r u l y

We are nearing the end of the month and you may be wanting to know where Ruly Ruth is! Don’t be alarmed. She is alive and well, having just completed a cross-country move. She will be back next month with her usual humor and insight for us. This year, I asked Ruly Ruth to take on the challenge of helping us all to eat healthier by road-testing various healthy recipes to see how they work out for real people.

In Ruth’s absence, this month I will post an invented salad that we have been eating. This salad evolved mostly as a way to use up stuff we just happened to have in the fridge and freezer. It was also my answer to how to create a salad with some warmth to it because eating salad in the middle of winter can sometimes feel empty and unfulfilling. What I also like about it is that if you are the type of person who easily can buy a lot of fresh produce and then watch it sadly spoil because you aren’t using it, this recipe uses primarily frozen ingredients that you can use as you need them and there is no chopping of vegetables.

So first, the “recipe”:

Put some greens in a bowl. (We were trying to use up a huge container of organic spinach and mixed greens from Costco.)

Cook up some frozen mixed vegetables. When I was on my vegetable eating kick in November, I purchased two huge bags of delicious-looking Birds-Eye frozen mixed vegetables at Wal-Mart. There is a “Stir-Fry” one and a “Normandy” one. The Normandy mix has broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and squash. I just boiled some water on the stove and put them in but you could probably microwave them too.

Grill up some salmon. I used the frozen salmon burgers from Costco on our electric George Foreman grill where the grease runs right off into the drip pan and it is easy to clean.

Add the cooked hot veggies to the salad.

Cut up the salmon burger into strips and add that to the salad.

Add whatever else you would like. I used some guacamole and a few slices of cheddar cheese.

This is the Wholly Guacamole brand from Costco that you buy in a huge pack. You can freeze the unopened packs if you can’t use them right away and they will thaw in the fridge after about a day. After opening, if you can’t eat the whole container right away, I have found you can preserve it for a day or two without too much browning by putting the package in a sealed Tupperware-like container. Some also advocate putting a sprinkle of lemon juice on top if you have that.

I also put on some canned black beans and some salsa.

I didn’t have any dressing that matched my southwestern theme so I just left that off.

We made other versions where we left off the guacamole and salsa and used a poppyseed dressing.

I have no idea how many calories are in this salad but it is filling, packs in a lot of veggies, and we ate it as an entrée without any other sides.

For my (and your) nutritional education, however, I wanted to know whether it is “better” to put guacamole or dressing on the salad.

Salad topping	Calories	Total Fat	Sat. Fat	Chol.	Sodium	Fiber
Brianna’s Poppyseed dressing (about 2 tablespoons)	160	14 g	1 g	0 g	220 mg	0 g
Wholly Guacamole (about ¼ cup)	120	5 g	1 g	0 g	90 mg	2 g

I am not a nutritionist but it looks to me like these choices are about the same, although the guacamole has an edge because you can have twice as much for the same amount of calories. It is my understanding that the fat grams in the dressing although they look high could be the “healthy” fats. You do get a break on your sodium and pick up some fiber by switching to the guacamole, though. The guacamole claims it has “20 vitamins and minerals” but the dressing gives you 20% of your vitamin E.

So, my personal opinion is that you can pick whichever one helps make the salad go down easier for you. As for a real nutritionist, Rachel Beller for The Biggest Loser recently said on the show that you should aim for a dressing that is a maximum of 40-80 calories per 2 Tablespoons.  So, she would probably get rid of the poppyseed and keep the guacamole but use half as much as I did. (She would probably take my cheese off too.)

What healthy recipes are you eating lately? Do you have a recipe you want Ruly Ruth to try? Please share in the comments.

Calendars are essential organizing tools for all goal-oriented people. There are a surprising variety of calendar formats to choose from. In addition to a dizzying number of digital and online calendars, there is the classic month-at-a-time wall calendar, planners with monthly, weekly or daily formats and even large wall calendars showing the whole year at a time.

Most people are looking to plan ahead for events to come. In this mindset there is not much demand for a page-a-day calendar. After all, what use would such a calendar be? If you wrote all of your appointments on a page-a-day calendar, you would wake up each day and be shocked to find out that you are running late for a meeting, due at the dentist or heading out of town that evening.

Metropolitan Museum of Art 2012 Page-A-Day Calendar

Yet, I found myself strangely drawn to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2012 Page-A-Day art calendar. My children had fun counting down the days to Christmas so I thought they might like counting up as the year went on as well. As a bonus, it was on sale for 50% off since 2012 had already begun.

When the calendar arrived, I unboxed it and was simply amazed. The design of this calendar is an artistic feat. The simple clear acrylic holder sits prettily on the desk and each page is printed in high quality inks to maximize the impact of the artwork in question. The day and date are printed inconspicuously at the top and the details about the artist and artwork are in a tiny font. Each page is printed double-sided so that when you get half-way through the year, you turn the pages over and flip back through the reverse side of the stack. Eco-friendly and streamlined! My children have so enjoyed turning the page each day to see what we will find and it literally feels like we are touring the museum every day. This would be a fantastic calendar for any office environment as well.

Alas, this beautiful calendar appears to be all sold out through the Met online store, which is great news considering all sales benefit the museum, but you can still get it at amazon.com. If art is not your cup of tea, consider a page-a-day calendar in your area of interest to give you a boost of motivation toward your 2012 goals.

P.S. I have no affiliation with the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I was reading a wonderful book this week (The Artful Garden by James Van Sweden and Tom Christopher) and found it a surprising source of inspiration not only about gardening but about life and particularly the subject of goals.

In the book, the authors profile artist Robert Dash. Dash was a good friend of the artist Willem DeKooning who gave this bit of insightful reflection.

“I have to change to remain the same.”

–Willem De Kooning

I read this and just stopped. Most of the time, we think of change as shifting away from our “true selves” to something else that is less authentic, perhaps more in conformity with what others want us to be. This quote turns that concept around and forces you to ask yourself if you aren’t moving away from your true self by refusing to change. Perhaps the person you are “supposed to be” is a person who lives very differently from the way you do now. By sticking with the tried and true, while it may seem that you are maintaining yourself, perhaps you are slowly losing your vision, draining your energy and dulling your mental acuity. The “real” you might have taken the risk, put in the effort, or even made the mistake.

As you make your goals this month, consider how your change is not really to make you different but to keep you true to yourself.

Anyone who is employed and anyone who runs a business should understand the difference between personal versus professional goal-setting.  In the business setting, the stakes are far higher.  Your goal-statements are not just “aspirations” but rather a strong promise of what you intend to achieve in a given year.  They are the basis for sustaining the investing confidence of your shareholders.

While in our personal lives, it is perfectly normal and acceptable to announce a big goal, make some attempt to achieve it and then give up when it gets too hard or we get bored with the task, or postpone the implementation or change the goal, this strategy doesn’t work in the business environment.

Our starting point for business goals is the well-known maxim of corporate culture:

under-promise and over-deliver

In my corporate work experience, it was interesting to see how the business world views “goals.”  In our personal lives, we view a “goal” as something that we will have to stretch to achieve, something that may or may not happen but we will “try” to accomplish.  In the business world, when you set a goal, it is effectively considered a commitment.  I almost never saw a corporation announce a “goal” publicly that wasn’t almost already substantially achieved.  Big change ideas were never announced as “goals” but were rather treated as just ideas percolating under the surface.

Why should you care about this distinction?  The area that you are most likely to encounter this goaling distinction is performance evaluations.  Have you ever been asked to list your own goals for the year?  The first time I had to do this, I wrote down a bunch of ambitious things.  Fortunately, my seasoned boss coached me to scale my list down to things that I didn’t really consider “goals” but rather aspects of my everyday job responsibilities that sounded good and that I would definitely deliver on no matter what.

As an extreme example, you may be thinking that your boss wants you to write down “Cure cancer.” as your goal while your boss really just wants you to put down basic job description requirements like “Respond to all client inquiries.” or “Issue the payroll every two weeks.”  You know you are on the right track if your list of goals reflects duties that if you didn’t perform them you would likely be fired.

For example, your first draft goal list might say “all of my regular duties” plus:

• Answer all emails within 24 hours.
• Write white paper on social media marketing strategies.
• Complete training course on financial analysis.

But if you thought again about this list and said to yourself, “If my regular workload increases for unforeseen reasons and I am really short on time, which of these things can I guarantee will get done?”  Your second draft might say:

• Answer all emails within one week.
• Begin research for white paper on social media marketing strategies.
• Research options for financial analysis training.

Or, you might ditch all 3 of the above goals altogether and just rewrite your goals to reflect increasing demands on your current job responsibilities.  For example, “Continue to issue payroll on time every two weeks, expected to increase by 10% to 5,000 employees.”

Corporate Goals are Clear and Measurable

Another distinguishing characteristic of business goals is that they implicitly require a measuring stick and a clear judgment.

The mnemonic SMART is often used for business goals and, while definitions vary, the most common is usually

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Timely

At the end of the year, it should be easy to judge whether you achieved your goal.  Did you issue the payroll on time or not?  Did you complete the training course or not?

The harsh reality is that no one really cares why you didn’t do something, even if it was for a very good reason.  If, at the end of the year, you can point to your goals and say, “See, I told you I would do A, B and C and I did A, B and C as evidenced by these data points.  Plus I also did D, E and F.” you are doing as well as anyone can expect.

While there is no need for us to be so harsh with our personal goals and it is still OK to make outlandish goals that we may never realistically achieve, trying out some of these corporate goaling strategies provides excellent discipline.

Ruly Challenge:  Revisit your current list of 2012 goals. Apply the harsh discipline of business goal-setting strategies to them.  How could you re-word them to guarantee achievement?  If it helps, imagine that you will have to pay a $10,000 penalty for every goal you don’t achieve.

What have you learned about goal-setting in the business environment?  Please share in the comments.

If you have been reading all of this month’s Ruly posts, by now you should have some good ideas about your goals for the year as well as an appreciation of the challenges you are likely to face attempting those goals.

Today, I wanted to share two ideas for organizing those goals. These tips were inspired by reading the blog of Marcia Francois, “The Organising Queen.”

So, say you have a bunch of goals for the year either in your head or written down. That’s a lot of words. Could you streamline it all down into just one word?

One word?

Yes! Marcia advises that you select a theme word for your year. You can read her compelling reasoning here and here.

Applying this to myself, my theme word for 2012 is:

ENERGY

As busy as I am and as many commitments as I have taken on, there are still more things I want to accomplish in any given year or improve how I am doing things currently. I fully realize that I can’t do everything but I feel that too often I give up on the attempt too easily because I tell myself something will take “too much energy” and I also know that I waste a lot of time too. Are there ways that I could get more energy in my life? Is it also possible that in order to get more energy, you have to expend more energy (eating well, exercising, implementing new organizing routines, etc.)? So, within that theme, I think of my goals/resolutions falling into the following subcategories:

1. Expend energy to get energy
2. Energize other people
3. Avoid energy drains
4. Recharge

The other very clever tip Marcia Francois shared last September on her blog was to frame your goals and put them on your desk/fridge, etc. where you have a beautiful, formal reminder of what you are trying to get done.

You could use this tip to frame up any of your other insights too. For example:

• If you did some thinking about what really motivates you by asking “why,” you might want to frame your core motivations.

• If you have a list of common excuses, you may want to frame those along with what you say to yourself to overcome those excuses.

• If there is a particular person who embodies your goals, you could frame up a photo of him/her or type up an inspirational quote from that person.

I found this great, but inexpensive 3-opening frame. I am going to put my theme word, my core motivations and my excuses in each of the openings and hang it by my desk.

When I went to frame my words, I was pleasantly shocked to see this note on the stock paper in the frame:

Almost every picture frame is made in China these days so the fact that this frame (or at least the plastic front part) was Made in the USA, plus made from recycled materials plus sold at WalMart for an inexpensive price was astounding!  Such a high achieving frame is a great backdrop for my own goals!

If you are doing this project for a professional office, you might want to be careful with how much you share publicly in your frame but you could always write your theme word in a hard-to-read artistic font, in a foreign language or in code so only you know what it means.

Aren’t these great tips? I am excited to know that Marcia Francois plans to publish a book this year and can’t wait to hear what the subject will be.

Do you have a theme word for the year? Do you frame or otherwise formalize a display for your goals? Please share in the comments.

P.S. I have no affiliation with Marcia Francois other than thinking she is incredibly clever and reading her blog.

Recently, I read a great article in the New York Times Magazine called “The Fat Trap” by health columnist Tara Parker-Pope that gave me some great new insight about the goal-setting process.

This article was great for a number of reasons. First, I love the fact that Tara Parker-Pope demonstrates admirably that a person can still be a valid and inspiring health expert even though the person faces health challenges (in this case being overweight) of her own. We don’t always need the perfectionist–the triathlete/vegan/yogi to tell us about being healthy (although their insight and example is certainly inspiring). Sometimes we need the real person who struggles to fit in diet and exercise along with everyday life challenges.

Second, it was valuable to know that when it comes to weight, if we just “let ourselves go” thinking that at some point in the future we will have more time, energy and motivation to exercise or diet, we are metabolically doing ourselves a disservice. Her article points out that after the body holds excess weight for a certain period of time, the metabolism changes and it becomes measurably harder for an overweight person to maintain weight loss than for a person who keeps their weight under control constantly.

“For years, the advice to the overweight and obese has been that we simply need to eat less and exercise more. While there is truth to this guidance, it fails to take into account that the human body continues to fight against weight loss long after dieting has stopped. This translates into a sobering reality: once we become fat, most of us, despite our best efforts, will probably stay fat.”

–Tara Parker-Pope, “The Fat Trap,” The New York Times Magazine, December 28, 2011

This revelation makes me wonder if this recommendation for daily vigilance isn’t true in many areas of our lives. For example, if you are a binge organizer (as I tend to be with my busy family), where you let things go for a while and then clean it all up in a massive effort, this might end up being more work than if you struggled and picked away at your mess every . . single . . . day. (Just typing that makes me feel exhausted and a smidge depressed!)

But most importantly, this article points out that there is a tremendous variety of effort in achieving the same goal for different people. Some people may find it easier to alter their routines. Others may struggle significantly to get the same results. In short, it’s very easy to cry, “It’s not fair.” when comparing your effort and results to those of others.

This comment from a woman named Janice Bridge profiled in the article who exercises and diets every single day just to maintain a stable weight of 195 pounds was very insightful. Ms. Bridge knows that her metabolism may be either genetically low or altered by years of being overweight.

“It’s pretty easy to get angry with the amount of work and dedication it takes . . . “to keep this weight off. But the alternative is to not keep the weight off. ”

–Janice Bridge, profiled in Tara Parker-Pope, “The Fat Trap,” The New York Times Magazine, December 28, 2011 (emphasis added).

She profiles another woman, Lynn Haraldson, who has similarly struggled with weight loss and now maintains a weight of 140 pounds:

“[Haraldson] has also come to accept that she can never stop being ‘hypervigilant’ about what she eats. ‘Everything has to change,’ she says. ‘I’ve been up and down the scale so many times, always thinking I can go back to ‘normal,’ but I had to establish a new normal. People don’t like hearing that it’s not easy.’”

–Lynn Haraldson, profiled in Tara Parker-Pope, “The Fat Trap,” The New York Times Magazine, December 28, 2011 (emphasis added).

These two insights are often missing from weight loss programs like The Biggest Loser. We focus so much attention on just getting people started. We seem to think that if we just get someone started they will see how “easy” it is and the new habits will continue from there. We might even “Make the path easier.” initially so it is easier to get started. But the piece we are missing from this formula is that once we get started, we have to also practice “Make the path get gradually harder.” forcing ourselves to change and accept whatever the “new normal” is for our particular situation and that our change process is permanent and not temporary.

A similar point about the mindset of change in the context of home design was made today on the wonderful blog Young House Love by Sheri “$herdog” Petersik:

“If we ever become frozen in fear of a mistake that we’ve made (or the fear that we’ll make one) that’s when a room stagnates. We’d never get past decorating mistakes (or life mistakes) if we didn’t learn/adapt/evolve along the way. Our goal is for our house (and ourselves) to always be changing and growing. No freezing in place allowed. Because you usually can’t get around a life obstacle or a DIY debacle if you’re just stuck there standing still.”

–Sheri Petersik, “$herdog,” Young House Love blog, January 17, 2012

Based on this insight, I encourage you to ponder the following questions about whatever goals you are trying to achieve:

Ruly Challenge: List every “excuse” you can think of for why you have not achieved your goal. Ask yourself how much effort you are really willing to put in to achieve this goal. Would you be willing to change your hard-wired, “easy” routines? Would you be willing to institute a new “difficult” routine . . . every . .  . single . . . day if it meant you would achieve the goal? If not, why not? If you are willing to make the change “someday” what would need to change in your life to get to that “someday.”

What insights have you had about achieving difficult change? How do you respond to the above insights? Please share in the comments.

If you have been reading the last two posts, by this point, you probably have a list of goals, a list of “why” motivators and a list of “how” implementation steps. But this probably still doesn’t feel like a complete “plan” and some of the ideas may seem out of reach.

Revisiting some of my own past advice on goaling, I came across the Robert Mager Goal Analysis post.  The key idea that strikes me here is making your goal people-based. Mr. Mager’s concept is simple:

“[T]hink of someone who already has achieved your goal, someone who represents your goal, and write down the things he says and the things he does that cause you to be willing to pin that goal label on him. . . . If you can not think of anyone who represents your goal, you have a problem. . . . If . . . you . . . can not think of someone who represents the state or condition described by the goal, you need to think of what a person might be like if he represented your goal. You are skating on thin ice, though, because when you think of hypothetical people, there is the danger that your expectations will be forever unattainable.”

–Robert Mager, Goal Analysis

While I like this concept, it may be a concept that works better in business, where one “customer service representative” or “market analyst” may be the same as the next in terms of access to company resources, compensation and working hours. When I try to apply this to my personal life goals it gets complicated quickly.

For example, let’s say you have an ambitious list of personal tasks for your home organization. Think of a person who represents your goal. Depending on your personality, you are either thinking, “Martha Stewart” or “ ____ from across the street.” If you are aiming for weight loss, do you have a supermodel or celebrity in mind or someone from the local gym? Robert Mager reminds us that if we find someone in our similar situation who has achieved everything we want to achieve, chances are our goals are rooted somewhere in reality.

Some will find Robert Mager’s strategy disagreeable in this respect. For example, if you asked Amy Chua when she was making the decision to pursue her tiger parenting method to find another American family with two full-time working parents with two daughters who were both excellent musicians, fluent in Chinese and had perfect grades, she probably couldn’t find one! Sometimes you have to push the boundaries of possible to achieve something new.

Others will find this strategy disagreeable because it invites envy and competition among friends. Envying someone we don’t know and have never met is different than wanting to become the person you run into all the time. Some people find the realistic target a depressing reminder of all their shortcomings.

As I look around at people I know, there is an inevitable connection between money and organization. The more money you have the easier it is to hire a cleaning service, remodel, buy a new car, get your hair done at the salon, throw things out because you know you can always buy more, etc. Sometimes I wonder if wanting to “be more organized” is really a part of us saying, “I wish I had more money to _____.”

Another problem I am running into finding a role model for my goals is finding someone in a similar situation. There are always key differences when comparing people no matter how similar many of the circumstances seem.

Also, when it comes to our personal lives, there are a lot of hidden details that make direct comparisons difficult. The best we can do is say, “Assuming that ___ has a life similar to mine, he/she probably gets all that done by _______.”

Looking again at Amy Chua, for example. When she committed to her tiger mother strategy, she looked around at other mothers on her block and decided that she couldn’t do everything they were doing and still achieve her goal. So, she cut out sleepovers and playdates and school plays and other “fun” things for her children. She also cut out a lot of free time for herself, dedicating it instead to attending music lessons with her daughters, arranging for Chinese tutors, and, I suspect, losing sleep as well.

Ah…the reality check. Not the most fun part of the goaling process. It is far more exciting to imagine a life without boundaries. But if you really want to achieve your goal, you have to check in with reality.

Ruly Challenge: Take your current goal(s) and apply the people-based test to them. Who do you know who has roughly similar life circumstances to you? How are you different or similar to these people? If you imagine that one of these people wanted to achieve your same goal(s), how would he/she do it?

Do you find it helpful to imagine a real-life person when drafting your goals? What benefits or downsides do you see to this method? Please share in the comments.

In the last post, I gave some tips on generating ideas for personal and professional goals. Now that you have a basic idea of what you want to accomplish, it is time to refine these ideas.

Depending on what your basic idea is, you may need to either think big or think small. Thinking big will generate a more substantial goal that resonates with you at a deep level and that you will be more inclined to continue to pursue even when you have lost your initial energy and enthusiasm. Thinking small will help you to translate a vague idea into actionable, measurable tasks. Below are tips on how to approach this thinking exercise.

Think Big

Many goals may seem “big” in terms of the time and effort necessary to accomplish them but really are “small” in terms of their overall importance to broader goals or philosophies in your life. For example, if your goal is some variation of the ever-popular “lose ___ pounds,” to get to a deeper goal, you need to ask yourself one question:

Why?

. . . as in “Why do you want to lose ___ pounds?” Is it because your health depends on it? If yes, your broader goal might be, “Get stronger.” If instead, the reason you want to lose __ pounds is to look better, then your “real” goal might be “Get gorgeous.” or “Feel better about myself.”

Think Small

Thinking too big has its downsides too. If you only have broad, overarching goals, it can be easy to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the task and not know where to start. This is where thinking small comes in. The exact details of what you plan to do to achieve the goal are critical. For example, if your initial goal is “Have more balance in my life,” you need to dig deeper into that by asking a different question:

How?

As in “How will you get more balance in your life?” Possible answers could be: “Use my time more efficiently by setting up routines.” or “Reduce the amount of TV/blogs/Facebook I consume to spend more time ____.”

One of the best quotes I read recently on this subject came from browsing the alumni newsletter for the University of Utah.

“Instead of trying to achieve balance as I used to, my goal is to try to avoid imbalance, which has a higher probability of success than trying to find a single fulcrum point upon which my life can perch.”

–Nalini Nadkarni, Professor of Environmental Studies and head of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education at the University of Utah.

When you have thought both large and small about your goals, you have a mental framework to not only motivate yourself but explain your change easily to others.

Example: “No, I won’t be watching ____ tonight. My New Year’s resolution is to spend more quality time with my kids so ____ had to go so we could spend more time reading/playing, etc.”

Who would fault you for this? If you are pursuing a broad goal we all want to achieve, we are interested to see how you go about it. The message is also personalized so it doesn’t pass judgment on anyone who makes different choices.

Example: “That brownie looks delicious but I’m afraid I have to pass. I am working to get stronger and need to get my weight under control. I find that the only way that works for me is to cut out all sugar.”

Weight loss is one of the touchiest subjects out there but stating your goal in both large and small terms may help people to better understand your actions. In the above example, hopefully the message that comes across to everyone else eating the brownies is not, “You’re so unhealthy.” but rather “Good for you! You must have some other system for controlling your weight.” (After all, some people prefer to exercise vigorously, eat everything but in moderation, cut back on other foods or benefit from “gifted” metabolisms.)

This exercise also works for professional goals. You might start with a vague goal like, “Prepare status report once a week.” Why? “To promote better communication with my manager.” or “To highlight my achievements so I can obtain a raise.” or “To prioritize key issues and matters for easy reference.” Once you know the “why,” you can structure the status report appropriately to address the “How” portion. For example, if you want your boss to know what you are doing, you might choose a format for the report that is easiest for your boss to read (even if that is not the easiest method for you to use).

Ruly Challenge: I encourage you to take just a few minutes to write down one area of your life that you would improve, whether or not you are ready to actually make that change right now. Ask yourself “Why?” and “How?” and write down your answers.

What questions do you ask yourself when trying to formulate goals or implement change? Please share in the comments.

Forgive my tardiness in starting 2012 a few days beyond the official New Year.  We spent New Year’s on the beach visiting Ruly Ruth and family.  When we returned, I needed to do a bit of organizing on my blog to finish my December 2011 posts and theme and to add a new feature, a quick annual summary of last year’s themes and posts.

Now that that is done, it is time to move on to a new year, a new month and a new theme!  Goals.  It’s actually not a new theme, though.  We have done this before but this time we will add new perspectives.

The topic of goals and goal-setting is a crucial one in my view and it bears repeating again and again because it is often the first stage of any change process.  It is probably one of the healthiest traditions that we have to make New Year’s resolutions.  Sure, people are already complaining that they have broken their New Year’s resolutions and many people refuse to make any more resolutions because they never achieved any in the past, but the problem may lie in part with the resolutions themselves.

Most of us don’t know how to set achievable goals.

When I was thinking about my own resolutions for 2012, it actually took me several days of thinking to get to a resolution that I knew I had a chance at achieving.

Some people may not even know where to start in terms of goal setting.  This month at Ruly, we will walk through the process of goal-setting, looking at both personal and professional goals.

Today, we will look at where to start when setting a goal.  Some people get writer’s block when it comes to resolutions.  What would be a good topic for a resolution?  Here are a few suggestions:

Personal Goal Discovery Questions

• In addition to diet and exercise (that everyone can benefit from) what could you do to dramatically improve your health?
• What action could you take that would have a huge positive impact on your financial stability?  If you don’t know, what might you learn more about?
• What could you do to improve your relationships with your significant other, family and friends?
• What would you like to explore just for fun?
• What have you always wanted to learn more about?
• What could you do to help others or improve society at large?

Professional Goal Discovery Questions

• How could you improve the quality of your work?
• How could you get more work done?
• How can you ensure that all of your work is delivered on time or early?
• What could you learn to enhance your effectiveness at your current job or change into another role?
• How could you improve your communications with your coworkers and others?
• What connections can you make outside of your current job that might help you find another job in case you are ever unemployed?

I hope these suggestions give you some food for thought.  Don’t worry about getting your resolutions exactly right at this moment.  The other tips and guidance this month will help you refine them into achievable goals.

Are you making resolutions/goals this year?  Please share in the comments.

2011 was a great year at Ruly!  Before I leap into another great year for 2012, I wanted to pause for a moment to organize last year’s posts into a quick summary.  Each month, I explore one aspect of organization and at the end of the month I post a summary of the posts, comments and relevant news stories on the topic.  Below are links to those monthly summaries and an even shorter recap of each month’s content.

January – Cleaning

Ideas for making cleaning easier, including low maintenance home design suggestions and reviewing examples from the hospitality industry of how businesses implement cleaning standards.

February – Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

An overview of what OCD is, including examples of individuals who suffer from OCD, the fist-bumping versus handshake trend in the workplace and reconciling cleaning standards among spouses.

March – Change

Implementing change is one of the most difficult organizational challenges.  Reviewing books from various experts about successful strategies to implement change in your business and life.

April – Retirement Planning

Organizing your 401(k) – resources to calculate savings requirements, evaluating your 401(k).   The story of my own 401(k) savings experience so far.

May – Health

How to create a personal health binder.  Organizational strategies to improve compliance with taking medicine and following doctor-prescribed therapies.  How to track medical news alerts in your areas of interest.

June – Yard & Garden

Ideas to update and improve your garden space that don’t involve planting anything!  How to create a garden journal and my latest patio furniture transformations.  Plus Ruly Ruth’s popular “What to Bring to a Cookout” post.

July – Perfectionism in the Parent-Child Relationship

Examples of perfectionist parents, including Tiger Mother Amy Chua.  The psychological roots of perfectionist parents and counter-examples of parents who set high standards without demanding perfectionism.

August – Organizing for School

Reviewing great books from psychologists, educational organizers and others about common organizational problems children face in the school environment and what to do about them plus tips for organizing school papers and study spaces.

September – Emergency Preparedness

Sharing my experiences in 2011’s rare east coast earthquake and preparing for Hurricane Irene and discussing various preparedness strategies primarily related to communication, like “ICE-ing” cell phones and Ruly Ruth’s great family emergency contact form.

October – Closet Essentials

What are the classic pieces in a casual and professional wardrobe that never go out of style?  Plus a few fun Halloween and costume-themed posts.

November – Healthy Eating

A 30-day experiment trying to eat the recommended “half your plate” in fruits and vegetables and exercise 20 minutes every day.

December – Simple Holidays and Toy Storage

A diary of my own misadventures in organizing the holiday season plus homemade gift ideas, toy storage tips and a look at the organizing techniques of charitable fundraising during the holidays.

I have learned so much over the course of the last year that has helped me with my own organization and I hope that you have as well.  I appreciate all of my faithful readers and wish you a wonderful, healthy, joyful and, of course, organized 2012!