Hitting 2021 Running – The Climb #673

Saturday 26^th December 2020

I used to make New Year’s Resolutions each year. That progressed over time into giving each year a theme, into this year coming up with a more structured goal-orientated plan.

Like many, I’d eagerly await the chiming of the bells to ring in the New Year before embarking on my planned changes. Everything started on January 1^st.

The thing I found was that it often took me a bit of time to wind up. Thinking back to some of my most successful goals from the past, I’d set them as a New Year’s resolution and then take until February before I got them going.

I realised that it takes me some time to wind up to things. Some people are all prep and then never follow through, and whilst I can be as guilty of that as the next man, I do find that I am a preparations person. I’m not sure if that’s about creating a good environment for my goal to succeed, or building strong foundations, or a little procrastination as I find that internal bravery I need before I embark, but the things I’ve done best at and stuck with, are those goals that took me a few months to get going. I’m thinking things like my fitness in 2017/ 2018 or even bringing The Climb back this year (which started in March).

I experimented with planning a lot in 2020. I’ve never been a planner, either in real life or originally in my writing. I hate deadlines for the simple fact that you can never know what’s around the corner and I hate missing them. Introducing planning into my writing has helped me in the last few years and it’s something I’m still experimenting with in this latest novel.

And I honestly think the planning I did in 2020, however bad, got me through the year professionally. There were lots of challenges and yet, even if goals never got completed, a lot of them are in a better position than they were a year ago.

It’s something I want to experiment more with in 2021. I do need to do something better with some goals to make them more measurable. Rather than get my fitness back, I need something that’s more targetable and trackable. This is only the second year I’ve tried something more goal orientated than resolution orientated and, as such, I’m still learning,

But it means that I don’t get to January 1^st and suddenly try to make a bunch of changes. It means that I don’t wait until 1^st January to wind up to some goals. It means that the preparations form a stage in the goal.

Which is a long way of saying, I’m not waiting for 1^st January to get started. I’ve been doing some prep already in getting my goals together, and I plan to dive more heavily in come Monday.

I know some people take the time off between Xmas and New Year but to be honest, I’d rather take the time off before Xmas so I concentrate on the various tasks connected with getting ready for December 25^th.

Next week is about getting my plans finalised as well as getting things started if I can.

I’m keen to see the back of 2020 but there’s still a bit of work to do before I get into 2021.