I set two New Year's resolutions in 2013:
Learn to cook
Blog 3x weekly
I accomplished both.
Although I haven't been cooking as much as I'd like to, I learned the basics. I cooked dinner for close to a dozen girls. I cooked for my colleagues. I cooked for myself. Success.
Blogging was a spectacular success. It is among the best decisions I made in my life.
Based on my success in 2013, I want to set even more ambitious goals for 2014. I've been contemplating my goals for 2014 for a while. To arrive my goals, I adopt a simple framework: where do I want to be at the end of 2014?
I want to be a successful CEO of an amazing company.
There are two components to being a CEO: looking like a CEO, and acting like a CEO. So I've set a few goals that support that framework.
Look Like a CEO
I've gained quite a bit of weight since starting Pristine. I'm going to lean back out. I'm at 24% body fat today. I intend to lose 1% of body fat per month to be at 12% by the end of 2014. I'm going to place $100 / month on the line using stickk.com (I used stickk.com to enforce blogging throughout 2013). I've lost weight and put on muscle before, so I know what to do - record what I eat, join a gym, and stop drinking. I'm going to enforce this goal through stickk.com.
I don't enjoy shaving, so I tend to skip it unless I have a major presentation. But if I'm going to look like a CEO, then I must groom like a CEO. I've never experimented with groomed facial hair, so I'll start with that. If I'm not experimenting, then I'm going to shave completely every couple of days. No more uncontrolled beard.
I shake lots of strangers' hands. I want to put my best hand forward, so I'm going to start getting manicures once a month.
Act like a CEO
I love short form reading. I read an enormous amount of short-form content. But I don't read enough long-form content. So I'm going to read twelve books in 2014 - one every month - and write a blog post about each. I'm going to enforce this goal through stickk.com.
I check my email too much. Email prevents me from achieving ideal productivity. I'm only going to check my email 5x daily - when I wake up, when I get to work, after lunch, before I leave the office, and before sleeping. I intend to break this rule while mobile - driving, at conferences, etc. - because email isn't preventing me from being productive during those moments.
As Pristine grows, I need to get out of the details. My brain naturally tends towards details. So I'm going to make an effort to remove myself. Of all my goals, this is the only goal that I have been unable to come up with measurable success metric.
I asked everyone on our team to come up with one or two New Year's resolutions. We're all going to make them public and hold one another to them.