From my buddy Dave at Cin Sity Running who got it from the Pine Belt Pacers.
The 53 Runner's Commandments
#39. Without goals, training has no purpose.
Monday, February 2, 2009
A Little Bit of Change
You may have notice a few non-running blog posts lately and that's because I've decided to expand the scope of the blog a little bit. I love running and it's had multiple positive effects, but it's just one of my interests and only a fraction of my life. I also get bored just blogging about my running plan. So now, in addition to all the stuff about running, you'll see me talk about some of my other interests and goals. I hope it will make for a more entertaining and informative read.
A Neverending List of Goals
I'm an obsessive goal setter. I set goals, reset them, and then reset them again. I've been getting a lot better at following through in recent years but there's always room for improvement.
How I set goals.
I usually start off my making a broad "I want" statement. Like "I want to be healthy." Then I develop a list of two or three goals for each statement that, if I reach, will get me closer to getting what I ultimately want.
Finances
Goal 1: Have an emergency fund of $15,000. This amount should allow me to pay my bills for at least 6 months if I were to suddenly get laid off. I'm pretty much starting at zero here, so I have a long way to go.
Goal 2: Pay off my main credit card. I want to be debt free by 2011 (not counting student loans). To do this, I have to pay off a little over $12,000 between my credit cards and my car loan. Even though the car loan has the higher interest rate of the three, there's a prepayment penalty, so I'm pretty much stuck paying the whole thing no matter when I pay it off.
Health:
Goal 1: Run a 10k. I ran my first 5k last fall and, although it was a struggle, it was a great self-esteem booster. I'm finding that reaching goals has quite a snowball effect. It makes you want to achieve greater and greater things. I've been quite lazy this winter and I'm sure I've lost some of the endurance that I was able to achieve last fall. I'm heading to a gym with an indoor track tonight to see where I'm at. This week my goal is to do: Monday 3k, Thursday 4k, and Friday 4k.
Goal 2: Eat more raw fruits and veggies at every meal. This is me basically trying to trick my brain. I've had the goals of eating better and losing weight for what seems like forever and I have reached it at times, but none of the improvements have been permanent. I'll eat healthy for a couple of months and then one cheat day becomes two, which becomes three, and you can figure out the rest. Now I'm taking it a meal at a time. I figure that if I force myself to think about each meal and how much of it is made up of raw fruits and veggies, it will cause me to think about what I'm eating more often and I will eat healthier.
Goal 3: No coffee after 5pm. I'm a caffeine junky. I specifically love Americanos and it doesn't help that my girlfriend works for Starbucks. Unfortunately, I'm finding that as I get older, caffeine is keeping me up later and later. I used to be able to sit and study in a coffee shop all night, drinking bottomless cups of coffee, and then go home and fall right asleep. Nowadays, if I have a tall Americano at 8pm, I have trouble sleeping at midnight. So I'm switching to tea at 5pm and I'll see how that goes.
I think all of these are doable and don't require drastic lifestyle changes or punishment. I want to create goals that will positively impact my life, but also ones that I'll stick with.
How I set goals.
I usually start off my making a broad "I want" statement. Like "I want to be healthy." Then I develop a list of two or three goals for each statement that, if I reach, will get me closer to getting what I ultimately want.
Finances
Goal 1: Have an emergency fund of $15,000. This amount should allow me to pay my bills for at least 6 months if I were to suddenly get laid off. I'm pretty much starting at zero here, so I have a long way to go.
Goal 2: Pay off my main credit card. I want to be debt free by 2011 (not counting student loans). To do this, I have to pay off a little over $12,000 between my credit cards and my car loan. Even though the car loan has the higher interest rate of the three, there's a prepayment penalty, so I'm pretty much stuck paying the whole thing no matter when I pay it off.
Health:
Goal 1: Run a 10k. I ran my first 5k last fall and, although it was a struggle, it was a great self-esteem booster. I'm finding that reaching goals has quite a snowball effect. It makes you want to achieve greater and greater things. I've been quite lazy this winter and I'm sure I've lost some of the endurance that I was able to achieve last fall. I'm heading to a gym with an indoor track tonight to see where I'm at. This week my goal is to do: Monday 3k, Thursday 4k, and Friday 4k.
Goal 2: Eat more raw fruits and veggies at every meal. This is me basically trying to trick my brain. I've had the goals of eating better and losing weight for what seems like forever and I have reached it at times, but none of the improvements have been permanent. I'll eat healthy for a couple of months and then one cheat day becomes two, which becomes three, and you can figure out the rest. Now I'm taking it a meal at a time. I figure that if I force myself to think about each meal and how much of it is made up of raw fruits and veggies, it will cause me to think about what I'm eating more often and I will eat healthier.
Goal 3: No coffee after 5pm. I'm a caffeine junky. I specifically love Americanos and it doesn't help that my girlfriend works for Starbucks. Unfortunately, I'm finding that as I get older, caffeine is keeping me up later and later. I used to be able to sit and study in a coffee shop all night, drinking bottomless cups of coffee, and then go home and fall right asleep. Nowadays, if I have a tall Americano at 8pm, I have trouble sleeping at midnight. So I'm switching to tea at 5pm and I'll see how that goes.
I think all of these are doable and don't require drastic lifestyle changes or punishment. I want to create goals that will positively impact my life, but also ones that I'll stick with.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Taming The Spending Beast
My budget has gotten pretty tight recently, now that I've resumed paying back my student loans. At this moment, I cannot say with confidence that getting my MBA will be beneficial to my salary-earning potential as most jobs out there require something called "experience", whatever that is.
To be able to pay all the bills and still save money, I've had to cut back considerably on frivolous purchases. Instead of just making a temporary adjustment, I'm viewing this required change as an opportunity to examine my spending behaviors to find out why I buy the things I do and if those purchases can be curbed. For example, growing up I was a huge music fan, and I got into the habit of purchasing a new CD or record almost every week. Nowadays, I don't really care about the "next big thing", and I find myself listening to the same five or six artists 90% of the time with the other 10% filled in with a mixture of other stuff that I have. Now, I only venture into a record store when I know exactly what I want instead of aimlessly walking around the shop looking for something to buy.
To be able to pay all the bills and still save money, I've had to cut back considerably on frivolous purchases. Instead of just making a temporary adjustment, I'm viewing this required change as an opportunity to examine my spending behaviors to find out why I buy the things I do and if those purchases can be curbed. For example, growing up I was a huge music fan, and I got into the habit of purchasing a new CD or record almost every week. Nowadays, I don't really care about the "next big thing", and I find myself listening to the same five or six artists 90% of the time with the other 10% filled in with a mixture of other stuff that I have. Now, I only venture into a record store when I know exactly what I want instead of aimlessly walking around the shop looking for something to buy.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
I love RSS, but...
I'm an avid blog reader and I love to use an aggregator such as bloglines.com to read all my favorites in one place. I was looking over my list of blogs recently and I realized that the majority of them are about "stuff" a.k.a. things I don't need. I've decided a purgin' is in order.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Winter Jams
I'm very seasonal when it comes to the music I listen to. Summer time means straight forward rock 'n' roll, usually with a southern tinge. Winter is inevitably of the mellow, folky, singer songwriter type with some jazz thrown in for good measure.
Here are the 5 albums I'm digging this winter:
1. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
2. Daniel Martin Moore - Stray Age
3. Bonnie "Prince" Billie - The Letting Go
4. Patty Griffin - A Kiss In Time
5. Bowerbirds - Hymns For A Dark Horse
Here are the 5 albums I'm digging this winter:
1. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
2. Daniel Martin Moore - Stray Age
3. Bonnie "Prince" Billie - The Letting Go
4. Patty Griffin - A Kiss In Time
5. Bowerbirds - Hymns For A Dark Horse
Shivering In A Starbucks
Right now I am holed up in the Madeira Starbucks wasting a few hours as I catch up with the internet. This 'bucks has a lot of windows and a lot of in-and-out traffic, contributing to an uncomfortably low temperature in the store.
One of the five tabs I have open in my browser at the moment is www.solbeam.com. Sol is a world traveler aka vagabonder who left her dotcom job back in 2001 to travel the world and has been blogging her experiences for eight years now. I'm envious of her life of travel, but I know I could have done the same thing if I truly wanted to back then. I don't know why, but I've been bitten by the travel bug recently. Something is calling me to see the world. How I make that happen at this point is still under question.
One of the five tabs I have open in my browser at the moment is www.solbeam.com. Sol is a world traveler aka vagabonder who left her dotcom job back in 2001 to travel the world and has been blogging her experiences for eight years now. I'm envious of her life of travel, but I know I could have done the same thing if I truly wanted to back then. I don't know why, but I've been bitten by the travel bug recently. Something is calling me to see the world. How I make that happen at this point is still under question.
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