Part of living an intentional life is looking ahead at where you’d like to be and taking steps to get closer to those goals vs looking in the rearview mirror thinking “woulda, coulda, shoulda”.  Life is an iterative process and those who act intentionally will be more likely to live the life they want.   

This article is broken down into 3 parts

• Goal setting

• Action steps

• 2022 Predictions

 2022 Goals

Always the overachiever, I don’t just do one “New Year’s Resolution”,  I do 3-5 every year.  My criteria are similar to the S.M.A.R.T. Goals system often used in management. (I started doing this before I knew what smart goals were)

 What are S.M.A.R.T. Goals you ask? They are goals that are:

S - Specific

M - Measurable

A - Achievable

R - Relevant

T - Time Bounded

Here are a couple notes I have about the more formal S.M.A.R.T. goals method.  

*While these goals should be Achievable, don’t lowball yourself.  The point is to set ambitious goals that you’ll have to stretch yourself to hit.  If you fall a little short that’s ok, you’ll still make progress toward the outcome you desire.  Too many people set the bar too low and make little to no progress toward the future end state.  

**Not all worthy goals are easy to measure

-Goals like spending more quality time with family or living more intentionally are hard to quantify

That being said you can still take specific actions within a period of time to help you reach these goals, so I still find this system useful.  

 2022 Goals

1. Lose 20lbs (lost 30 this year)

2. 2x Amazon sales

3. Travel more

4. Invest $20K new money

5. Grow my website to 1K visitors per month

 Action steps

As we talked about earlier, goals don’t mean much if you don’t take action. Below is my action plan for each goal outlined above.  

1. Lose 20lbs (lost 30 this year)

   1. Dry January (no drinking)

   2. No snacking after 5pm dinner

   3. Work out 6X per week, 3 cardio and 3 weight training

2. 2x Amazon sales

   1. Target higher volume products

   2. Post 4 product reviews per month

3. Travel more

   1. Plan trip to Equator

   2. Plan trip to East coast

   3. Plan trip to West coat

4. Invest $20K new money

   1. Invest $1,667/ per month

   2. Funnel higher % of Amazon sales commissions to achieve this

5. Grow my website to 1K visitors per month

   1. Post 1 article per week

   2. Send monthly newsletter to email subscribers

   3. Explore ways to expand social media presence

As you can see, I’ve outlined specific goals then taken the next step and outline actionable steps to take to achieve these goals.  It’s important to try and keep your action steps in the realm of things you can control or do.  For example, saying I want 10K subscribers to my YouTube channel isn’t really something you can directly make happen. However, if you said “I want to make & upload 1 quality video per week”, that’s definitely something you can make happen to move you closer to your end goal of 10K subscribers.  

Wish me luck and I look forward to giving you an update at the end of the year with how I did!  

 2022 Predictions

After reading the book Fooled By Randomness I realized how much of a role chance has in our lives.  It’s easy to look back and say “well of course that’s what happened, that’s the obvious outcome”. Our ability to predict future is actually quite abysmal, that’s partly why the average trader does worse than the market average.  Things aren’t so predicatable as they seem.   

 In an effort to keep myself humble, I make 3 predictions every New Year and reflect on them at the end of the year.  Frequently, my predictions are comically wrong.  Sometimes, I’m lucky.  I’d say my average is probably about as good as the average “Expert” that is paraded across the news channels on a regular basis… which is to say not very good.  

2022 Predictions

• S&P500 will hit 5,500:

  • As of January 1st 2022 the S&P500 is 4,783.50, which means I’m predicating a 14.98% increase over 2022.  Now I could give you an elaborate explanation with line charts and diagrams with hexagons to justify my reasoning, but it wouldn’t make my prediction any more accurate.  It comes down to my gut feeling based on the following.  

  • We’ve printed a lot of money and it is still working its way thru the financial system

  • Inflation will push prices up

  • This is approximately half the 1083 pts / 29.3% increase we saw in 2021

• Housing will go up around 7% nationally in 2022:

  • This is a straight up gut feel, I think increasing interest rates will put downward pressure on prices as buyers have to pay a larger % of their monthly payment to the bank vs the home seller.  However, inflation of wages may help offset this some.  This is significantly lower than the approximately 19% increase we saw in 2021 you’ll note the article I linked is predicting a 5.7% increase for 2022.  I’ve seen estimates range from 13.9% all the way down to 3%.  The general consensus is there will be some kind of continued upward trend just not as much as 2021.  

• United States will get involved in another war:

  • This is a more controversial prediction of mine but between the China/Taiwan escalations, and the Russia/ Ukraine escalations I predict we will either be a direct supporter or directly intervene in a conflict in 2022.  With our troops out of Afghanistan the resources can be allocated to another conflict.  I would prefer we don’t so hopefully this prediction is wrong.  

“Life is like steering a boat, the currents will push you back and forth, but if you keep your eye on your goals you’ll eventually get there” -Me

Alright that’s it for this article.  Go out there and make 2022 the year you want it to be! 

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