Happy 2013!

Hello, blog readers!  We haven't dropped off the planet; we've just been busy with families, holidays, traveling, and working.  We hope to be back to our regular posting schedule soon, but in the meantime, here's a great how-to post about New Year's resolutions, straight from our archives!!

It's about that time of year that we start to make new resolutions for the new year!I found this while reading a magazine & immediately tore the page out so I could keep it. I've held on to it for four years now and use it whenever I want to set new goals, make new resolutions, set priorities or just figure out what the heck I want!

You Need: A pencil, a paper, a watch/timer and your personal calendar.
You are only allowed three minutes per answer because you don't want to overthink your answers. Write down whatever pops into your mind first. You are looking for bullets, not paragraphs
You should go through this process often. Today's answers might not be next months.
Again, there are no limits or boundaries. Write down whatever comes to your mind, personal or professional as large or small as you imagine.

1. Spend three minutes listing items to answer this question: " By the end of my life, what do I want to have done?"
2. Spend three minutes listing items to answer this question: "By one year from today, what do I want to have done?"
3. Spend three minutes listing items to answer this question: " I just found out I have 30 days to live. What do I want to have experienced in this last month of my life?"
4. Circle the three most important items to you from each of the first three steps. Combine repeated item answers into a single goal.
5. List your top three goals for Steps 1, 2 & 3. You may have fewer than nine goals after combining duplicates into one goal. Now, look at your schedule for the coming week. For each goal you listed, make time on next week's calendar to take a specific action toward accomplishing that coal. Write down the action you will take and specific day & time when you will spend at least an hour working on it.
Goal: ___________________
Action: ___________________
Day/Time: _____________________
6. Be realistic. If you can't easily think of an action to take or don't want to spend an hour to move forward on it, then cross that goal off your list.
7. Now you have your final list of your most important goals, an action to propel you toward each goal and a specific time to take that action. If you crossed a goal off the final list, don't be concerned. It probably wasn't that important to you. (or isn't the biggest priority for right now)
Take a look at the list of all the goals still left. Study it. Search for broader themes about what you want to do next. What do these goals say about who you really are and what you want? Take a wide view of your goals so you can complete the following sentence:
What I want next is........

Sadly I don't have the author's name to this process, but it's taken from the book What I Want Next: 30 Minutes to Reveal Your Future (whatiwantnext.com).
Update, January 2013: The author is Cathy Bonner.