I used to never do new year’s resolutions. I tried a couple times, but my heart was never in it and I never developed a system to help me succeed. So I obviously failed.

In 2015, however, I tried again and succeeded. My goal was to run 1,000 miles, and I succeeded by using the Nike Running app to track my runs and to remind me to get out the door. In 2017 I went a different direction, and made a goal to read 36 books. Using the Goodreads app, I tracked my book progress over the year and ended up reading 41 books.

Having succeeded in completing my singular goals in 2015 and 2017, I decided to go for 2 this year.

Read 50 books

36 books last year was a big step for me. I had probably only read 36 books in the previous 10 years or so, so getting to 3 per month felt awesome. After reading at that pace for a year, I think I can bump it up to something closer to 1 book a week. I’ll shoot for 50 to give myself a tiny bit of wiggle room.

In addition to just reading 50 books, I’d like to also like to make sure I’m not skimping on book size too much. I read very few (meaning 1) books over 500 pages last year, so this year I’m going to shoot for 5 of those 50 books to be 500 pages or more.

There are no other qualifications, besides I must read the entire book. No skimming.

Create and publish something twice a month

Reading has become part of my normal routine, so it doesn’t take quite as much focus for me to execute that goal. So in addition to having a goal focused on consuming and learning, I’m also going to have a goal focused on creating.

There are 2 parts of this goal; creating and publishing. Creating is the part I really care about. I want to make creating a habit in much the way reading became a habit for me last year. Publishing is simply a way of forcing me to bring things to a level of quality that I’m not completely embarrassed by. I’m afraid that if I don’t make whatever I am creating public that I’ll skimp on quality and too often say “good enough”  when in fact the product is crap.

I expect that much of what I create will be blog posts for my company, Redox. But from time to time I’ll write personal posts here, and maybe I’ll even create some music or something different. I haven’t put any restrictions what I have to create.

I’m using the Strides app on my iPhone to track my progress on the second goal. I’ll continue using the Goodreads app for the reading goal since that worked well for me last year.

So that’s it. This blog post is the first of 24 works I will publish this year to meet my goal.