“Goal: Dry January,” you say?

Let me stop you there.

No.

That is that nonsense out of the way.

January the first is my Mum’s birthday. Happy Birthday Mum!

Soon she will join us here for lunch. As I type, my fantastic wife is cooking up a storm in the kitchen. Beef Wellington, accompanied by this sumptuous, velvety Rioja from Muga. This is a beautiful wine. Buy some and enjoy it. In February, if you must.

Last year I wrote about my goals and how I was filling notebooks with them. I had goals, objectives, sub-goals, milestones, action plans, all sorts of things intended to keep me focused and ‘on mission’.

How did I do?

Well, regrettably, I am not 4 stone lighter. For a while, I was a stone lighter at one point but now I’m probably a pound lighter. Not a dazzling success. Must do better.

Single-figure handicap golfer? Nope. Not yet. Playing off 12, which is an improvement. Good progress.

Publishing third novel? Nope. Not published the debut yet. Unacceptable.

I could go on for pages. Overall, I did reach several of my goals, but I did so at the expense of the core ones, the ones that I really wanted to achieve.

There is danger in over-complicating things, or being too ambitious. The older I get, the more I learn that multi-tasking is a word that means “doing lots of things poorly”.

This year – I’m not filling notebooks with goals, milestones, measures etc. This year I’m keeping it simple and I’m going public.

  1. Publish a novel.
  2. Lose 2 stone.
  3. Buy a company.

What are your goals for 2017?