space in my life that hasn’t existed prior. Rather then waking up, taking a shower, and heading down to the bus and into the office – I plan to rise at 6:00am and not head to work until 9am. That three hour space I’m carving out will be used for reflection, exercise, writing, eating a healthy breakfast and most likely other tasks I’m not yet aware of. Three hours, four days a week (Friday is entirely mine) is twelve hours of time dedicated to something outside of work – outside the illusory structure of the workweek. Half a complete day, to use as I see fit. Monday might not feel so much like a Monday, if the first three hours of the day are dedicated not to catching up on email or sitting in meetings – but instead reading, reflecting and enjoying those early moments of the morning.

Gaining or losing one hour will seem trite if I can carve out half a day each week to dedicate to self.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

- Rumi

Has it really been almost two months since I’ve written a blog post?  My dear, faithful readers – my sincerest apologies, but your humble narrator has been rather busy carving out an entirely new life in which to live – and thus has been unable to find the time to document this transformation, or comment on the success.  This evening I have found that moment.

At the beginning of this year, I sat down and I wrote out 50 goals to transform my life.  I found myself running a struggling web development company, one I had greatly considered abandoning at the end of 2010.  I was uninspired and honestly unhappy.  I was living in the same apartment I had for five years – and my habits and the life they had formed no longer motivated me.  I decided I could either continue in this pathetic direction, or radically transform things.  An old friend had performed an interesting goals project, and I took it upon myself to do the same.  What began was a journey that took me to this moment.

Today, half way through 2011, I am happy to report that my life has been radically improved.  I became re-inspired by my business, and after a lot of effort and clarity of purpose, May was my best month of billing in nearly five years.  Then in June we crushed that sales record!  I am confident July will beat even that.  Both Jessica and myself hired on folks, and the new energy in the office has been wonderful.  I closed my largest deal ever three weeks ago, and the investments I made in learning Adobe Business Catalyst and cleaning up the financial side of things have entirely paid off.  The Interactive Dept. is a thriving web development studio – and I couldn’t be more proud.

At the start of May I began taking a long hard look at my negative habits, and for the most part have really cleaned up my life.  While I was never in serious peril with my drinking and such – recognizing that there was a time and place for everything, and making sure I observed my actions carefully greatly transformed how I spent my freetime – and more importantly, gave me the clear head I needed to tackle so many other smaller issues in my life that had always seemed impossible to resolve.  My hands are back on the wheel and I am truly driving this life – and that is extremely rewarding.

One of my goals at the start of the year was to visit several apartments I couldn’t currently afford.  One of the places I visited was Tupelo Alley – a gorgeous apartment complex on N. Mississippi.  It was twice my current rent, but ten-times the quality.  At the end of June I moved into Tupelo Alley, into a wonderful 1-bedroom apartment on the 4th floor, overlooking Mississippi and Forest Park to the west.  Much as I had assumed, once I saw what was “outside my reach” – my reach expanded.  I began to contemplate living in a place like that, and sure enough, the thoughts grew to a point that they felt more like memories, and before I knew it I was signing the lease and getting the keys.  As I never worried about the “how” – the universe was kind enough to massively improve the revenue my business was making, and thus everything fell into place as it almost always seems to do.

All these wonderful new experiences provided me with a high that I’ve been riding for nearly a month now.  Last night however,  I sat down for the first time in a long time and asked a really hard question.  ”NOW WHAT?”

It’s easy to feel you’ve crossed the finish line – that you’ve won.  I can sit down on my couch, confident that it looks a million times better in this new place, watch the sun setting over the west hills and say, “well done!”  But what’s the fun in that?  So last night for the first time in far too long, I meditated (or day-dreamed as I prefer to say) about what could be better than this.  Almost immediately I felt this overwhelming energy, as if my brain was saying, “Oh there you are!”  For nearly an hour I simply relaxed and contemplated all that I still desired, while reflecting on how insanely blessed I was to possess the gifts I’ve received thus far this year.  I think I had generally forgotten how good it feels to simply wish for things – to relax entirely and reflect on that which you desire.  To conjure up scenarios in your mind and see yourself living the life you desire that is currently beyond your grasp. To not worry about the “how” or the “why” – but just see yourself enjoying an ideal life.  I had forgotten how good it feels to see yourself in your mind’s eye living a life fulfilled.

Perhaps it was easier to daydream when things were unsatisfying – an escape from the mundane and freedom from an undesired station in life.  However, as someone who truly believes thoughts become reality – I know it’s a horrible habit to let those thoughts fade.  Or worse, to let the mind travel aimlessly like a ship without a captain.  So last night I began anew – from a far grander vantage point no doubt – to envision where my life should take me.  Thoughts centered around getting entirely out of debt (primarily tax burdens I’m still struggling with) and improved personal relationships. I dreamt of sharing what I currently have with someone else, and getting to share in their life as well.  I contemplated my health and how I could exercise more and improve my diet.  I dreamt of places I still longed to visit, and the beach house on Maui I someday desire to call home.

I felt beyond refreshed when I had completed my thoughts.  While it is wonderful to come home to this new apartment and gratifying to go to work at such a vibrant and exciting business – it is always equally important to dream of what’s yet to come.  Because it will.  It always does.

A new month, on a fresh week, on a gorgeous day – what better moment than the present to transform yourself?

After having some mild success in the first 3 months of 2011 with my Goals Project – I spent the month of April reviewing how I did, and trying to tackle some of the issues that held me back from accomplishing certain goals.  I also admittedly relaxed for an entire weekend and did nothing – something I’d neglected to do in the first quarter as the Goals Project had dominated my weekends.

While I am determined to participate in another round of goals, I’ve decided to dedicate the month of May (and hopefully beyond, but lets start practical) to transforming my lifestyle.  I see this transformation taking place over three main facets of my life: Diet, Exercise and Behavior (or habit modification if you prefer). While I could certainly incorporate these practices into a goals list, the list would no doubt contain other more fun desires and whims, and history has already shown I will focus on the goals that seem most pleasurable first and sadly will allow others to fall by the wayside.  “No más!”

DIET

At the moment I weigh 190lbs.  For a 5′10″ male with a standard frame, I should weigh somewhere between 150-170 depending on which charts I read.  At my best, I’ve gotten down to the low 180s, but 170 or lower seems almost unimaginable.  This is why my diet is going to be key.

The fact is, I’m a relatively active individual.  I walk a mile and a half to work each day, and another mile and a half back home each night.  I don’t own a car, so I basically walk or bike everywhere I need to go.  Yet even when I was working out daily last year, I still never really lost any weight.  How come?

Well I’m certainly not a dietitian, but everything I read seems to suggest my diet (or honestly, lack thereof) is to blame.  As a Spies male, there are two things I really love in life – beer and bread.  I eat bread as a snack – I literally sneak slices of rye bread throughout the day/evening.  I eat sandwiches for almost every lunch (hell, I even wrote a blog post of my top 5 sandwiches) – and my favorite dinner to cook over the years is Chicken Parmesan - yes, breaded chicken, with pasta and of course  – garlic bread.  Carbs anyone?

As for beer, this is a double-edged sword – because not only am I known to put back more than my share of IPA’s when at the bar, drinks at the bar often lead to bar food – and bar food is typically some type of sandwich, greasy as hell, with perhaps a small side salad that I avoid.

And don’t even get me started on pizza!

For the month of May I’ve decided to get serious about the fuel I’m putting in my tank – and during April I started reading more and more about healthy decisions one can make.  I reviewed several popular diets out there and read lots of message boards and blogs regarding weight loss.  My goals was to eat healthy, eat intelligently, but not starve myself or force myself to eat something I didn’t enjoy just to loose some pounds. This has to be a practical life transformation – not a starve yourself for temporary success solution.

After  quite a bit of research I decided to do a variation on the Palio diet recommended by Steve Kamb over at NerdFitness. I’ve been a big fan of Steve’s blog for awhile now and really enjoyed his thoughts on healthy eating.  His summary of the Palio diet philosophy is this:

“Back in the day, grains weren’t part of our diet.  We ate what we could hunt or find – meats, fish, nuts, leafy greens, regional veggies, some tubers and roots, occasional berries or seasonal fruits, and seeds that other animals hadn’t decimated.  Grains came around extremely late in our development cycle and have been causing problems ever since.”

With a number of friends discovering they have issues with gluten, and my own observations that regardless of my fitness level, my weight and general “health” never seemed to greatly improve – I saw a lot of value in what Steve was saying and decided it made sense philosophically, so I should try it.  While I am no longer allowed to eat many of my favorite foods in the quantities I once did (or at all for May) – the foods I am allowed to eat are delicious and the meals I can prepare look and taste great.

I purchased Steve’s “Rebel Strength Guide“ from his website (I figured I’d been getting tons of free information and ideas for months, I could drop the $39 to read his book) and that included a 6-week menu planner.  This is awesome because I don’t have to think of recipes for every meal – I can just prepare what is listed on the menu.  Everything looks delicious, and I went out shopping yesterday to acquire all I’ll need for week one.  My dinners this week include: Stir fry beef & broccoli, baked chicken with grilled zucchini, grilled steak with asparagus, stir fry shrimp with veggies, grilled salmon with sauteed kale.  Not exactly something to complain about – plus I learn to prepare several new meals which was a big part of my first Goals Project and something I want to continue.

In fact, what might be the most challenging part of this diet is that I will be eating way more than I currently do. Each day will start out with a breakfast (typically eggs with veggies).  I don’t currently eat breakfast – I start my mornings with a cappuccino and either a bagel or a cookie (gosh it pains me to state that I start my day with a friggin’ cookie).  This again suggests that the issue was never “how much” I was eating – but “what” I was eating.  Not only will I be putting better fuel in the tank, I’ll be putting a lot more of it – this should be interesting.

The challenge will be preparing my lunch in advance, as I will have to bring it from home each day.  No more cheese-steaks at Theo’s, spicy italian subs at the People’s Sandwich of Portland – and good-bye to all my carts for the time being – I’ll miss you Give Pizza Chance – I’ll be back Real Taste of India once I discover what it is you were serving me, and what the heck is in it besides deliciousness.

Another challenge will be cost – it’s more expensive to eat healthy.  My grocery bill was noticeably larger yesterday.  Not surprisingly since I had to pick-up 3 steaks and 5 chicken breasts just for one week’s worth of meals. Dinners loaded up with pasta, bread and rice are cheaper for sure then a solid cut of a meat and a medley of veggies.  Hopefully though the cost will not only be beneficial, it will be offset by modifications to my behavior which I’ll discuss shortly.

All in all, I’m excited to see what results I get by thinking logically about what I consume.

EXERCISE

I have a gym membership, I have free-weights at home, I have $100 running shoes and I have a gut – ironic, no?  I’ve often joked that a gym membership is the equivalent of building a robot that works out for you so you don’t have to.  I pay my monthly fee – isn’t that enough?  Shouldn’t I be in shape?

Much like my old “diet” – exercise is something else I just sort of improvised over the years.  Sure I went to the gym (pretty regularly last year in fact) – but I had no strategy in place.  I kept no records of what I was doing, nor of my progress (assuming I had any).  I’d run on the treadmill for 30 minutes, then go hit up some free-weights and a variety of machines – whatever was not occupied at the moment.  I’d set the weight to whatever felt good (or whatever vague recollection I had to where I’d set it the previous time) and performed the task till I was tired and moved on to the next random machine until I’d felt my work-out was complete.

As the son of a physical education teacher, I was probably aware this was not a solid strategy.  Beyond the physical danger of performing any strength building exercise without knowledge of proper form – without a strategy in place and measuring your progress, how can you actually accomplish anything?

Again I’ve turned to Steve Kamb over at NerdFitness, and his book “The Rebel Strength Guide” for some strategies for how to proceed on this front.  My goals are simple – burn off fat, maintain muscle and build-up my core strength.  To accomplish this, I plan to hit-up the gym or work-out in my apartment 3 days a week, and then do some type of running, biking or long walk on the off days.  My gym days will be Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday – with aerobic exercises on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and a rest day on Saturday (although sunny Saturday’s in the spring typically find me doing something outside, I don’t anticipate “resting” all that much).

Much of May will be dedicated to developing the habit of working out, as well as learning how to perform various exercises correctly with solid form.  Again Steve has provided a handy guide that takes a lot of the guess work out it.  The exercise philosophy, similar to the diet philosophy is a return to basic concepts.  Weight machines are out - natural motions and body-weight exercises are in.  Push-ups, lunges, dips, chin-ups (eventually) and free-weights will be the core of this strategy.  Equally important will be recording each gym session in a notebook and using that data to make sure I’m always going in a positive direction.  If I did 10 reps last time, I better be able to do at least 11 this time.

I expect it will take at least a month to get back into the mentality that working out is not a chore, but just something that I do.  Making it a priority in my day will be key.  In the past, when time seemed short, working out was often the first item on the task list to be cut.  That has to fundamentally change.  Just like eating lunch or going to sleep at night, working out is a requirement of the day and can no longer be bumped.

BEHAVIOR

Bumping exercise off the day-planner as I just mentioned is a result of my behavior.  I don’t simply mean the actions I take, but my general outlook on everything and where I’m at mentally on any given day.  How one looks at a day greatly impacts what that day will bring.

Typically my week looks like this:

Monday: Not quite ready to start the week, sometimes a bit hung-over from a day of watching football. I avoid meetings on Monday and try to wrap-up things I abandoned on Friday at work.
Tuesday: Oh man – the week is sooo long.  Try to go to gym after work with Rachel, but sometimes I need some pints instead, to power me through the week.
Wednesday: Half-way there…  I’m exhausted, but I can make it.
Thursday: Almost done with the week – perhaps a few pints after work to welcome in Friday.
Friday: Done – thank God!  If it’s sunny at 2pm, my mind is writing an escape plan – I’ll be able to tackle these things on Monday anyhow.  HAPPY HOUR.
Weekend: Extended happy hour.  Clean-up apartment from mess I made during the week.  Take care of work projects that are falling behind and get ready to do it all over again.

It’s amazing how much the day of the week effects my mental outlook on what is possible.  This is all the more confusing considering I work for myself and rarely meet any of my clients in person.  With complete control over my schedule, and the freedom to organize my week as I see fit, I still manage to box myself into the industrial-age schema of a systematic “workweek”.  Mondays feel like Mondays, Fridays feel like Fridays. And throughout this endless march, time is always running out.  On Monday I can’t believe how long the week feels, but by Thursday I am running out of time, and on Friday I’ve resigned myself to the fact that some things just won’t get completed.  All the while I’m not going to the gym, grabbing last-minute meals, and justifying as many pints as I can swallow.

Here’s a little secret though… today was exactly the same as yesterday, and tomorrow will be no different.  The universe sees no difference between a Sunday and Monday.  It’s all in my head.  A day is just a day, and what’s possible in that day is no different at the start of the week then at the end of it.  Weeks don’t end, time does not run out.

So my goal for May is to take control of my time as best as I can.  What should a day look like – not a Monday or a Friday – just a day?  What are the actions and behaviors that must accompany that day, what are the actions and behaviors that should NOT accompany it?  I will need time to prepare 3 delicious meals a day.  I will need an hour to work-out or run.  I need to get solid sleep at night.  I will need to work and earn a living.  I will need time to socialize with friends, and most important, time to reflect on all of this and make certain results are coming through.

The time has come to cut-out the binge drinking and pot-smoking that while I have certainly enjoyed and have no regrets indulging in over the past decade or so, no longer provide the same level of artificial enjoyment they once did. That’s not to say I’m abandoning my vices altogether – quitting cold turkey is a recipe for disaster – but at least for the month of May I’m going to clean up my act and look for healthier alternatives.  In the same way that quitting cigarette smoking and drinking hard liquor greatly improved my health and chances for general survival during my twenties – this next step is vital to transforming my thirties and becoming the individual I’m determined to be.

The party isn’t over – it’s just moving to a nicer venue.

CONCLUSION

So I’m excited about the month ahead.  All of these actions – the blog, the Goals Project, and now this are all aimed at self-awareness and motivating myself to be a better, healthier and stronger individual.  As always, it goes back to that 6th-century spoon in the British Museum with the inscription “Know yourself, and urge yourself ceaselessly.” Mediocrity is a wide, level super-highway crammed with traffic.  I long for a different route and I think I’ve seen it.  I’ll keep you posted.

Well three months have come and gone – and the first quarter is officially over as of Friday.  Phase 1 of the goals project is complete, and while I’m disappointed with my performance in some areas, I’m pretty psyched about how well I did in other areas. Overall, I would say I did “good” – but could have done better.  I also think perhaps 50 goals in 3 months is a bit too aggressive, or at least the goals I chose might have been a tad ambitious.  Not necessarily on their own – but when combined it was quite the task list.

First off, there were several early on I realized I wouldn’t complete.  #6 produce video series reviewing iPad apps seemed like a neat idea, but after producing two of them, I realized the time I had to put into shooting and producing each video completely outweighed my interest in the project, nor did I have anything particularly insightful to say.  #42 acquire a new bike is something I definitely want to do, but to spend that money on a bike in the middle of a rainy Portland winter wasn’t really the greatest use of my budget. Budget was also an issue for #14 produce some large scale photos for home/office.  Large scale photographic prints cost a good deal of money, and although it’s still a goal, I’ll need more time to get this right.

A few projects I started, but didn’t complete.  #34 write an article for publication I thought out a few ideas for, and then decided a great article concept would be to write about P:ear’s barista training program which teaches homeless and at-risk youth a marketable skill.  I contacted Pippa over at P:ear, and she was on board. I had written an article for Barista Magazine a year or so ago, so I brought up the idea with the editor Sarah.  Turns out she had been speaking with another company that was involved with helping P:ear run their school, and the idea was already percolating in her head as well.  I’m hopeful I’ll get to be involved in producing the article, but I don’t expect to see it in the magazine until late summer, early fall.  Did I write an article for publication… technically no.  Will I… probably.  I did begin to start coding in AS3.0 (#20) and did some research into HTML5 and CSS3 (#26) – but as I spend most of my days programming websites, doing that on the weekends or evenings for no pay on made-up projects just never interested me.  I am going to continue studying AS3.0 for Flash, but HTML5 and CSS3 are a bit too cutting edge at the moment to dedicate my time to.

Some areas I did particularly well in.  I love cooking – so #3 cook ten new meals was a real treat.  Over the years I had developed a tasty, but limited variety of dishes I prepared on a regular basis.  With this goal, I really tried to get outside of my childhood dinners, and explore things I enjoyed eating but had no idea how to prepare.  This included lebanese/greek food such as grape leaves and falafel, chinese food like won ton soup and pork fried rice – as well as some delicious classics like irish stew and brown bread.  Learning how to cook some delicious stir-frys as well as Pad Thai has really opened up my options for a quick and healthy dinner.

#19 Volunteer a saturday was intended to make me give back to the community in some way or another.  I decided to take this a bit further, and pushed myself to not only donate my time, but also raise as much money as I could for various causes.  I donated $1000 to help produce a film for the Oregon Mental Health Association.  I also volunteered my time to build out a website for the film, that we’ve begun to produce.  I doubled my current monthly giving to P:ear, donated $100 to help a teacher and friend in NYC fund a science project for her students, and sponsored several friends running in various marathon fundraisers.  All in all, I donated $1900 to various charities, and probably 10-15 hours of my time.

On the health front I had mixed results.  #41 get clean bill of health from dentist pushed me to go see a dentist for the first time in over a decade. I discovered I had a pretty bad cavity in one of my wisdom teeth, that would have eventually caused some major issues. I had all four wisdom teeth removed, and officially got my clean bill of health.  However, I failed on #41 visit doctor and get a physical and #23 get health insurance. Both are too important to simply “fail” – so I will be doing my best to push myself to take care of those this month.

Equally on the health front, I failed to go to the gym 50 times (#2) as well as complete the 100 push-up challenge (#5), nor did I attend a yoga class (#38).  Truth be told, I went to the 24hr Fitness once over the past three months.  My weight is still at 185, so I failed #25 as well. I’m not sure why I’m unable to motivate myself on this front, but this will be a major focus over the next few weeks.  My lack of exercise not only decreases my capacity to accomplish goals in all areas of my life, it’s detrimental to my very existence.  Combined with my failure to greatly reduce my intake of various intoxicants (#35) – a pattern begins to take shape that is both unflattering and disappointing.  That subconscious disappointment colors my perceptions of events and people around me, and creates unnecessary challenges in my reality.  However, the awareness of this disappointment, previously unmeasured and either ignored or skillfully suppressed, is a key step in challenging it and ultimately resolving it. To recognize that an unhealthy lifestyle (which itself can only be discovered once a healthy lifestyle has been defined) has direct connection to the inability to achieve certain goals, is a great insight taken from this project.  To see that my failure to act healthy, and thus feel healthy, makes it challenging to develop the self-confidence to ask a girl on a date (#9) which makes it nearly impossible to get laid (#28) is a tough pill to swallow, but far more practical than my prior perception that “girls just don’t dig me.”  Time to dig myself.

Simply put, when your actions do not match your intentions, you fail to achieve your goals.  This is the grand take-away from this little experiment. When my actions mirrored my intentions, achieving goals was quite simple and enjoyable.  So there is an equation here, with two possible variables – actions and goals.  However, the fact is I don’t want to fail at my goals, nor compromise them to create artificial success – and so I should see my goals as a constant and the alternative as unacceptable. While some goals like buying a bicycle or printing out large photographs certainly need to be refined, and most certainly would never be ranked as major life goals of mine – that doesn’t mean they are any less possible if I simply took the correct actions to make them happen. If the goals become a constant, then all that can and must be modified are my actions.

So what’s next?  There are several goals still on the list I’m close to wrapping up that I plan to tackle over the next few weeks.  I have about an hour of video footage I’ve shot on my walk to work (#21), and I plan to shoot more now that the weather is slowly getting nicer, and by spring should have produced a short film about my walk to work.  I’m going to keep pushing myself to learn new recipes, and do my best to keep writing blog posts as regularly as I can.  I’m going to keep with my goal of complimenting someone daily (#33), but have modified that to attempt to engage in something beyond “hi/hello” with strangers I interact with.  Just attempting to find folks to compliment made me realize how separated I am from most of the people around me.  In the past few weeks I’ve begun trying to look passing strangers in the eye, and have started asking questions like “how’s your day going” or general tasks about folk’s jobs, with the various cab drivers, cashiers and such I interact with, and to listen and care about their response.

April I need to dedicate to health, and confronting my lack of exercise.  Part of it is straight-up laziness, but another part is scheduling, and not carving out the time to make it happen.  Taking the correct actions will solve this – and so starting this week I begin to attempt new actions in an effort to achieve those goals.

On a final note, the first goal I achieved, and one I accomplished several times over was to inspire 3 other individuals to create goal lists (#50).  It was super inspiring to hear other goals from people – and recognize that the desire to push ourselves is a trait we all share.  Inspiration and motivation are key to pushing us.  The simple act of writing down your goals inspires. Reviewing that list and feeling that confirmation within your soul that these are indeed the things you wish to accomplish is a great source of motivation.  And looking around my apartment, after the clutter was removed, and the new photographs of family members on the wall, and improvements to my kitchen made and a delicious new meal ready to be enjoyed, reminded me of the simple truth engraved on that 6th century spoon in the British History Museum – “Know thyself, and urge thyself ceaselessly.”

I’m getting there, and I shall try.

There are three forms of knowledge in this world.  That which we know, that which we realize we don’t know, and that which we don’t even know we don’t know.  It is the third realm, that which we don’t know we don’t know that is the largest of the three. For all the information we acquire on this journey, and all the information we put off acquiring is ultimately eclipsed by all the knowledge we’re not even aware we’re missing out on.

The goals projects I started at the beginning of this year was my attempt to explore the second realm of knowledge – that which I realize I don’t know.  I made a list of all the things I wanted to learn that up until that point had eluded me.  New meals to cook, new bands to discover, new locations to visit.  I knew I didn’t know how to make Pad Thai… now I do.  Listing out various areas of knowledge or expertise that I lacked gave me a solid road-map to learning new things.  I’ve spent the majority of my weekends and free time the past three months teaching myself new ideas – and it’s been beyond rewarding.

However, in pursuing these various new skills and tasks, I learned a handful of things I hadn’t expected to discover.  In reading the autobiography of Ben Franklin for example, I discovered numerous authors and books he mentions throughout, that previously I’d never heard of.  With the help of the iPad’s super easy capacity to find public-domain texts, I could easily acquire books and articles he mentions, and learn more about the era and the man himself.

Cooking ten new meals taught me all sorts of things I hadn’t previously considered.  I especially took the time to learn some of my favorite ethnic foods – various chinese stir-fries and lebanese dishes.  Discovering how meals like Won Ton soup or Grape Leaves are prepared gave me such a new appreciation for foods I’d enjoyed my whole life, but never took the time to ponder what was in them.

While doing research on how to store various vegetables to avoid wilting, I discovered a YouTube video in which someone explained that green onions would regenerate themselves if you replanted the white base in some soil.  This seemed almost too good to be true as an obsessed lover of green onions.  How could it be that all these years, I had thrown out the root of the vegetable, when I could have simply re-grown the entire plant.  Sure enough, I planted a few roots, and in a week’s time I had a complete green onion.

Three months ago I knew I didn’t know how to make pork fried rice.  But I had no idea that one of the key ingredients could re-grow itself with ease.  One discovery often leads to many others, and that process of learning what is actually going on in the world around us is somehow the point of this aimless journey.  While it’s clear I wont’ accomplish all 50 of my goals, pushing myself to learn new things has been a great step forward in my life, and figuring out how to maintain this drive and focus the energy even greater is the goal for phase 2.

I love to travel.  So much so that if money was no issue, I would leave town tomorrow and travel the globe non-stop for the rest of my time on this planet.  There is really nothing I enjoy more than seeing a landscape I’ve never encountered before – coming into a town I’ve never walked through – finding places, pubs and people with stories to share.

Of course, money is an issue, and since my parents chose teaching rather than say, high finance, I wasn’t born into overwhelming sums of wealth. I needed to find another way to satisfy this craving, and what I did was devise a career and a company that would allow me to work from anywhere.  I started up The Interactive Dept (well, actually I started it with the name GDSpies, but soon changed that) about five or so years ago, and almost immediately I was setting off on adventures.

My first was a 30-day rail trip across America and Canada my friend Rita inspired me to take.  I was wonderfully unprepared to leave town for an entire month – and business seriously suffered.  Actually, it pretty much stopped and upon my return I found myself reborn, but completely broke.  While I had brought with me a gigantic Gateway laptop (or mobile desktop as they called it) – internet at the time was a scarce commodity – and typically reserved for the occasional hotel stop along the way.  Electrical outlets on the train were an impossible find – and typically the one or two in each car were jammed with cell phone chargers – giving me little more than two or three hours of battery life on my machine.  About two weeks in I discovered a somewhat hidden outlet in the back of the food car (I believe they referred to those two booths as the “cafe”) and for much of the rest of the trip, I could be found sitting there, plugged in, and doing my best to work offline.

Road-trips became a regular activity for me over the next few years, with two trips to Telluride, Colorado amongst others.  While these trips provided endless visual pleasures as the landscape slowly unfolded before me, it was obviously impossible to work while driving – and once I arrived in a town after 5-6 hours on the road, doing some work usually lost out to exploration.  The roadtrip was bad for business, that’s for sure, and I could see a direct downturn in sales the month following my 4 weeks on the road as leads were often ignored, and invoicing typically forgotten about. While I could now afford to travel, I couldn’t afford anything else upon my return.  I worked hard to fix this.

Three years ago, when my friend Chris and I decided to live in Barcelona for a few months, I did the best I could to plan for things – but there were many unknowns I’d soon find.  Thankfully Chris knows his tech, because getting online proved to be quite the challenge.  Heck, it took nearly 25 minutes to even explain we were trying to find a wifi provider – as my high-tech spanish vocab was sorely lacking and we discovered they pronounce it ‘wee-fee’.  After some major geeky magic, Chris managed to get things working, and for the next 3 months I was online and able to work.  This was the first successful business travel adventure – and it was during this time that I started the Modern Workweek blog.  Whether from our flat in Barcelona, or poolside in Peniscola, I was able to get online – and if I had internet, I could work – and if I could work, I could make money while on the road and land new projects.  SUCCESS.

Since then – I’ve returned to Europe twice, and each time have been able to get work accomplished while on the road.  The time difference can provide some challenges – and I find it’s best if I explain to clients I have current projects with that I’ll be away, but for the most part not much really changes.  In fact, in most instances, if a client asks for an update or fix to their site, I get it taken care of in 24hrs, and they are never any wiser that I was thousands of miles away from the studio.

This week I’m in Maui – and I’m writing this post from a nice little pub overlooking the Pacific, where I spent most of the day swimming.  Yesterday I picked up a VirginMobile Mifi hotspot that has been working out great and I was able to work most of the day in the historic town of Lahaina.  It’s a small device that produces a wifi hotstop that my computer then connects to.  Rather then having to hunt down coffeeshops and pubs with a weak wifi connection I can steal – I can now work from picnic tables in parks, delicious taco shops, or just the side of the road if I get an important text message.  It is amazing to think that when I was 16, I had to plug my family’s phone line into our computer and call Poughkeepsie, NY just to get a connection that was infinitely slower then the connection this small piece of plastic is pulling in from… gosh, I don’t even know… space?

Now of course, one criticism I hear often is “you’re in X, you shouldn’t be working.” While I completely understand that argument, and love that friends and family are suggesting I work too much – I know the truth is that I love what I do.  Seriously – web design is probably the most fun thing I do on regular basis.  I actually don’t mind opening up the laptop and taking a few hours to solve some mathematical puzzels wrapped in creativity.  The fact that I get paid so well for what I do is a fact that still marvels me on a regular basis.  And if the choice each year is between one week of vacation without work, or literally a month or more of travel while sneaking a few hours a day to handle projects I’m pretty psyched to be working on anyhow – I’ll take my path.

One night while in Barcelona eating some tapas with Chris near our flat in the Gracia neighborhood, two older American women were sitting at the table beside us.  I guess Chris and I had reached that point where we’d told all our stories, because apparently we weren’t talking – and one of the women began commenting about the food I was eating to the other, completely unaware that I could speak English (and, like, really well).  “I wonder what that is he’s eating,” she pondered to her friend.

“They’re called croquetas,” I replied to the now completely shocked and embarrassed woman and her friend.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you were American,” she said – a statement that every time it was said to me always surprised me – as I think I look pretty darn American, or at least not European, whatever that means.  We got to talking, and it turned out she and her friend had always dreamed of coming to Barcelona and had saved up – and were staying for just one week.

“It’s so rainy here,” the woman said to me.  I thought for a second and realized that it had been rainy the past few days – but overall I would certainly never describe Barcelona as rainy.  In fact, I think of Spain and that whole Costa del Sol region as a pretty sunny, beautiful place. That conversation with the woman echoes in my memory every time I find myself sitting in a new wonderful location, working on the road.

Before I left for Maui, my Mom emailed me and said, “You do realize that you are going to the only place I dream of visiting.” I thought of the woman in Spain – and of all the people who dream instead of plan – and what it must be like to think of a place for years if not decades – to save up their money or their vacation days – and I am beyond thankful for what I have carved out and that no one has told me to stop yet.  That I get to travel the planet regularly, fulfilling even the most passing travel fancy. I currently have about 3-5 locations on my to-do list, all of which I hope to visit within the next year or so.  I don’t dream of seeing any place – I simply plan it out.

What’s the one place you would love to see?  Go type it into Google and pull up a map.  Click on My Maps – and save this spot.  Start looking for places you would visit – restaurants you would eat at – hotels you might stay at – hikes you might take – and mark those places on the map.  Look into what it would cost to fly there next month – 3 months from now – 6 months from now – a year from now.  Write down those prices, and prices of hotels or camping spots you might stay at.  Know the facts of your dream and you begin to plan. The more you plan, the sooner reality occurs. The planning itself is part of the thrill of travel – and the more you plan, the more likely you are to make it happen.  And once you’ve visited the place you would love to see, you have nothing left to do but pick another spot.

At the start of the new year, I discovered I had a cavity in one of my wisdom teeth, and after meeting with an oral surgeon, decided it was best to have all four of my wisdom teeth removed.  As luck would have it, they had an opening two days later and so before I knew it, I was preparing to have my first surgery.   Yup, that’s correct – up until this point my body had been in mint condition.  Okay, well I guess my eyes aren’t 100% functional, and I’d broke a collar bone back in high school, but I’d never had to work with someone referred to as a surgeon before.  More importantly, I had never been put under before.

I’m not sure I had a clear vision of what would happen when I went under, but I assume I thought it was like sleeping.  The night before the dental operation, my friend Rachel informed me that things were a little different than I supposed. That I wouldn’t be dreaming – and that I wouldn’t even notice the passage of time.  I had no idea what she was talking about.

The next morning I showed up at the oral surgeon’s bright and early.  Jessica was kind enough to be my co-pilot, because as I would soon discover, I would be in no condition to take care of myself, let alone get myself home from Milwaukie, Oregon.  My name was called and I was led back to one of the patient rooms, where I took my seat, and began getting covered and strapped with all sorts of straps and devices.  Apparently this particular office only hires very attractive, female nurses – as the room was stuffed with them.  One was setting up a tray with various dental tools – another fiddling with the computer and pulling up x-rays they’d taken of my jaw – another strapping those suction-cup devises that track your heartbeat, which of course had risen by that point. Suddenly my heartbeat was playing out over the room, a surreal experience to say the least – a high-pitched alarm-clock sounding rendition of my living, breathing self.

“Roxy is my dog,” the girl removing the sanitary wrapping from various tools said to me in an explanatory tone.

“I figured as much,” I replied, having no idea what she was talking about.

As she continued with her story, I began to imagine what it would be like if I heard my heartbeat all the time, or worse, if others could.  I mean, here I was, hanging out with four very attractive gals – educated nurses at that – and each one of them could literally hear me getting more nervous as the moments crept closer to the operation.  I calmed myself down for a second.  “Whoa” – I suddenly realized I could increase or decrease my heart rate.  This was pretty fascinating stuff and I was taking great interest in the fluctuation of my heart monitor when just then the doctor showed up. He sat down beside me, and began preparing a needle to stick into my arm.  “This is it,” I thought.  He said some typical “are you ready” type things, but my mind was so focused on the needle, and the sound of my own heartbeat, and this wildly bizarre moment that I can’t recall what I replied, if anything.  “Okay, we’ll see you in a bit,” I believe he said – and there were some other final statements from the gals – and I thought, “I wonder how long…” and I felt myself slip away.

I opened my eyes and everyone was gone.

“Welcome back,” I heard from behind me.  I attempted to speak but realized my mouth was stuffed with gauze and my jaw completely numb.  In hindsight, there were probably a dozen other critical requirements for a solid conversation I wouldn’t have met at that particular moment.  I was helped to a wheel-chair, wheeled down a hallway, and helped into Jess’ car.

I estimate that I was under for approximately an hour, and as my friend suggested, it did not feel like a nap.  There were no dreams inside this state – nor seemingly the passage of time.  While I may occasionally be surprised how late I have slept in on a Saturday morning – I am never incredulous to the fact that time has passed.  This experience was quite the opposite – no sooner had the doctor pricked my arm and my eyes had closed – then I was waking up and the operation was complete.  I wonder if they could replicate this service for air travel.

What is most peculiar about this experience is that I state without question that “I was out”.  Yet, I imagine if a certain beeping machine had decided to quit beeping, there would have been a room full of very panicked, albeit still attractive, female nurses.  Clearly only a portion of the physical form of “Greg” was gone. It is remarkable to think that this ship can still float, even when the captain is not present.  That I need not tell my heart to beat, nor lungs to breath – they continue on without me, perhaps awaiting my return, or perhaps completely unaware that I left in the first place.  All the billions of cells, doing their own thing, perhaps unaware that the boss is away.  Perhaps unaware that there even is a boss.  Perhaps correct in their assumption?

And what of this consciousness?  What of this dialogue inside my head – the writer typing these words – the voice and the one that hears the voice?  Not today, but in rapidly approaching future, one might find a regatta of options in which to implant oneself – hybrid biological systems, grown with the specific purpose of transplanting ones consciousness into another life-form.  While such propositions no doubt conjure up Terminator style dystopian visions of a world filled with mutant humans – I always prefer to think of best-case scenarios for the inevitable technological breakthroughs we are to experience during my lifetime.  If a clearer understanding of what consciousness is can be discovered, a whole new world of exploration becomes possible. How would our attachment to our physical selves change if we were no longer bound to the limits of our human form?  Does the human form have limits if the capacity for biological modifications are part of its survival toolkit? How will the concept of strength and beauty modify as bio-geneticists tinker with the very building blocks that produce life? How long before improved hearing or sight are not just life-changing solutions for the blind and deaf, but upgrades beyond the visible spectrum and audio ranges currently experienced by humans? At first we will modify ourselves, but eventually, if for nothing else than the survival of our consciousness, we will create a better form.  How marvelous is evolution, that eventually a creature if formed that can not only grasp the complexity of how life is developed – but can take it upon itself to create new forms that suit specific needs? If life is truly survival of the fittest, then one can hardly imagine a creature more fit, than one that strategically designs its own form.

The first week of 2011 has come to an end, and my what a week.

A visit to the oral surgeon on Monday confirmed that I had a cavity in one of my wisdom teeth, and based on the dentist’s recommendation, I opted to have all four wisdom teeth removed at once.  As luck would have it, they had a cancellation on Wednesday – and so right at the start of 2011 I took a full swing at #41 – Get A Clean Bill Of Health From The Dentist. The procedure went as well as can be expected, and other then some occasional soarness around the newly formed holes in my jaw, it really was completely pain-free and not nearly as bad as I had imagined.  Much thanks to the great staff at Northwest Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons in Milwaukie, OR. Having not been to a dentist in a decade, my big fear was that he might say something horrible like “we need to remove all four of your wisdom teeth.”  When he said exactly that, and we did exactly that, and it turned out to not be nearly as horrible as I had imagined, suddenly I find myself inspired to confront more demons, and encouraged to kick-ass on the rest of this list.

Seeing as how I spent Wednesday incapacitated on pain killers, and thursday slowly sobering up from said pain killers, I wasn’t able to get many other tasks taken care of. In fact, the only goal that has been achieved to this point is inspiring other folks to create their own lists of goals.  Very excited that others have put their goals down on paper, and will start pushing themselves like mad to achieve them.  To that end, I wanted to explain some of my process – and how I’m going about tackling all the items on my list.

The first step was organization.  On day one I sat down with my list of goals, and immediately was overwhelmed by the variety of tasks before me.  I realized the first thing I had to do was separate the goals into different “types”.  I played around with a few different terms, but eventually settled on three:  TASKS, PROJECTS and HABITS.

TASKS I see as single events (#38 – Take a Yoga Class or #43 – Go To A Blazers Game).  These are the simplest items for the most part, because they require no  training or skills, just making an effort to take care of them.  I broke TASKS up into two categories though, SINGLE-TASKS, and MULTI-TASKS.  MULTI-TASKS consist of any of the tasks I assigned a series to #3 – Cook 10 Meals I’ve Never Made or #47 – Watch 5 Chinese Films).  They are still single tasks, just ones that I need to repeat a few times.

PROJECTS are the real challenge of this adventure.  These are goals that require lots of actions to take place in order for success.  For example, #7 – Open A T-Shirt Store Online is a simple enough goal to state – but the reality of what needs to be done for that to happen is quite complicated.  So far I have researched various online portals that will produce the shirts for me, and allow me to mark them up for profit.  I believe at this point I am going to use Zazzle.com to manage the merchandise and payment/fulfillment side of the store.  My general idea is to create a store that sells t-shirts that have street signs on them.  Don’t steal that – it’s a million dollar idea, I know.  I have started listing out street sign concepts.  Luckily for years in my travels I’ve taken photos of street signs I found interesting or unique.  In addition, I am going for all the low-hanging fruit as well which are easy enough to find on Google Images.  A few days ago I thought of grabbing a bunch of famous street-names too.  Anyhow – my goal is to have 50 shirts in the store for launch.  Once I’ve selected all 50, I need to produce the graphics (no small task) – and then obviously set  up all the inventory in the store.  Finally, I need to put some budgets and time together to market the store online.  I won’t consider this a success until I sell at least one shirt to somebody I don’t know.  So, one goal “Open T-Shirt Store Online” has numerous tasks required to make it happen, and will be something I’ll have to attend to on an almost daily basis to achieve.  But I’ve been talking about it for two years – so I’m excited to see it live in March!

The final category are HABITS.  These are tasks that need to happen at such frequency, that what I’m looking for is a change in behavior, not so much a series of actions. #22 – Write Weekly Blog Posts or #31 – Meditate Daily are not so much items I will check-off on a list, but just the type of behaviors I want to see becoming standard fair for my lifestyle.  These will be very challenging in their own right, because all seven of them when put together amounts to a radically improved lifestyle, one that while inviting and inspiring, will still be a challenge to live by.  I suppose that is the whole point of this exercise though.

To assist in organizing these tasks, I’ve started using http://ToDo.ly This website has a great To-Do list engine that lets you create various projects and tasks that you can check-off as you progress.  Beyond giving you a great visual of all the work ahead of you, it also allows you to track progress as you check-off the various tasks on your list.  You can also re-order and move things around, to help focus on what you’re looking to tackle now, and what will need to wait a bit.  You can add deadlines too which also help to keep you on pace.  I don’t want to be running around like a mad-man in March because I didn’t tackle enough tasks early in the quarter.

I’ve done research now on every tasks.  For items like #44 – Try Three New Restaurants I’ve started listing out which restaurants I’d like to go to, so not only do I have the goal in mind, but also a clear idea of how it will be achieved.  That actually brings me to the single most asked question about this whole concept:

“Does The List Have To Be Public?”

Lots of folks seemed really interested in creating their own lists, and of the handful of people I know that mentioned it to me that they were, most asked if making the list public was part of this or not.  While there are no rules to this concept, and I would never tell anyone who is in the process of making a list of goals they hope to achieve in 3 months to “scrap it” just because they want to keep those goals to themselves, I would say that being public about your goals helps.  The first two steps are obviously EXTREMELY important.  Writing out a list of goals is key, first and foremost.  Most folks rock their lives on auto-pilot, not taking the time to explore why they are here in the first place, and what they would like to do with their time.  Thus, their lives are spent on the defensive, responding to events and circumstances seemingly outside their control.  By creating the focus on what you want your life to be about, you go on the offensive, and control your time.  The second step, creating a definitive deadline is what converts a dream to a goal.  Goals need to be achieved by a certain point, or else they are simply wishes.  Most of the major events in our life happen at a defined point, and thus we work well with that construct in mind.  Schools function this way, most projects at work have deadlines (if you work for a good company) – but in our personal lives we don’t often have these time constraints.  ”I want to loose weight”, “I need to save more money”, “I’d love to travel to Europe” are admirable thoughts, but unless you complete that statement with “by March 30th”, you’re only dreaming (not that dreaming isn’t fun too).

The final step though – posting your goals serves several functions, most involving encouragement.  First off, my little experiment is a spin-off of the main Goals Project, which sets its target at 100 Goals In 100 Days.  That also started on January 1st, so there are dozens and dozens of other folks right now going through a similar process to mine – and in the age of social media they of course have a Facebook Group where I can go to read other lists, and see suggestions for tackling shared goals. It’s a great community of highly motivated folks, that will become more important as the deadline looms.

As I linked my blog post from Facebook, lots of friends and family saw it.  While of course everybody has a comment on #28 – Get Laid, I remind them that this isn’t about some spiritual quest for enlightenment, this is about having fun and enjoying life.  Many friends have already joined in for several of the goals.  My friend Keely sent over a great list of restaurants to check-out, which I’m thinking will turn into a monthly restaurant outing with friends. My friend Rachel and I will be getting back into our gym routines, and my buddy Tim and I started throwing around ideas for Vacation Anticipation for the first time in over a year or so.  This and several other offers of assistance were only made possibly by making my goals public.  We are all surrounded by an amazing network of super talented and wonderfully generous folks – by posting a list of all that you want to accomplish online, you tap into that collective creativity and the “how” begins to answer itself.

If you’re not quite ready to share on Facebook, you can always just leave your list as a comment on my blog or just email it to me.  I think you should share your goals with at least a few other folks, even if you’re not quite ready to experience the peer-held-talents you’ve collected through your life.  Perhaps that’s a goal for the second quarter.

An old school-mate of mine who happens to share my interest in web design and serial entrepreneurship recently completed a challenge he devised called 100 Goals In 100 Days.  The concept is simple – list out 100 goals, and complete them in 100 days.  As someone who recognizes the power in setting goals – this seemed like a great concept.  However, as someone who is also easily distracted, I felt 100 goals were a bit too much to manage at once and for me personally, would be setting myself up for failure.  So instead, I’ve gone with 50 goals in the first quarter (January, February, March).  This adds up to 90 days – which is still a good amount of time to complete the tasks at hand.  In theory, if this goes well, I’ll be able to do this 4 times this year, and accomplish 200 goals in 2011.  Lets not get ahead of ourselves though – time to focus on the tasks at hand.

These goals range from business goals, to personal improvement, right up to just wanting to catch a basketball game.  It took me less than an hour to create the list, which means most of these “wants” have been floating around in my head for some time. Some will be relatively easy – others extremely challenging.    I will continue to update this post as I cross things off my list.  Hopefully it inspires others to try the same.  Having clear measurable goals with definitive deadlines is the key to success in life – hopefully this new construct will help expedite the process.

MY 50 GOALS FOR THE FIRST QUARTER

1. produce an iPhone/iPad app
2. go to the gym/workout 50 times
3. cook 10 meals I’ve never made
4. read The Autobiography of Ben Franklin
5. be able to do 100 pushups
6. produce video series reviewing iPad apps
7. open t-shirt store online
8. travel to someplace new
9. ask a girl on a date
10. update theinteractivedept.com homepage and work sections
11. find a pet web project for little $ and get passionate about it
12. learn fundamentals of the Chinese/Mandarin language and 25 phrases
13. produce a series of paintings with a theme
14. produce some large scale photos for home/office
15. write outline for my novel “East” and first two chapters
16. get in touch with two old friends
17. learn 5 scales on the mandolin
18. write a song and record it
19. volunteer a Saturday
20. learn Flash AS3
21. produce a short video about my walk to work
22. write weekly blog posts
23. get health insurance
24. go to coffee with 3 colleagues/peers
25. get weight below 175lbs
26. build website using html5 and css3
27. learn to pull an espresso shot
28. get laid
29. find a recipe for Irish stew and brown bread and make them
30. take a brewing class and make some beer
31. meditate daily
32. build something to improve apartment
33. compliment someone daily
34. write an article for publication
35. cut back on use of intoxicants
36. go to three live shows of bands I don’t know
37. fix faucet on tub
38. take a yoga class
39. get better photos of family members and frame them
40. visit doctor and get a physical
41. get clean bill of health from dentist
42. acquire a new bike
43. go to a Blazers game
44. try 3 new restaurants
45. take a tour of 2 apartments/condos I can’t currently afford
46. get a sketchpad and create a style for drawing people
47. watch 5 Chinese films
48. Get Vacation-Anticipation up and running again
49. Get rid of anything that doesn’t have a purpose in my apartment
50. inspire 3 other people to create lists of goals

ITALIC/GREEN MEANS COMPLETED