I’ve been making my goals public for a few years now and 2013 is going to be no different. I haven’t always been the best at reaching my goals. At least, I’ve never been 100%. But that’s not always the point. The point is to put a marker ahead of you on the road of life and work your ass off to get there. Sometimes you succeed, sometimes you fail. But its the try that makes us better no matter the outcome.

This year, I’m going to keep it simple. The 2013 goals are: Run, Ship, Live

That’s it? WTF is up with that asshole? Is this some sort of new t-shirt marketing campaign? The “just do it” for geeks? Well, yes and no. Simple is going to be necessary for all the things that I want to get done this year. Let’s break it down.

Run This has been a goal for several years now. Its been a certain number of 5Ks which is nice and all, but I don’t want to have a simple check box for “hey, 5 5Ks again this year”. I could just set some goal of X number of miles in the year. But you never know what could happen there. I got injured playing hockey in late September that pretty much screwed up my running for a good month which could devaste a running number goal. I’d like to say I’m going to run the Des Moines Marathon and that is a race that I want to do, but its not a goal. I want to run to run. I want to enjoy it for what it is. It helps keep me in shape and clears my mind. So no number, just keep running all year. It shouldn’t be a chore which it felt like for a while for me this summer. I want the run to be workout, but also fun. I want to appreciate what I’m doing and enjoy the scenery instead of worrying if I’ll get my milage in this week.

Ship This is a big one and one that has been daunting me for a while. Its hard trying to do the one man show late at night. Its still on the radar and its still a goal to get my code out there into the wild. Its just been challenging with a little boss (the 2 year old energy sucking bundle of pure awesome sauce) and a full time day job. Plans are in place and I keep working things the best that I can. It will happen, its just taking a bit of time.

Live There is only so much time in the day and there are too many distractions in life. People forget its about the little things in life. Are you checking your phone at the dinner table? Are you worried about that meeting the next day when you should be playing with your son? Live in the moment, enjoy life! Live it. Tomorrow will come, but that moment right there will be gone before you know it.

Sure, they are a bit superficial to many out there. How do you really measure them for success? Well, I can’t necessarily say that you can measure most of them. Maybe if I’m still running at the end of the year and happily married I have 2 of the 3 down which I fully expect to happen. At the end of 2013, I’m going to list out my accomplishments and let everyone know, I kicked some ass which is really what these goals are all about.

Stay tuned!

Happy New Year!

2012 is closing down and its time to review my goals for the year.

Goal #1: Sleep More! SUCCESS! My goal was to average between 7-8 hours of sleep this past year which with all the other stuff I was trying to do I knew would be a challenge. So after tallying up the numbers, I posted an average of 7.03 hours per night. I know, I squeaked by on this one. But its an improvement over the middle of the year when I was still sub 7 hours.

Goal #2: Time for family SUCCESS! I made family time a priority this year as I think most people try to do. I kept my distractions to a minimum and enjoyed watching Nolan grow another year older and a lot more active. That little man wears me out which made running a lot harder after he’d go down for the night.

Goal #3: Ship Code FAIL! Ugh, uber fail again. I think goal 2 was a big part of this one. My nighttime hours were greatly squeezed with Nolan, a bit of running and then the secret goal. There just wasn’t enough time in the day.

Goal #4: 5×5 SUCCESS! Finished this one strong and had a lot of fun with the various races that I did. The Warrior Dash was probably the most fun and challenging. The Color run was also a cool experience, but probably won’t do it again just because of how chaotic that was.

Goal #5: Top Secret FAIL! I am so close to getting this one done. So damn close. But alas, its just not happening in 2012. And that’s ok, when the time is right we’ll get this one done and that will hopefully be in early 2013.

I only hit 60% of my goals again this year and while I wanted that to be 100%, I know there is room for improvement and I look forward to the challenge. Overall, I had a great 2012 and I’m really looking forward to 2013 and the exciting things ahead.

Happy New Year!

Trying to keep myself on track here and the best way to do that is to make sure that I’m writing and checking in on my goals at various points throughout the year. So here is my mid-year goal checking.

Goal #1: Sleep More! 6 months in and still tracking with the help of mercuryapp.com. My average is now 6.92 which is up slightly from my 3 month mark of 6.86. So we’re trending in the right direction. Goal is still 7 hours a night.

Goal #2: Time for family – Check and check. Still on track here.

Goal #3: Ship Code. No progress here. Still want to knock this out before fall.

Goal #4: 5×5. 2 down, 1 scheduled for July and 2 more that I’m looking at for the end of the summer / fall timeframe. I had a small goal of 100 miles in Q2 and beat and then some.

Goal #5: Top Secret. Still top secret. But I came really close to making this one here in the past month. Hopefully by the end of summer I can get this one nailed.