Lifestyle Redesigned

Well I’m a little late in getting my new years resolutions for 2010 together, but at least they are finally done.  I typically don’t do your standard new years resolutions, I think they are usually too general and too easy to break.  Instead, I like to take a weekend and set out my goals for the year.  Then I break them down into quarterly, monthly, weekly, and finally daily goals.  I like to have a massive action plan to achieve my goals.  It usually works for me.  However the last few years I’ve been in a funk and have not set any goals for myself, and to be brutally honest I achieved next to nothing.  The last two years passed by with next to no real accomplishments.  This year is going to be different.

First I start off with my yearly goals.  I try to break them down by groups.  The groups for this year are financial, personal, health & fitness, things I want, and lifestyle.  From there I brain storm how I want my life to be at the end of the year and come up with some specific goals for each.  Goals that are too broad are way to easy to miss.  For example ‘lose weight’ or ‘get in shape’ are too broad of goals.  I want to lose 20 lbs of fat, gain 10 lbs of muscle, and be a ripped 185.  I want to be in the best shape of my life.  Those are specific goals.  You can break them down further so you have something to achieve monthly and daily.  You can put real milestones in place.

My Goals for 2010

Financial

• Make a full time income of 70K a year from my side work
• Quit my regualr job by Nov. of this year and go to contract work
• Save 10% of my salary for retirement
• Payoff all my debt / live debt free (aside from mortgage and car payment)

Personal

• Stay in better contact with friends and family (call or email once per week)
• Go out on one date per month
• Go out for happy hour/dinner/entertainment one night a month
• Get back into SCUBA (get my divemasters)
• Visit my family at least once a year

Health  & Fitness

• Be in the best shape of my life by November (lose 20lbs of fat, gain 10lbs of muscle, and be a ripped 185)
• Hike at least 1 time a month
• Eat a clean and health lifestyle
• Cut down drinking alcohol – only with friends or on special occasions
• Quit Chewing tobacco

Things

• Buy a new car
• Travel to Thailand for an entire month

Lifestyle

• Always dress to impress at work
• Get a new wardrobe (after I lose the weight)
• Be well kept and stylish in my free time
• Keep a clean house (clean once every two weeks)
• Keep close cleaned and pressed (once per week)

The the nice thing about setting goals is that you can track of what you are doing to make sure you accomplish them.  When you set your daily or weekly to do lists, each item should be helping you realize your goals.  Your goals can also be interrelated.  You can see a couple of mine, where I must accomplish one, before I can move on to the other.  The other nice thing about goal setting is that the list is a living document.  You scratch things off as you complete them, and can add more if time allows.  You can also reflect back on them everyday and week to judge your progress.   This isn’t a list to make at the begining of the year then file away never to be looked at again.

We’ll see how things go.  I plan on having monthly and quarterly milestones to keep me on target.  It is way to easy for the months to slip away.  It is almost the end of January for crying out loud.

Put in another gruelling week of work slogging away at my computer.  Nothing beats working for the man.  I really love having people tell me what to do all day, and making other people really rich.  Then when it comes time for your review, the scoff and sputter and complain that things are tough and all we can give you is 1% raise this year.  What a load of balls.  If trying to find a way to financial freedom doesn’t get you motivated in situations like this, then I don’t know what will.

I’ve come up with a plan to be free from working from someone else by this time next year.  I want the freedom to live and do what I want, and not have to ask permission to take 2 or 3 measly weeks off per year.  What a joke that is.  Sure there are some nice benefits, but if I can make more money and have my life back I will feel so much the better.

I’d love to be able to pick up stakes and move when the summer is just too hot here in Scottsdale.  Get to the mountains for a couple of weeks and cool down.  Or move to Thailand or Europe for a couple of months.  You just can’t do that in a standard 9 to 5 job.  I don’t mind working to make money.  I’ll work darn hard at it.  I just hate to see all my hard work go to line the pockets of someone else.  Someone who pretends like they give a crap about you, but at the first sign of financial hardship would cut you from the payroll faster than you could say pink slip.

So what is this amazing plan?  Well it will be essentially taking on a full time second job for the next 6 months and working my ass off.  I won’t go into the full details, but a lot of hard work and I should be in a good position by June.  Then I’ll reevaluate, before I press on with the next 6 months.  In the mean time at work I’m going to building on my skills and getting ready to be able to do some contract work.

My end goal is to have a contract job for 6-9 months out of the year and travel and visit family with the rest of my time.  I know it can be done, and I also know it won’t be easy.  But there is more to life than going to the office 5 days a week and sometimes more to eke out a living.  Working your ass off during the prime of your life so that you can finally retire and enjoy life when you are old.  I want that life now.  And I’m going to make it happen.

I have been sleeping like a baby lately – waking up every few hours and crying.  Well maybe not the crying part, but I have not been sleeping well the last week or so.  The combination of stress and working out at night has kept me from getting to sleep till 2 or 3 in the morning.  Then I’m so tired when I get home from work I take a nap on the couch, which only adds to my trouble of getting to sleep later, it is a vicious circle.

I’ve stopped working out for a few days to see if that will help, last night it did not.  I took another nap today, but hope I can get some much needed rest tonight.  When I am this tired I am useless at work, and I think it is starting to show, which is no good.  I need to pick up my game and start getting things done.

I need to work a couple of weekend days to build up some comp time for my vacation at the end of the year.  However if I am having this much trouble getting work done during the week, you can imagine my trouble on the weekend.

I try and clear my mind when I lay my head down to rest, which seems to be my biggest problem.  I can’t seem to stop my mind from running.  Plus my bed seems to be lumpier than ever these days.  I think I may try reading before bed tonight and see how that goes.