WRITE TEAM: Want to avoid being a couch-sitter? Set some goals

Thank God 2020 is winding down! Rough year for everybody. Me, I count a lost tooth and a brown recluse spider bite on my leg as two more great memories of 2020. Pro tip: Don’t get bitten by a brown recluse spider. It’s not worth the glory.

At the top of every year, the Volker family takes a little family retreat. The past couple of years, we went to an abbey that let us rent out part of a ranch house on its hilltop property. This year, I’m stoked. We’re going to a neat little cabin in Dubuque for a winter weekend. Right now I’ve got a photo of it as my computer screensaver.

Hopefully it will snow a bit and we can cross-country ski in the woods. Then have some hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps in front of the fire.

We play games and hang out. Snacks are big. But our real business is goal-setting. Each year, we set goals we want to achieve in the coming year. This is something that you might try – what kinds of goals do you want to achieve in 2021?

Happiness experts tell us that happiness isn’t so much a function of having stuff as it is being fully engaged in new and challenging experiences. So goals can make you really very happy – try something new for 2021! Learn to play a musical instrument or do a new sport. Read a challenging book – better yet, re-read a classic that you had to read in high school. You might be surprised at how your “Adult You” now likes it.

Goals can be broken into categories: financial, intellectual, spiritual, professional, civic, physical, household repair. You can think of your own categories – should you say a prayer each day? Are there any books you should read? Do you want to run a 5K? Do you need to landscape the backyard? Do you want to learn to swing dance?

Pro tip: It’s important to be very specific and to stick a clock on each goal – what’s the deadline going to be? It’s also important to only bite off as many as you can really do. Maybe eight should be the max, maybe 12.

The coronavirus really messed up some of my goals. Other goals have worked out. I’ve been doing more regular prayer. I’ve been regularly playing the piano – so much so that I’m pretty much over my piano-phobia. I did a lot of household fixups. Plus more.

I’ve been doing this since I was in high school. A guy came and gave a talk about goal-setting to our religion class. He handed out little cards for us to use, with a nifty plastic protector. I jotted down some goals and stuck it in my wallet. I could refer to it.

For me, this seems to work. Make it a point to have your goals handy so you can keep up with it. Mine are on a document on my computer’s desktop. It’s OK to change or revise them if needed. I had to do this in 2020.

Final “pro tip” for today: Start thinking about your goals now. This will give you time for thoughts to percolate, and you’ll have goals that are really valuable to you. Last-minute goal-setting is nuts.

Time flies fast, fast, fast! Life goes by fast, fast, fast! You only have so much time to do stuff. And you want to do the important stuff.  Making goals and referring to them is a great way to increase your knowledge, your abilities and live life more fully. Without these landmarks, it’s just too easy to live each day and end up being an expert couch-sitter.

• Todd Voker lives in Ottawa with his wife and son, and they enjoy reading, kayaking, hiking, tennis and camping. He’s a lifelong learner with books in his hands. He can be reached at tsloup@shawmedia.com.