2023 Goals (and 2022 in Review)

At the beginning of last year I shared My Goals for 2022. Looking back through that, I decided to do the same for 2023. “Spoiler alert” … there will be no real “year-long” goal.

My Year in Review – 2022

Resources: Ink and Volt Planning Series – 2022 Goal Planning | Power Sheets | LindseyScribbles. Like last year, I kept my review really simple and answered the questions below:-

• Best thing that happened to you: moving to Florida
• What goals did you achieve this year: changing this to “major moment of the year” – bought a house
• What accomplishment were you the most proud of: making new friends in a new state (as an introvert this is usually very hard for me) … also getting a raise
• Time you had the most fun: Sunday Fundays with friends
• What would you have improved upon: nutrition

In 2022, I had 4 intentions for last year and a theme for the year of “Preparation”. That theme really stuck in my head throughout the year and it ended up affecting my life in so many ways … as we sold a house in March, moved to a new state – a new part of the country – in April, bought a house, moved again in September (albeit just 10 minutes away) … and bought a vehicle in December. I was successful (for the most part) in being mindful of this theme and incorporating it in everything big and small – from packing the night before trips instead of the day of … to getting our home setup for family to visit over the holidays … to making sure our finances stayed straight.

For the more specific goals, there were things I was able to do and things I had NO headspace to do – and am mad that I even bothered to try! Sometimes you have to pivot when life goes in an unexpected direction as with all those changes I mentioned above. You can’t and should not hold yourself accountable to “goals” set when life was very different from what it is now. Here were my original goals for 2022 and how I did:-

1. Maintain the exercise consistency from 2021. WIN. There was maybe a week a quarter where I didn’t exercise – which is A-OK. While I feel I could have done better, I’m happy that I didn’t take months off at a time, stayed relatively consistent with running (improving speed and base distance + finding a love of trail running) and still cycled (both inside on the trainer and outside on group rides), and did strength training (albeit not as consistently as I would have liked).
2. Better nutrition. NOPE. The bane of my existence! And the alcohol intake increased as I moved to a town where being out and about is almost mandatory.
3. LEARN Spanish – learn something new every month. Nope. With all the moving and everything, no time to dedicate to this.
4. Build better relationships. YES. I have a group of good friends where we live now and still maintain the friendships with the people I was close to in Illinois.

So at the end of 2022 – I’m calling it a WIN, but have decided to not set yearly goals for 2023.

One Word 2023 … READY

Since the year before was all about “preparation”, this year I want to adopt a mindset of “stay ready so you don’t have to get ready” which is really resonating with me this year. I AM READY … ready to move on up at my job, ready to tackle running races and doing duathlons, ready to travel, ready for whatever!

Goal Setting and Action Planning for 2023

For goals in 2023 – I’m doing a quarterly “learning” and a monthly focus. Q1 Learning is focused on Habits. I’m re-reading Atomic Habits, James Clear, taking his 30 day course, and putting what I learn into practice.

For JANUARY FOCUS –

• ONE. There’s a team based running challenge that I participated in last January and I’m doing again this year, so my goal is to run 100KM for the month (every month actually … so I guess I do have yearly “goal”).
• TWO. Vitamins / Supplements! Take them. For the love of all that’s holy – stop tripping and make this a habit!

That’s it! I’m tempted to add a whole list of things, but that’s truly all I need to focus on to get the year started right. I believe in starting with small, easily achievable wins to get pumped up for doing more.

Tracking

Does anybody else forget about their goal after a few weeks?! I do – so I need to keep them front and center. For tracking vitamin intake, I’m using the mini-month calendar at the top of my planner, and crossing it off in the morning when I do the prep for my day – which means, I take the vitamins at that time – habit stacking. To track my progress to run 100KM, I run with a Garmin watch which digitally records my runs. This also syncs to Strava, which is also tracking my progress, but I also created a little 100K drawing on the side of my monthly planner spread and color in every 5KM. Finally, for study time, I set aside an hour on Sunday afternoons to study up on my quarterly immersion topic.

Have you set goals / intentions / resolutions for 2023? Do you use a planner? Do you journal?