It’s the season of resolutions, and of course there is no way to be a homo universalis in training, I am going to stay out of the fun-zone of listing everything that I want to accomplish throughout the year.

The problem with trying to do something of everything is the slight inconvenience that you cannot focus everywhere at once. So, this year, I am going to try something a bit different.

You know you know the normal procedure: Write a list of about 253 goals of the coming year, and try to work towards all of these goals all at the same time. Then fail. Hit next new years-celebration. Repeat.

Instead of being stupid like this like I am used to, I have split my resolutions in three sections this year: First and foremost, I have become increasingly fascinated by how the mental game has effects on everything we do. There is no doubt in my mind that if I, or you for that matter, put in the effort and time to do the needed work, and you do the right type of work, the results will simply be mind-blowing.

So, my conclusion is that if I can improve my mindset, allowing me to put in the resources needed (effort & time), I should be seeing good results. Last year, the theme of the year was to build the necessary foundation for living an exciting life. This year the theme is the mental game.

That was the first section; the second section of my resolutions is about areas of my life that I feel should be in place, that needs attention: financials, physical fitness, habits and skills. Of course I have a set of goals for each of these areas, which I want to hit. I probably won’t make all of my goals, that is the nature of the beast, but I am aiming for all of them.

No, I’m not saying that I am in a terrible financial situation with no physical fitness, poor habits all around and with no skills to fall back on. On the contrary, I am doing fairly well in all areas as far as I’m concerned. But, nevertheless, I could use some level up for all of these characteristics. But, before moving on to bigger and even more incredible goals, the focus is on building a stabile foundation.

If you look at the 2012 and 2013 themes, you can probably make a case that they would fit well with the two bottom layers of Maslow’s pyramid of needs. That’s by no means intentional, but something that occurred to me writing this post. But it does tell me that I’m onto something, building a core foundation before trying to reach unimpossible goals.

Finally, I have the third section of this year’s resolutions: the normal goals. There is a ton of them, like around 120 (I lost track trying to do a count) at the time I’m writing this, and I haven’ even finished setting them up yet.

However, here’s the real kicker: I don’t even think I am going to make 20% of these “goals”. I am writing goals, but should rather call them ideas, because that’s more appropriate. I have categories in this mammoth list, but the common thing for all of them are that I haven’t committed mentally to doing these. We are talking about a list of bigger and smaller ideas for what I could spend my time doing in 2013, to make this a year to remember. What kind of stuff should I do for work, where do I want to travel, how much should I blog, what kind of courses do I want to take within the Red Cross and more. The kind of things that I fill the days with, when I am not keeping track of financials, working out or brushing my teeth.

So, summary so far:

1. The mental game; building an even better mindset on how to tackle things.
2. The foundation areas; financials, physical fitness, skills and habits.
3. Ideas for what I could accomplish during 2013.

The mental game is what I do subconsciously when building a better me through the foundation areas, for easier accomplishing the general goals.

One of my biggest vices is that I try to do everything at once. And this is perhaps the biggest challenge when I try to tackle this set of resolutions – determining when it’s OK to have several focuses, and what kind of goals I can’t work on in parallel.

I haven’t got this all figured out yet, but here is what I’m thinking right now:

• Financials is an area that in general should run in the background. From time to time I need to do maintenance, such as updating the budget and paying bills, but it doesn’t eliminate anything else outside of that.
• Physical fitness is in the same league. It’s a “background process” of sorts, except for maintenance – cooking and working out, and research of such.
• Skills: I get to work on one at the time. Not two, but one. One focus and that’s it.
• Habits: Most of these habits that I have listed for myself are the type of habits that I am already doing most of the time. So in the beginning of the year, I will focus on not doing these most of the time, but all of the time. After that, I can start getting into the habits that I am not doing any of the time right now.
• Mindsets: I have some vague goals right now. “Develop an internal drive to do better”. (Yup, not made up, it’s on my list). So the first thing to do is to make these goals SMART. Then picking them off – one by one.
• The other goals: You guessed it – I get to work on one at the time. Some I might check in on, booking tickets for trips for instance, and then move on, but in general, I should lock in on just one goal at the time.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I am going to stop multitasking, and still keep dreaming multiple dreams at the same time. Quite simply, no-one can stop you from having a big-ass list of goals – don’t we all have an Universalis list of some sort – but you should still keep doing one thing at the time.