Happy New Year

It's a new year. Welcome! Wishing you the best for 2011! (Ouch, busted: I initially wrote 2010, thank god this is not a type writer).

Any resolutions? Here are mine (beta):
- Launch my company
- Launch the local job website that I am currently working at
- Get some exercises in my daily routine to train my back muscles
- Launch new blogs, for fun and learning

S.M.A.R.T
In my language we have an acronym called SMART. it translates quite reasonably to English, and I always thought that's where it originates, but I'm not sure anymore. Anyways:

SMART = 
Specific
Measurable
Acceptable
Reasonable
Time-bound

Targets are SMART when they follow all of these guidelines. A SMART guideline is more motivating and easier to monitor and evaluate. Even the process trying to make a target SMART is beneficial: it encourages you to really think about your targets and look at them from different angles.

Problems (un-smartness)
My resolutions are not fully SMART. Are they time-bound? Well, perhaps coarsely because of the unwritten law that resolutions apply to the coming year only. But they definitely could improve time-bound wise. 'Launch new blogs': this lacks specificity. In an earlier I wrote I was thinking about 'one blog a month'. But is that reasonable? It makes no sense setting goals if they are not reasonable. This can even be demotivating.

My resolutions revisited
- I'll launch my company and will turnover (excluding VAT) 4k euro in the first year.
- We will launch the local jobsite in February, including 20 jobs, having 1k hits in March.
- Have a daily 15-min exercise routine running by the end of January to train my back muscles
- I will launch a new blog every two months, and post at least 30 posts per blog

Sounds perhaps less inspiring, with all the numbers and stuff, but makes it harder to cheat :-D

Meta
So this my last post in the December blog-month series. This means less posts on this blog, and more focused ones. So no more sandcastle building videos ;)