Ask HN: What are your big plans for 2013?

I always start a new pocket moleskine in each new year, and the first page always has my goals for that year. I generally split it up into 3 or 4 business goals, and 3 or 4 personal ones.

I like having them written down somewhere physical because you end up seeing them quite a lot (The moleskine lies on my desk for most of the year), and I tend to keep the notebooks when I'm done (They're small, so it's no big space consumer).

That means that after a few years, you still have the lists and can start to see what sort of things have come up a few times and still not been done (Get fitter...), and how your goals have changed. It's not a big fancy review exercise, more of a nice thing to flick over from time to time.

- Create more application for iphone and android.

- finishing my intern.

- Graduating.

- Take a photo with my parents infront of my university.

I'm not a fan of "New Years Resolutions".

IMHO it's a false point in time to force a process you won't follow through on anyway because the driving factor is the random reality that day on the calendar happened to pass by that we've assigned importance to (i.e. New Year).

That said I believe in constant, on-going goals analysis and review. On a daily basis I review my goals for the day. On a semi-random basis I review my goals for other random-lengths of time. Usually triggered by passing through or letting go of another goal on my roadmap. Meanwhile on a fairly regular basis I review my personal "core goals" and see if my current progress and goals are in alignment. If they're not I either rework my core goals or rework my "working" goals to align. Sometimes I do this on the subway to work and other times on a beach while on vacation.

I think setting goals at the beginning of the year really has no impact on the reality of your life. That said it's not a bad idea to look at your "core" goals. Rather then say "I'll loose 25 lbs this year" say "I want to be healthy for the rest of my life". And then identify some short, mid and long term goals to obtain that overall "core goal".

Often if I find myself overwhelmed by life I will stop and review my "core goals" and make sure everything is in alignment with those. Or I change them to meet what I really want in my life "now". When I was younger I had very different "core goals" then I do now and I'm comfortable that sometime in the next 0 to 24 months those might change as I review what is meaningful and rewarding to me in my life.

As an example my primary goal is to "Live my life in my passion". This has actually been true for most of my life starting sometime while I was in high school. Clearly my "passion" has changed over time but the "core goal" remains the same and drives many of my decisions in my life.

That said some other "core goals" of mine have changed though my life as I've progressed through various phases and transitions in my life. Your "core goals" when you have young children are most likely very different then when they've all moved out and are living their own lives. :-)

Be flexible, be alert and true to yourself, find your "core goals" and then develop your short, mid and long-term goals driven from those. And as always, be willing to change them as you and your life changes.

To think small

Focus on my health.