Update: Thanks to Henrik for noticing that the title of the blog entry was ‘….2007’ and not ‘…2008’ as it should be.. Shame on me.

I was never much into New Year resolutions, often they sounded as bad excuses for delaying something you already could get started with, such as “In 2008 I’m going to stop smoking” (This was just an example, I never ever smoked). Why wait until 2008, when you can start NOW. Anyway, I want to setup some goals for myself in 2008 and why not share them with you. This also puts some pressure on me.

Sure many of these can be taken as New Year resolutions as nothing stops me moving forward with the goals NOW. I do believe it is important to have goals for the future, as long as they are realistic, so if I say ‘Goal for 2008 is to get into space’ then I will probably have to disappoint myself (So I will wait with that till 2009).

Goals for 2008

Living

A reminder to some Germans: Live your Life. (They often swap them, due to how you pronounce v and f).

• Get more out of life.
  I spend way too much time here in the home office. Need to get this changed and also a good way to get out and meet people. Some of the goals mentioned below (fitness & work) should help with this. Next goal is also related to this.
• Courses
  I feel it would be the right time to look for off line courses here in 2008; maybe it be languages, poker or cooking courses.

Health

What would a New Year Resolution be without this part?

• Get back to fitness.
  I have been pretty lazy and not in the mood for going to the fitness studio for several month now. Don’t know why really, as I miss it. So time to get back going there a few times a week.
• Loose 15 kg.
  More than 15 kg would not hurt but let’s stay realistic. With fitness and changes to what I’m eating this should be possible.
• Walks and cycling.
  Something I did early this year was to do a lot of walks, and I really enjoyed this. Also good for the mind.

Work

The most time consuming part of our life, does it really have to be like that?

• What direction to go?
  I should do some serious thoughts about what direction I want to go for the next years: Games, none games, consoles, hand-held, online…
• Look for new possibilities
  (related to previous goal) Contact more companies for possible freelance projects.
• Update my profile on LinkedIn and XING.
  This way I can grow my professional/work network and hopefully get in touch with people who want to work on new projects with me.

Holidays & visiting friends

Wish I can find the time…

• Visit Denmark.
  I want to visit Denmark at least once in 2008, with the kids. I was not even in Denmark alone in 2007.
• Visit friends outside of Switzerland.
  So this will include: France, UK, Germany and Denmark. This year I only managed to get to France; which I really enjoyed.
• See more of Switzerland
  There are so many nice places here in Switzerland; so I really should get away on some weekends without the kids and just enjoy nature here in Switzerland. So goal is to do that ;-)

Finance

Wish I can find the money…

• Get my VISA card and MasterCard paid off.
  Still not sure if I should pay off the higher VISA card as it is the most expensive one; or take the easier MasterCard and feel some victory in achieving a goal.
• Get my Dell notebook paid off 100%
• Put money on to my pension
  I have been VERY bad with this the last few years and this is one area where I should not lack behind.
• Get money on the savings account for unexpected expenses and holidays

Poker

Time for one of my favorite hobbies (Blogging also counts)

• Play more
  I have had times this year (and the year before) where I was playing several hours pr day. I want to get back to that. The goal is to play at least 10 hours pr week.
• Qualify for tournaments
  When I talk about tournaments here I’m talking about the Sunday tournaments at PokerStars (the $210 tournaments). I don’t have the money to take part in these, so I will have to qualify by satellites.
• Play some live poker
  This is something I didn’t do yet, but there are some great places here in Switzerland, so the goal is to take part in 4-6 Sit and Go tournaments.
• Become SilverStar on PokerStars.
  The goal is to become SilverStar for at least 3 month during the year. This will require more playing than now, possible multi-tabling and higher stakes.
• Eat a lot
  This might sound total silly, but since I will be spending more time playing poker then why not spend it eating :-) I’m here NOT talking about sweets but on fruits and vegetables.

Blogging

I left blogging to the very end; as it is the longest but at the same time not the most important.

• Start at least two new blogs.
  I have already been working on this, setting up design and preparing content.
• Blog more.
  Much more :-) This year I had 66 posts, plan is to triple this (across the different blogs).
• Get more active with HubPages
  I only wrote one Hub on HubPages this year, not really what I planned.
• Social networking
  I have accounts on Facebook, XING, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and a few other but I really don’t use them much. I will concentrate on XING and LinkedIn for growing my professional network.
• Get Alexa down below 100.000.
  Right now it is at 279.590 and has been dropping a lot the recently month, so this should be possible.
• Reduce number of widgets (Clean up in sidebars)
  I’m considering removing BlogRush & MyBlogLog as they generate very little traffic. BlogRush will go first in that case. WidgetBucks might also be removed as I so far only had 2 clicks, so not really worth it.
  PayPerPost have so far earned me a bit more $50 but since Google penalized the blog world (Paid links) my Google PageRank went from 3 to 0, which also means that PayPerPost don’t offer me anything worth writing about (I will NOT write about Russian Dating sites), so this might also go.
  Then there is Text Link Ads; all a nice idea but I just never got any links to show, so unless this changes in the coming month then this will have to go also. This would also put me on good terms with Google so maybe I can get the PageRank back.
  Zilo and their store system are still in my test phase so time will see how that goes.

So how realistic is all this. To get blogging and poker going very well I just need to find some work that pays more but requires less time, not doable really. But we will see; I’m ready for the challenge.

Actually I just need more TIME. Always an issue I have together with a few friends, just an example I got this great book Time Management from the Inside Out but I never felt I had time to read it!!!

The plan is of course to give updates on these goals through the year.