Been blogging since 2008 with the hopes of making it big and I realized resolutions just don’t cut it.
Wrote about it two days ago here

David — I completely agree.

Your goals should be measurable and actionable. So, “help more people” is not a very good goal, but increase RSS readers by 20% before June 1, 2011 is better.

As for long term goals — I have always thought that the best approach is to have a long term goal and then break it down into monthly or even weekly goals. That way, you know what to work on today to get where you want to be in a year or two.

Thanks for the comment!

Mark

This is a post that is just full of good points. One thing that I thing bears mentioning though, is that goals like “help more people” or “exercise more” are lacking an important quality… they are not measurable. All goals should have a definitive and measurable end. Eating less is just relative. But keeping your calorie load below 3k everyday is measurable.

I agree that saying you want to make “$3,000/month by summer” is too broad, but at least it’s measurable. The goals should be shorter-term, I think. It would probably be better to have a monetary goal each month, and then break it down into weekly service/content goals for your business… all designed to add up to that 3k/month average by summer.

Am I way off-base here? Let me know what you think.

Nope — I’ve got about 40 to lose my self. Just got back from the Gym. So, that’s a start at least.

Setting good goals that can stand the test of time (a year in this case) is indeed hard. Let me know if I can help.

Mark

I’m actually having a hard time setting my business goals for the year, usually I’ve got a big long list, but I’m finding myself struggling with it this weekend and staring at a blank page in my new idea notebook. I thought I knew what I wanted to do and then *poof* I realized I had no idea.