Smart Goals Archives - Lazy Man and Money

Back when all my little goals seemed so important
Every pot of gold fill and full of distortion
Heaven was a place still in space not in motion
But soon
I Got You
I got everything
I Got You
I don’t need nothing more than you
I got everything
I Got You
– “I Got You” by Jack Johnson

I know it’s late to create goals for 2022. We’re already about 1/10th through it. Like the Jack Johnson quote above, I used to focus on my “all so important” goals. Now, I’m pulling back a little bit. Goals can be still important, but the top goal is to be happy with the ones you love.

We’re still dealing with a pandemic and there’s a lot of stress for many people out there. It’s okay to focus on living. As Buffy the Vampire Slayer once said, “The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.”

With those two big acknowledgments out in the open, I still think it’s worth it to make some goals. I’m going to try to make them smart goals, but think I’ll miss with a few. I did well completing many of my goals last year, so I’m going to try to build on that success.

If you already have goals, this is a good time to renew those New Year Resolutions. Early February is prime time for people to start to fall off the wagon.

Before we get started here’s my goal’s spreadsheet for this year. It’s a lot easier to have a spreadsheet than it is to go back and read this article. It’ll also help you follow along:

Money Goals

Make $70K of income

Last year, I wanted to make $50,000 with a stretch goal of $60,000. That was good because I didn’t know if travel would ever open up and I could make money boarding dogs. Well, with vaccines it opened up and I ended up making about 3x more than I usually do – in only about 8 months. I ended up making $75,000.

This year, I may not do as well. It’s started better, but I lost one of my freelance clients late last year. I don’t know if I want to do all that dog boarding this year. My part-time customer service position pays a set amount and I don’t see that changing any time soon (unless I lose the job).

Save Money for Wife’s Retirement

My wife was very certain she was going to retire last year. Then she got a new job with an easy road to a promotion that she likes. It’s a lot less stressful too. So she’s going to give this a year or two and see how it goes.

Last year we were trying to save $100K for my wife to feel comfortable with retiring. We’d still have my income above, but it’s irregular. We’d also have her pension, which would be around $65,000 minus some insurance we’ll buy so that I’ll get the pension if she dies. It’s a good situation, but we aren’t mortgage-free yet and we have 3 investment properties that aren’t mortgage-free either. Our kids go to a great private school, so we’ve got a lot of expenses.

We were able to save $30K last year and that’s our goal for this year. It would get us to $85,000 in savings. Maybe we’ll be able to save some more and safely invest some. Could that get us an extra $15,000? Probably not, but maybe it would get us very close. I have some other money squirreled away (she knows about it) that could also bridge the gap.

Business Goals

KidWealth.com

I want to get 50,000 page views to Kid Wealth this year. I have about 660 now, so I’ve got a long way to go. It’s okay, I’ve just started. I don’t know if 50,000 is a good number or not. Sometimes it’s tough to get a single view. Sometimes a big media outlet links to you and there’s a big flood of thousands of page views.

I also want to get 75 articles published. I think that’s a lot I’ve only published 7 articles right now and I’m hoping to get to 80.

These are going to be difficult goals. I’m still going to be posting here along with the dog boarding. If you have kids, I hope you’ll check it out. There’s no advertising and I worked hard to make sure that the pages load very fast and look a lot better than what you see here at Lazy Man and Money. Sometimes a fresh clean slate produces great results.

Content Audit/Article Refresh

I want to go through 15 old articles and refresh them for 2022. It’s a lot of work to refresh some of my old articles. They are that bad. I often write about current events or my life and it’s hard to take that view from 2007 and put it in a 2022 context. However, when I can do it, the articles are very good and helpful for readers.

Look into Dog Training

I’m not sure if I want to go into dog training. I usually like to board dogs that are well-trained already. However, this would be a good way to make some more money. Of course, this would take more time – time that I couldn’t spend blogging. However, maybe I could charge higher rates and host fewer dogs if my clients know that they are getting someone who has a professional dog training certification.

As you can tell, I’m not very committed to this. That’s not a great sign of a goal.

Personal Goals

Lose Weight

I had gained a “Pandemic 15” and my goal last year was to lose it. I was at 192 pounds and that’s not great. I had gotten it down to 186, but a stressful Christmas came and I ended up back around 192. The good news is that the first month of January brought it back to around 185. So now I only have 7 pounds of that “Pandemic 15” left.

My goal will be to lose another 10 pounds. That would get me to a round number of 175. That BMI would still be 25.8 – not great. However, my body fat percentage is bordering on the acceptable range. It was as high as 28%, but now it’s around 25%.

I’m going to try to lose those 10 pounds by eating more healthy wraps. I’ve been eating these Tumaro’s Wraps with some lettuce, tomato, salami, deli chicken, cheese, some roasted red peppers, and banana peppers. It’s good and it seems to be working, so I’ll stick to it. Unfortunately, it’s probably too salty for what I should be eating.

I’ll also try to do at least a couple of things from my extreme Lazy Man Diet. The diet is too extreme to stick to long-term, but I should be able to incorporate some of the things.

To get to my goal, I’ll need to add more exercise than walking my dog… especially weight training and cardio.

Drink Less

This should really be “drink zero”, but I don’t know if I can do that. We’ll see how it goes. I’m only a few days into coming up with this idea, but I feel strongly about it.

Make a Bucket List

I worked on a bucket list last year, but I don’t think it was very good. I’ve been reading about making a bucket list for the next five years. That sounds more manageable. I think it would include a lot of travel, but that’s still a little uncertain now. I’ve also never been fond of traveling. Of course, this also directly works against my dog boarding goals – unless I build a credible dog boarding robot.

As part of this, I’ll explore making a dream board. That will get me to the dangerously close place of scrapbooking. Now I’m starting to understand why I always put this off.

Programming with Python

I want to get back into programming, even if it’s just to make stupid little programs for myself. For example, once upon a time, I could have coded Wordle. I bet I could still do it, but it would take me a long time to get a development environment set up and organize all the logic.

While my main motivation to get back into programming is for my selfishness, it would be helpful to do it, so I could get the kids set up with something. That’s why I’m going to choose Python to get started in this. Python wasn’t a big programming language until I started to stop coding, so it would be new to me. It’s also good for helping kids learn real coding, not just moving visual logic blocks on a screen.

This has been a tough goal because I’m always pulled in a lot of different directions. Right now, I’m trying to finish this post in time to get it published before it gets too late on Monday. I also have to start the slow cooker for dinner tonight. There are some trouble tickets I have to do for my customer support job. KidWealth also needs a new article. So while I’m very motivated to dig into Python programming, I’ve got to stop before I give myself a panic attack.

Family Goals

Get Organized

This isn’t going to be a SMART Goal because I don’t know how to quantify success with this. My wife has gotten an organizer to come to the house once for an hour and we made a lot of progress. Then the kids and I got COVID and we had to put it on pause. After finishing the basement last year, we’ve got a lot of clean-up to do. It’s going to be tough to fit this one in.

Travel Four Times

Last year my wife wanted to go on a European cruise. That wasn’t going to happen in 2021 and it isn’t matching up with our 2022 plans. I’ll see if she finds anything she likes for the kids’ March vacation in 2023.

This year, we are going to Puerto Rico in March. I’m very excited. I’ve only been there for one day on a cruise layover and it wasn’t enough. It has fewer COVID travel issues for us because it is part of the United States. However, it has its own culture. As much I’m going to enjoy it myself, I love getting the kids some exposure to a new culture. They’ve never been anywhere where Spanish was a major language.

For one of the other trips we’ll go to Block Island – a staycation we do every year. That’s great for getting away from electronics and hiking in nature.

For another trip, we’ll go to Hershey Park and the Cartoon Network hotel. We try to get to Hershey every year and the kids enjoyed the Cartoon Network hotel last year. My wife enjoyed Amish country. I enjoyed everyone being happy.

Our last trip is up in the air. I’m hoping to go to Aruba, but we weren’t able to book a school-friendly week with our timeshare this year. We can sell our week and buy another week on an exchange without too much loss, but my wife would like to go somewhere else. I’m okay with somewhere else as long as it’s warm and relaxing. I need a break from the New England cold around November/December to get me through to next spring. We didn’t have that this year and I can feel the difference.

Parenting Goals

It’s hard to come up with plans for the kids. Their interests are always changing. The things we can do during COVID keep changing as well. We’ll have to play it by ear. That said, I think we can try a few things:

YouTube Channel

It was just before Christmas, but I completed the goal of setting up the kids with a YouTube channel. I even got them a domain name, social media accounts, and an email account. They know how to do any of that stuff and I won’t teach it for a while. My oldest, 9 years old, knows how to film and post to the channel. He’s only allowed to do it if a parent is around though.

They have one video up and it isn’t great. I think it’s gotten 5-7 outside views (other than ourselves), which is good for how terrible it is. There was script or plan, just silliness around the house. The longest journey starts with a single step.

Unfortunately, they haven’t taken a second step since then. They’ve been very busy, so it’s understandable. I have no expectations that they’ll become YouTube stars, but there are some useful skills they can learn. The kids (and their dad) can learn filmmaking. I can help them learn how to organize and outline their thoughts. They can create a set. The big idea is to get them to create something, which will stimulate their imagination.

The goal this year is to make 20 videos. They don’t have to be good videos, just better than the first. We’ll let practice take its course and improve all of us. Maybe next year, we make a goal of a number of subscribers or a video that gets 200 page views. We’re all flying blind in this YouTube world, so we’ll have to figure it out as we go along.

Drone Flying

The kids and I find flying drones very fun. It’s hard to find the time to take them. We’re all moving in different directions.

Computer Programming

I got them started with Tynker.com a bit last year. They didn’t love it. I was hoping that being a game, they’d enjoy it, but I guess it was still too much of a focus on teaching and learning. Maybe a different Tynker game would be better.

Maybe with my Python plan above, I can get them involved in that. It might be a better plan for 2023.

Specialty Camps

We’re still trying to figure out camps for this year. I don’t think most have started up yet. At least we registered for a spot at the sailing camp in time. I think we’ll do cooking camp again even though it is super expensive. I find it is a valuable skill. The 9-year-old loved it and my 8-year-old is just old enough to do it. Maybe we’ll do a karate camp this year because they are getting good at that. We may also try theater camp.

There are so many different things for kids to do nowadays. It’s a good thing that kids’ minds are flexible because I wouldn’t know which end up with all the things they are into.

Final Thoughts

Last year a lot of these goals conflicted with others. Fortunately, there are fewer conflicts this year. The biggest conflict I see is a fight against Father Time. There’s just so much to do. I’ll have to remind myself to breathe and focus on the opening paragraph of this article. That’s what’s important.

Wait, New Year’s Resolutions now? It’s a month and a half into the new year. That’s an eighth of the year already in the books. If I still wrote paper checks, I’d still be putting 2020 as the date. Stick with me on this one.

New Year’s Resolutions are always optional, but if it’s possible, they’re more optional in 2021. Many people have legitimate goals of “keep breathing.” There’s nothing wrong with that.

However, if you made New Year’s Resolutions, this may be a good time to renew them and give them a second look. I did well focusing on losing weight for the first two or three weeks, but then I got busy and started to lose focus. Since there’s nothing magical about New Year’s, I can use this checkpoint in the year to start again.

Without those check-ins, the whole year would slip away and I wouldn’t make much progress on my goals. Last year, I didn’t get very far. Doing distance learning tripped me up and I never recovered – even after the kids went to summer camp and school.

I’ve been thinking about how to stop that from happening this year, and I’ve got three ideas:

Make my goals visual – My goals usually live as digital bits in my computer – often in a spreadsheet. I have a lot of these spreadsheet bits. I also have email bits, document bits, well, you know all the digital bits – you have them too. However, by printing them out and putting them in a prominent place, I’ll see them. I have a goal to make a vision or dream board of goals. (My spreadsheet digital bits would be upset at me for that circular reference.)
Making goal progress a habit – I need to put time aside every day to move forward with something. Otherwise, I’ll just continue to stuck in the loop of laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, social media scrolling, and news reading.
Making SMART goals – (This is what I’m writing about today.)

[This article was originally written in 2009 and last updated in 2014 – days after my 7-year-old was born. Now that I’m not spending time wiping baby butts, I’m able to refresh it for 2021. I’m leaving all the Office Space references in here.]

SMART Goals

Many of you have heard about SMART goals in the past. It’s common in the realm of project management. SMART is simply a mnemonic device to help you remember the steps necessary to achieve your goals. Though some of the specific terms are debated (more on that later), one popular interpretation is that stands for:

Specific – What is the goal that I want to accomplish? Do I want to get my TPS reports submitted with cover sheets? Do I want to get that ~~T.G.I. Friday’s~~ Chotchkie’s waitress to go out with me? Or do you want to just want to get your red stapler back? (Note: Those goals won’t make sense unless you’ve seen Office Space)
Measurable – How do I measure the goal? Am I successful if I submit my TPS reports with cover sheets 80% of the time? Sounds like a good start. Having I gotten to know what the Chotchkie’s waitress likes? Am I successful if I find that she likes kung-fu? Yep.
Attainable – Is my goal reasonable? If my goal is to learn to fly by flapping my arms, I need to go back to the drawing board. In this case, it is possible to achieve the TPS report/coversheet goal. It may not be possible to find Jennifer Aniston working at Chotchkie’s… and I’m not sure how acceptable it is to try to pick-up a waiter or waitress just trying to do their job. And with COVID, restaurants, and dating have been pushed down the “attainable” list. (So many things have changed since Office Space came out.)
Relevant – Does the goal matter to you and your life? Do you really care about achieving the 80% TPS report/coversheet goal? No, you don’t. Does getting a date with Chotchkie’s waitress matter? I think most of the men I know would say that it’s something worth caring about. (Well, most of the men I know now are married, so that would be a big problem.)
Time-bound – When do expect to reach this goal? Maybe you want to start out with getting your TPS Reports up to par for just a month… then raise it to a fiscal quarter… then go for the full year… Maybe you want to find out three things that the Chotchkie’s waitress likes in the next week. Maybe you set a firm plan that you’ll ask her out in two weeks.

I mentioned earlier that there are some variations to SMART goals. Some use Appropriate and Realistic instead of Attainable and Relevant. If you think about it, “appropriate” is similar enough to “relevant”, and “realistic” is similar enough to “attainable” that it doesn’t really matter. As long as you cover the main five concepts you are ready to tackle any goal… or are you?

SMARTER Goals

I’ve noticed some people are getting a little clever with SMART Goals and trying to make them even SMARTER Goals. They do this by adding a couple more steps such as

Exciting – Your goals should exciting you. I think this is captured in “Relevant” step mentioned above. This could be debated, but in the example above, I think it’s safe to say that Peter should be excited about the idea of taking Jennifer Aniston’s character on a date.
Recorded – You should record your progress at set intervals. I like this one. It’s a little like Measurable, but reminds you to go back and look at how you are doing.

Another variation is:

Evaluate – Same concept as the recorded above – evaluate your goal progress on an on-going basis.
Re-do – After evaluating your goal’s progress, go back and adjust your goal accordingly. Now that you know some things that the waitress likes, ask her to come over and watch the Kung-Fu marathon on channel 39.

SMARTEST Goals

I’m not going to revise the acronym again. Instead, I’d like to add a few more important tips for achieving your goals that I believe get lost in all the steps above:

Assess Where You Start – Before you create a goal, you should assess where you stand currently. It will help you with various steps in the process. Maya Angelou once said, “If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going.”
Break them Down – You may need to break big goals into smaller ones. Some goals may seem to break the “Attainable” guideline, but in smaller chunks, it becomes easier. Paying off $100,000 of debt in a year may not be attainable for most people, but for some people paying off $20,000 may be possible.
Get Some Motivating Help – How do I keep up with my goals? Here are some things that I’ve found helpful:
- StickK to Your Goals – This website can help make you accountable for not achieving your goals.
- Buddy System – If your goal is to go to the gym, get a buddy to hold yourself accountable. On days when you don’t feel like going, you will be less likely to give up because you don’t want to let your buddy down. I’ve personally been struggling to find an accountability group for my blogging goals. There are a lot of bloggers who decided to sell entrance into their group, but that doesn’t sit well with me.
- Reminders – It can be easy to forget your goals. Hopefully my dream board will help. I may also set up regular reminders on Google Calendar.

When I put together my goals article for 2021, I was too busy to make my goals SMART, SMARTER, or SMARTEST. One kid had a cold, so we had to get tested and miss school while we waited for the results. My plan (dare I say goal?) for the next week is to revisit those goals and make them SMART.

Finally, if you take just one thing away from this article, I hope it’s this: “Lazy Man has seen Office Space far too many times.”

2022 Goals and Resolutions