It’s hard to believe how fast time goes by, isn’t it?  If you don’t master the practice of setting goals and striving to achieve them, you will fall well short of your potential.  If I can be candid with everybody here, I’m struggling a bit more than I have in the past with motivation.  I’ve worked for so many years on “my” company and now it’s owned by another.  My efforts are well-rewarded, but it’s still harder to get to that intangible feeling of deep, personal motivation than it was previously.  I’ve decided to combat this by taking this year to think about what I want to LEARN rather than what I want to achieve.  I’m passionate about education.  I really believe in continually learning new things and improving ones self.  At this juncture, I have a great opportunity to learn using somebody else’s money (at work at least)!  So, here is what I want to focus on in 2017 :

• Grow substantially on my journey to becoming a truly great leader
• Discover/create at least 5 management techniques that are uniquely fitted to me and implement them
• Apply the above to both home and work

Goals have to be able to be measured.  It’s standard practice.  All of these objectives do not, in and of themselves, make a goal. The challenge is to make up some goals that will help one meet these objectives I have stated.

Goal Number 1 : Read 9 books on leadership in 2017.

Goal Number 2 : Complete at least 1 formal training on leadership.

Goal Number 3 : Create a weekly leadership/management assessment for myself by April 1st, 2017.  Use the assessment weekly throughout the year to gauge my progress.

Goal Number 4 : Read 3 books on management in 2017.

Goal Number 5 : Complete at least 1 formal training in management

Goal Number 6 : Create a feedback question list and ask these questions to those I lead on how I am doing 4 times in the year and track the responses.

This blog is mainly supposed to be about personal finances.  I will lay down some goals in that arena as well.

Goal Number 1 : Invest 30% of my net worth into investment vehicles that are no longer than 10 years to return.

Goal Number 2 : Invest 30% of my net worth into investment vehicles that are no longer than 5 years to return.

Goal Number 3 : Invest 20% of my net worth into investments that are no longer than 2 years to return.

Goal Number 4 : Invest 20% of my net worth in highly liquid vehicles which can be returned to cash within 5 days.

Achieve a blended rate of 7.5% returns per year across my investments.

I know this is a bit vague.  Next I need to assess where my current investments are to track my starting progress towards my goals.  I still have way too much money returning 1-2% in highly liquid forms.