Last week, for New Years, I decided to relive my old pushup days—this time, in a private jet terminal in Miami.
Well—I got regulated in the comments
Sure, I was just trying to show a cool shot. But the beauty of the internet and social media—even though that picture is still totally awesome—-is that we can harness the collective knowledge of the world to improve ourselves. And our triceps.
Hack the System has let me connect with awesome readers like you. And here’s something I find fascinating: Over the past few years, I’ve made my biggest strides not from reading more books — but by learning from conversations with people like you.
And just like I hope that you find my adventures interesting, I’m genuinely interested in your adventures as well.
So fill me in: What are your biggest goals for 2014?
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Do you want to lose weight or get stronger?
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Hey, maybe you’d like to find a new/better relationship?
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How about learning a new language or picking up an interesting skill?
Let me know in the comments.
I’ll read every response and help out where I can.
Then, on Thursday, I’ll share some of your best responses.
Note: If over 30 people post comments on the site, I’ll post the second half my 2013 Year in Review — and Goals and Plans for 2014. Unfiltered. So make sure you head over to the comments and list your goals for 2014.
Looking forward to hearing from you 🙂
{ 56 comments… }
It seems I’m a bit late to this party, but I’ll post some aspirations for this year.
1. Run the Beijing Great Wall half marathon with my wife.
2. Complete one cycle of T25 workouts
3. Cycle 2000 miles
4. Increase my salary by 20% through a new job.
5. Spend 1 day per month with each of my 4 kids, doing only what they want.
6. Compete in a WSOP event.
I moved my wife and I down to Tampa, FL to begin a career as a financial advisor – so my goal is to exceed the salary of my former corporate job by the end of the year.
I tried multiple goals last year and it fell apart. This year I want real sustainable progress so I’m going with replacing my habit of defensiveness with one of openness.
My goals this year are to:
1. Start a side business to earn $1000 within 3 months using skills I already have to crush my student loan debt by turning that skill into a world class product within 1-2 years.
2. To have a casual conversation with a native speaker in russian within 1 year by learning the language and reading russian translated comics.
3. To go on a 2-3 week trip by train to Portland, OR within 6 months with my mate to see if we ant to move there within a year.
1. Run 3 half marathons. 2. Find a new relationship. 3. Study abroad. 4. Volunteer at least once a month.
In 2014 I will:
*Moderate my drinking
*Live with less anxiety
*Start my blog about the underappreciated things in life
*Resurrect Firstrategies, my consulting business
* Continue to hone my cooking skills
*Open an online store to sell my collectible LP’s and 45’s
*Practice living in the way of Kainos Ktisis: as a new creation, not a renewed old one
It’s pretty inspiring to see the goals everyone is putting forth here in the comments. I hope everyone is able to achieve them.
as for me, I only want a few things, but they’re big ones:
– for my side business to generate enough income for it to become my primary income (performance tea for athletes)
– to get in the best shape of my life
– global adventure(s)
I will start a business that will free me from time spent worrying and student loan debt.
My intention for this year is to be present to whatever I may be doing in any given moment, and to be open to whatever arises. This includes all the things that push the edge of my competencies, in work and play. It also means not giving in to procrastination, which will be the hardest part, while allowing relaxation when necessary.
1. Starting a new online business that will generate $3,000-$5,000+/month
2. Reading 48 books
3. Benchpressing 150+ lbs
1. I want to be able to have full control of my productivity. I often find myself watching motivational videos to get myself off my lazy behind and get stuff done, but the effect of them wears off after about an hour, and I’m back to square one! Essentially, I need to be productive regardless of my mood.
2. I would like to have a romantic relationship. Since I’m still in the British equivalent of high school, I realise that finding the time to pursue this could prove difficult, but there’s gotta be a way to make it happen.
Love your work Maneesh, keep inspiring us HtS readers!
Yo Maneesh…always love what you have going on. 2014 is like this for me..
1. Set up a Clean Water Charity Project for a village in Ghana and take a bunch of friends there with me
2. Hike the Camino de Santiago and raise money for the project in Ghana
3. Re-Launch my blog and attract 1000 subscribers this year
4. In Feb. I am speaking at the National Collegiate Leadership Conference at the Univ. of Arizona….my goal is to get my first standing ovation!!!
5. Start a new personal relationship.
Thanks for setting the bar bro!!! Love ya
1) improve my Chinese
2) become an intermediate guitar player
3) read 1 book a month
1. Increase stamina
2. Learn to code
3. Larn other marketable skill
For 2014, I want the government to do what its supposed to do, like clean up waste water, and the REST of the pseudo-overblown government/IRS stay out of everyone’s personal and small business life!! I want everyone I know to be less materialistic and externalized. I want religions to stop fighting among one other. I want corporations to care more about their employees than their high profits. I want everyone to wake up and realize how polluted and dangerous our food supply has become and stop trusting labels – demand better food. I want the pharmaceutical industry to quit addicting people and start healing them … yes, even if it puts them out of business to do so. Oh yes, and I’d like to lose 10 pounds.
1. Speak Italian fluently (without hesitations, good vocabulary etc)
2. Get a second job working with Italians
3. Start running twice per week
I have loads more habits to change and other goals to implement, but first I’ll start on these.
1. Write 1 blog post per week
2. Write for an hour daily
3. Bulk up to 80+kg
4. Pay off my debt
5. Increase income
I’m declaring 2014 the first of ‘the after years’. People say they will pursue their dreams ‘after’ – after the kids go to college, after they save enough money, after they retire. Well, while you’re waiting for your after, the fact is, there could be a bus revving its engine around the corner, waiting to squash all your good intentions. So, this year, I will monitize my passions, coach and speak to as many people as possible to encourage them to pursue their goals and believe in themselves. And, most importantly, encourage people to believe that we all, as individuals, have the power to make the world a better place to be! That would be a very good use of 365 days, I think!!
My goal for this year (and next year) is developing integrity (sticking to my commitments and promises) and focusing more on important things.
Happy New Year all!!
For me it is get my abs and cardio fitness back
Learn Ballroom dancing with my wife.
Read ALL of the business & self development books I have lying around.
Ramp up my business.
Publish my first book.
Have fun.
Stress less.
Love more.
three focuses this year:
Health — mental and physical
Family –make my relationships more meaningful
Finances– make and spend more thoughtfully
I want these to be my priority and not allow other responsibilities to overpower them.
Mine are…
1) Learn to code. My job, industry and future demands it.
2) Writing every morning for five minutes. I have been timing myself right after a shower. My head is clear. Even a few sentences spewed out in five minutes helps me clear my head for the day.
3) No eating out during the weekdays – this is probably the hardest one for me. I love eating. There is a strip mall with tons of food places right by my job. I LOVE food. But when I checked my Mint last month, I went over $400 eating out alone! Not that I regret it – but I’d like to enjoy food that I take time to prepare for a change.
That’s it. Want to keep things simple and (presumably) achievable. Happy new year, Maneesh!
I’m currently traveling SouthEast Asia (just got to Malaysia!) after working my butt off in Australia for the past 2 years!
I’ve paid off all my debt (school loans, credit cards), and now I want to develop a remote income so I can travel forever. 🙂
Or at least choose where I want to work.
I’ve learned so far that it’s more difficult to work and travel than you would think! Not because of the lack of resources or internet (in fact, it’s better than at home many times!), but because there are so many amazing things to see and do you really have to develop the discipline to set ‘work hours’ for yourself.
Also…. my lifeline, my livelihood, my MacbookPro is DYING and when things like that break down on the road it’s always a bit harder (and not in the budget) to get them fixed.
Any tips for Mac repair in Southeast Asia? LOL
Minimize material things.
Better personal relationship with people.
Start & grow bridal/alteration business.
In 2014, I want to build a blog and grow it to 5000 subscribers. I also want to write my own book, get the body of my dreams, and change one habit every month. At the end of the year, I want to celebrate my success by taking a trip to Las Vegas 🙂
Piggybacking on previous habits, my two main goals for this year are increased fitness and supercharging my career as a designer. I blogged about it more here: http://blog.chloefan.com/2013/12/a-time-for-speeding-up/
Here are some goals for my 2014
1. Get my abs to where they look like abs without me flexing (may or may not require hair grooming)
2. Work harder on my soon-to-be long distance relationship
3. Reach out to more old friends that I miss and lost touch with mainly cuz I went away
4. Make videos as a way to launch/develop my pronunciation business
5. Perfect my Portuguese (in Brazil!)
2.
My 2014 Goals:
1. Sell my leather goods product
2. Sell my Fine Art Photography
3. Get my first paid marketing consulting client
4. Build a networking habit
5. Become a Minimalist
Read every day. Volunteer for a project (several ideas at the moment). Watch the past 10 best picture movies at the oscars. Learn to teach English. Continue to hit all my lift app habits every day.
My goals for 2014 are:
1- Full fund my Africa documentary
( igg.me/at/iquit)
2- Get it to a travel channel
3- Start film school
4- Run a Triathlon
5- Find a way to help others regularly
One of my goals is to fall in love with the process. I’ve read books like The Slight Edge and the Power of Habit, but I find myself daydreaming about the results rather than the process of doing the work that produces those results. Getting locked in and staying locked in on a daily basis, falling in love with process, learning what techniques, attitudes or formulas I can follow to stay in that productivity lane is really what the goal is. Once I can do that, the sky is the lmit, but I’m turning 30. Smoething has got to change. Calling on Maneesh and the other readers, I need help on this one.
I read Leo’s Zen Habits, so this year instead of resolutions I am focusing on 12 habits (one for each month) to have at the end of 2014. For January I am working on exercising my two wonderful doggies EVERYDAY NO EXCUSES.
Other things I’d like to work on are:
-increasing my reading rate by not sub-vocalizing
-increasing my typing rate to 120 WPM
-spending sufficient amounts of time in my veggie garden to get a big harvest
Right now, my biggest problem is consistency (or lack of it . . .), so once I figure that out I will move on to “bigger” goals.
Save $500/month towards my goal of leaving for an epic adventure in 2015. I started mid-November 2013, and have started writing about it on my website where I will give a monthly accounting of how much money I have saved and how I did it. By publicly stating I am going to do something I hope to have some accountability to myself, while inspiring others and showing it’s easy to save money for travel if you make it a priority and get creative. I’ve never been so public with my finances, either.
Last year I lost 133 pounds, ran 658 miles, spoke in 6 countries, became completely supported by my online business, our family got one-way tickets for our move to Hawaii in April. This year I will lose 48 more pounds, move to Hawaii, double my online business and help at least 10 people become supported by their online dreams!
My goals for the year of 2014:
1. Sell all my stuff in storage on Craigslist/eBay
2. Travel to Peru for an Ayahuasca ceremony
3. Complete the entire Duolingo Spanish course prior to the Peru trip
4. Compete at least 3 times in a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament.
5. Get at least two more stripes on my Jiu-Jitsu blue belt.
6. Read 36 books for the year (or 3 books a month)
7. Learn to speed read
8. Further my goals of creating my own business and traveling the world!
My goals for 2014:
Go to the gym 3 times a week
Learn Italian to an intermediate level (I’ve just begun learning how to pronounce it and it’s very eye opening!)
Learn more about psychology, hence the fact I’m taking a course on it next semester.
Be more concise about things (I tend to ramble haha)
Improvement and educating myself in any way I can
Lastly, but most importantly, work hard and be happy.
Develop storytelling skill
Be comfortable to talk around people
Do yoga regularly
Play guitar and be able to improvise
Pretty simple goals, because I’m in my late 50’s. The more extreme “look at what I did” goals are actually part of the younger years, and I already took care of a lot of those. (Yes, it was fun. No, I’m not judging. Yes, you absolutely should do some of that just to realize what you can do). So my goals are..
1. make health more of a concern (drop some of the belly, do some activity/goal to keep the muscles moving like another sprint tri, or backpacking trip, or something like that).
2. My consulting biz is 20 years old, and currently a solo operation. Need to change that up- hire staff, or sell and merge with another firm, or finally find that “muse” idea that I can set up and enjoy.
3. Need to do something different for contribution- local politics isn’t cutting it anymore, and is more of a rear-guard, reactive role. Need to figure out a more proactive one.
4. Hmmmm…. fun goal for year….. need to think about that a little more. So many things in life are fun; one of the above goals may even fufill this one.
BTW- where is that push-up form bible? I think I do them same as you did in the pic…
1. Go to Muay Thai or gym 5 times a week.
2. Compete in my 1st Muay Thai fight.
3. Perform stand-up comedy once a month.
4. Read 1 book a month
5. Travel out of state at least 4 times.
6 month goals that should occur in the same month:
3. Move to San Fran
2. Get a job as a physical therapist in San Fran
1. Rent out my south Florida town house
Eat only the foods my body wants. Learn to care for myself first. Continue to learn Ho’oponopono.
– Exercise and Meditate every morning
– Finish Law School with awesome results
– After that: improve my Arabic and pick up Polish (the language, that is)
Jacob: You’ve done your part for number 2 on your list just by using the word fortnight
1. Gym three times a week
2. Be cultured once a fortnight
3. Read one book a month
Maneesh, at least you are brave enough to let the interwebs judge 😀
Let’s see, goals for 2014 that I am willing to share publically:
1) Get body fat % down to 15% (10% would be better).
2) Have at least 1 social gathering at my house every month (yes, I am a bit of a recluse).
And then some financial and other goals 😀
#1 will be tackled through improved nutrition programs (I have many to pick from; will do one at a time for a month and see what the change is).
#2 I’ve got 2 down for month 1 😀
Still busy with my 2014 planning (loafed too much when holiday started) but that’s OK since work only starts on Wednesday!
As a student, I need to sleep more and work harder. I spend too much time on facebook and uselessly procrastinating and then I work at nights and wake up tired – it seriously has to stop! Somehow the more I read about how to stop procrastination the harder it seems.
So a normal sleeping and working routine would be my goal number one right now.
Top priority: become extremely conversationally fluent an intermediate level of Japanese, including master all the 2,136 essential Kanji. Right now I am barely scratching the surface with 5 months in. So I will take your, Maneesh’s habit building posts/advice for constructing daily italki conversations and studying habit building.
Second: continue to build upon my gym and diet habit to obtain the best physical shape of my life!
I have been doing freelance WP consulting as a side business for the last 5 years and this year I want to get away from client work and develop my WP based analytics and dashboard platform and grow my company out of it.
I need to get a minimum viable product out to start the growth so I can quit my FT job, or find some clients who will foot the bill as I build it out.
1. Straight A’s in C# Programming, Calculus II, and Modern Japanese I.
2. Read 12 books this year… At least. What I want to learn is how to read one book a week.
3. Do the HIIT Training challenge at Bodyrock.tv. Lose at least 15 pounds in this month’s time.
4. Decide on and transfer to a college or university.
I’ve never really had or followed goals but in the last year I somehow acquired a surge of motivation that made me realise what I wanted to do with my life. It’s become clear to me that the career path of being a graphic designer is not my true calling. So this year I finally have goals to set me on my new journey! Some of these include launching my online brand of cosmetics, becoming healthier, keeping an active blog and improving my Japanese language skills. It’s on!
Last year I started chose frugal living to deal with my debt. A year on am still in debt BUT much less debt. This year, I want to clear all my loans and make some money on top. 2014 GOAL: Make MORE money!
This year I won’t set any goal. I’ve just decided my proper direction and I’ll focus on progression.
My main strategies to keep on the adequate path are:
1.- Developing systems.
2.- Implement key metrics. As Deming said “You can’t improve what you don’t measure”.
3.- Change for itself is useless. Experiment instead.
4.- Selection. Not all the steps are equally important! Apply the Pareto law.
Keep progressing.
Hey Maneesh! Awesome picture above 😉
My top goals:
– Save up $5,000 for braces
– Do 50 website projects at our company
– Bring in $200k of profit to our company (Mobile App business)
– Have a $3,000 monthly income
These are all defined more elsewhere, I didn’t want to clog up your post.
Enjoy 2014!
I have 3 banner goals for 2014:
– Finishing and distributing my documentary film A Man Called Bronco (about a former mayor who survived two mafia attempts to kill him, Bronco saved his own bodyguards both times)
– Making a coffee dropshipping site.
– Getting Fit.
I follow my goals using an Achievement System by Darren Hardy, publisher of SUCCESS magazine.
I just need 3 things this year
1. Buy a house
2.Buy an BMW RS1200 Adventure motorcycle
3. Set up auto income stream and ride off to see the world.
Biggest Goals:
Lose weight, finish my first documentary film and travel with it to a lot of film festivals, improve my guitar skills and launch a start up I’ve started working on last year.
Embarrassingly I’ll admit that finding a new relationship is on my list this year!