New Years Goals are Stupid. . .but here are mine :)

It really is stupid to have New Years goals, not because trying to better yourself is stupid but arbitrarily doing it in January when everyone else is going to be doing the same thing really is pointless. Goals shouldn't revolve around switching the calendar but should revolve around you. Goals should be very important to you, it seems obvious that goals should be important enough to you to motivate you to achieve them but far to often people set goals of things that they would like to have happen but are not willing to put work into. That was certainly the case with my goals that I set last year in a blog entry. I listed like 10 goals and with the exception of my poker goal (one of the only ones that I actually achieved) I put nearly no effort into doing any of them. I think I fell into the trap that most people fall into when setting New Years goals, I sat down and thought about things I'd like to instantaneously change if I could but very few of them were actually important to me. It was also bad for me to set so many goals because since the ones i didn't really care about lessoned my focus (again excluding poker) to the ones that I did want to achieve but never came close to. Namely, I put do something healthy with some regularity. I made that goal intentionally vague to make it easier for me to achieve it. As it happens setting a vague goal actually hurts your ability to achieve it. Now that I got that off of my chest I am going to completely contradict myself and set some New Years goals some of which are again going to be intentionally vague. . . . What can I say? I guess I can be lumped into the portion of society who buys into the changing of the calendar theory. 1) Make $80,000 playing poker Last year I set the poker goal at $20,000 which I felt confident I would be able to achieve despite the fact that in January I was a full time student with no money and a moderate amount of debt to Finch from playing poker tournaments in New Hampshire. This year I set the mark at $80,000 which is much harder to achieve. I need to log more hours, play more big tournaments, and avoid going broke all year at all costs. I will put an addendum on this goal, if I end up taking a full time job then this goal is not going to be important to me. Basically I am saying that if all I am doing for money is playing poker and I have not taken a real job by next year, I will consider it a failure to have made less than $80,000. Hopefully I win a major tournament in Atlantic City next month and I basically get to free roll the entire year, that would be sweet. 2) Be more healthy in 2014 I know you are thinking what a schmuck, this asshole rants about not setting goals arbitrarily in January and making sure that they are not vague and then goes and sets an vague goal just because it's January. What can I say? I guess I'm a schmuck. Listen I don't want to be ripped like Brad Pitt in Troy, not because I wouldn't like to be in sick shape like that but because it is not worth it to me to put in the work to do so. What is worth putting some work into is not becoming a fat ass, and I am well on my way to becoming a fat ass. For me I will be happy as long as I can look at my typical week and say I was at least at an average level of healthiness. Here are some of the mini goals that I hope help me to get to an at least average level of healthiness. a) get take out less often b) work out at least 2-3 days a week, this can be as simple as a couple sets of pushups and sit-ups or as in depth as cross fit or hiking. c) cut out some soda and beer from my diet d) cook more often