New Year - New Resolutions

It's New Year's Eve, time for those resolutions. Maybe you're dusting off the same resolutions you have every year, maybe there's something new. If you're like me, you want to accomplish so much in a year that you can't possibly get it done, get frustrated and don't stick to them. Not this year, this year I have a plan. It's the 5 year plan and it's the perfect year for me to start this.

I'm 25, in 5 years I'll be 30. Wow. There's so much I want to do before I hit that milestone. So here's what I'm going to do. I am going to compile a list of everything that I want to accomplish in these next 5 years: things like finish my degree, start a family, own my own house.

Go ahead, make your list too.

Got it? Okay. Good.

Next, you plan out the next 5 years. Now, this isn't written in stone, it's on paper. Flexible.

Take your list and map it out. My degree will take 2 years to finish, family will probably happen during or just after that, and finally the house will realistically happy after school and before family.

Break those down even farther: Make a graph showing the 5 years and broken down into the 4 seasons plus the holidays. So like this:

Finish it up by planning out 2 things per season, with probably 1 or 2 if you feel like you can handle it in the holiday's slot. So for 2 years, one of each of those slots will be degree for me.

By the end of it, you will have a nice little map, go ahead and stick it somewhere you will see it a lot to remind you of what you want to do. Don't be scared to use free time to also prepare for upcoming projects. You have a big convention coming up? Start pinching those pennies now. Most of all, have fun with it and remember to be flexible but not too flexible. You don't want to push everything off until your last year where you will drive yourself insane or break your back trying to carry all of what you want to do. Say in 2016 you're coming up on a big project, but have a different project planned for 2017, you want to do the 2017 one first, a lot has changed in a year. Go ahead and switch them. Have fun with it.