2016: Resolutions
I’m going to give myself a pass on the fact that it’s almost mid-February and I’m about to write down my New Year’s resolutions. It was Chinese/Vietnamese New Year just a few days ago, after all, so there’s my excuse. All hail the Year of the Monkey!
(It also just occurred to me that my twin baby monkey brothers turn 24 this year, which is sort of an unacceptable fact in my brain right now. Does not compute!)
Research suggests that only 8 percent of the approximately 160 million Americans who make New Year’s resolutions each year actually get through Dec. 31 having kept them. The two major problems?
Resolutions that are too vague and resolutions that are too ambitious.
Make resolutions measurable and make goals tangible.
“Work out more” or “eat healthier” or “save more money” are all useless as personal resolutions in the same way that no marketer would put “growth” or “do more marketing” as goals on a 2016 marketing plan.
Be specific. What are you trying to accomplish and what metrics do you need to measure to know if you are making progress?
Here are some better examples:
- Work out four times a week
- Get to a goal weight of 150 lbs
- Eat home-cooked meals three times a week
- Eat vegetarian once a week
- Save 20 percent of your paycheck every pay period (and specify where)
- Read one book a month
- Travel abroad twice this year
Of course, make sure that you’re not trying to do all of these things at once. Tangible behavior change happens in sprints toward tangible goals, and willpower is a finite resource. Pick a few things, figure out how to track them and resolve to create a habit around your new behavior.
Here are mine for 2016:
No Soda. None. For Any Reason. Not Even in a Mixed Drink.
Metrics: Number of sodas consumed
Milestones: Every month that goes by without a soda
Hi, my name is Claire, and I’m addicted to Coke.
It’s kind of embarrassing to admit the level to which my brain craves Coca-Cola. I don’t have an addictive personality and my vices (I think) are relatively few. But oh, soda, you bubbly devil. I am in your clutches and that is a fact.
At its worst, my Coke addiction was so strong that I would see the color red and almost taste Coke in my mouth. In college, I would go through a Costco pallet a week, sometimes faster.
In the last few years, I’d gotten to a manageable point where I could go a few days between sodas, but if there was a 12-pack or a 2-liter in the house, it was gone within days. I had to have a Coke with any kind of fast food or any kind of burger or hot dog. Hot summer days meant ice-cold Cokes. A dozen different home-cooked meals didn’t feel right unless I had a Coke with them. Road trips were one long Coke-fueled roll.
I’ve seen all the videos and all the evidence. I know what soda does to the body. I’ve watched a steak dissolve in it. I’ve watched it take the paint off of cars. I could do all of that while drinking a Coke. That’s the addictive disconnect in action.
There’s no gradual weaning here for me. Maybe — maybe — one day I can get to the point where I can just have a Coke every once in awhile with fast food (though that might be next on the chopping block), but as my brain is right now, I can’t do soda in moderation. I don’t even like Pepsi and I would still get one if there was no Coke available. (That might say more about my level of addiction than any other fact, actually.)
So. Cold turkey or bust. I’ve been 42 days without soda so far in 2016. Wish me luck with the rest of the year!
Train for and Run at Least One Half-Marathon.
Metrics: Number of half marathons run
Milestones: Each new mile added to personal best during 14-week training program, saving for and purchasing (expensive!) registration for half-marathon, running half marathon
I have a confession. I don’t like running.
I run. At one time during my life I ran two 10ks in one summer. I ran almost every morning with my dog Dash. I still don’t like it.
I’ve heard of this thing that happens, this magical running thing, where you quite literally get high and you float along on cloud nine even though you’re actually pounding the pavement in your running shoes, and all the world’s your oyster and you feel cosmic connection to all the living beings of the earth and running is the greatest joy known to mankind.
This is not a thing I have experienced.
Mostly, I get aching muscles and pain in my diaphragm and shortness of breath in my lungs and my brain wanders until it overthinks all of these things and can’t get over itself.
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Assured by several people I trust that I’ll get there eventually, with enough distance and enough exertion, I had been toying around with the idea of a half marathon for a while. With a supportive partner and running buddy, and an energetic dog in need of daily exercise, I’ve embarked on a 14-week couch to half marathon training program and plan to run the Whidbey Island Marathon’s truncated version on April 16, 2016. I do solemnly swear I will try my best, barring injury or mishap.
Because this is how my mind functions, once the Whidbey Island Marathon became a foregone conclusion, I started to think about…more. It turns out there’s a thing called the Salish Sea Series, where you can run THREE of the most beautiful half marathons in the country in April, June and September.
I didn’t make the Salish Sea Series my resolution…but if all goes well and I’m not medevac’d off of Whidbey Island for gross overestimation of my physical abilities…then I just might add the North Olympic Discovery half and the Bellingham Bay half to my schedule. And let’s be perfectly honest — I also want that swag. “Free” tech shirts and medals? Yes, please.
Could 2016 become the year I learn to love running? Let’s hope!
Learn One New Professional Skill Each Month.
Metrics: Skills added to resume and LinkedIn
Milestones: Every new skill or course I sign up for, average one per month to get to 12 for the year
I’ve worked in marketing-related jobs since 2008. I thought I knew a few things.
Like Jon Snow, I know nothing.
Or at least that’s how I feel as I start to wade through the world of digital marketing. In the past seven months, I’ve been giving myself a crash course in the world of inbound marketing, content marketing, automation, UX/UI, growth hacking, product marketing, SaaS, apps, and more acronyms and jargon than you could possibly put on your radar by EOD.
This is the world I want to work in. To get there, I’ll commit myself to learning one tangible professional skill every month in 2016 and chronicling it on the ol’ blog.
A lot of what I know how to do in marketing applies everywhere. The marketing brain and marketing concepts still hold true in the digital and SaaS realm. But learning the concepts and the jargon and the metrics is like learning a language, and that’s how I’m approaching it. Learn theory, put it into practice, repetition.
In January, I took and passed the Hubspot Inbound Certification course, which helped me put names to concepts that I already practice or understood in theory. The Buyer’s Journey, the Pillars of Delight, landing pages, offers, TOFU and MOFU — all familiar now.
In February, I’ve already taken and passed the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) Certification course, which was a doozy and far harder than the inbound certification. I thought I knew Google Analytics pretty well. The former creative director at my former agency and I helped implement Google Analytics tracking and metrics reporting at the agency, and I usually was in charge of reading and analyzing the data for various client websites.
I knew nothing.
Even though I passed the certification, I will absolutely revisit parts of that course to get more comfortable with all the concepts and how to put them into practice.
For the rest of the year, I’d like to:
- Learn Photoshop (or maybe free GIMP instead…)
- Learn InDesign (or maybe Sketch instead…)
- Learn CSS
- Read How to Win Friends and Influence People and other books of this ilk
- Take a Ruby on Rails course (from Udemy or Treehouse)
- Design a site on SquareSpace and Semplice
- Take the Google AdWords certificate course
- Learn how to use a DSLR
- Learn to drive stick. (Okay, not a professional skill, but it’s one I feel like everyone should know, and I’m kind of embarrassed to not be able to drive all my friends’ manual vehicles on road trips and the like.)
Enjoy the Crap Out of My Wedding.
Metrics: Minutes of wedding-related anxiety.
Milestones: Reach the end of the wedding with all relationships intact and the feeling of “I enjoyed the crap out of that.”
Okay, so this is not a highly data-driven or measurable resolution, but it feels wrong to make goals for 2016 without acknowledging the big life event that’s going to take place this summer, namely that we will be legally a unit rather than two solo operators.
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked whether I’m excited for my wedding or what my theme is, the wedding would be paid for.
The wedding isn’t that important to me.
Let me rephrase that: actually getting married and seeing all the friends and family who will set aside time, spend money and go to great lengths to see us and wish us well — that matters far more to me than the wedding.
It’s shaping up to be a big family/friend reunion with far-flung relatives and long-time-no-see friends, and I couldn’t be more excited or care less about things like centerpieces or jewelry or rehearsals.
We chose an all-inclusive venue with phenomenal food and service (only one vendor to work with, huzzah!), we’re eschewing a wedding party, I got my dress secondhand after a single visit to one boutique to try on a total of 7 dresses, a talented friend designed our STDs and invites, I designed our website, we’re doing centerpieces from box-store flowers and cheap vases, and we’re keeping it all super simple and focused on the guests.
If I care about details at all, it’s to ensure a wonderful experience for our friends and family. The theme of our wedding is “we’re getting married, thank you for being part of our lives.” Full stop.
So those are the goals. Totally doable, right?
Let’s do this, 2016. It’s going to be a good year.
