V.   Other

New Year Resolutions

Speaking of New Year Resolutions, I do them every year. An article is going to be published by TechRepublic in their Artner's Law section of IT Manager on 12/27/01 that I wrote about setting goals. I set new goals every year and in looking back on them I'm intrigued by how many have actually been accomplished. It's more than you might think.

I set both personal and business goals for the new year and have done so since the late 1970's. I can look at the 1985 goals and see that I wanted to belong to the golf club that I belong to and that I wanted to live in the subdivision we live in now. Those were tremendous steps back then but as the opportunity came, it was what we did.

I'm a firm believer that you end up in life to a great extent where you target yourself to be. Those that do not set goals end up somewhere but I believe that it's probably not where they would have chosen given the opportunity.

Well, we all have the opportunity to choose where we will be in 3, 5 or 10 years from now. You just have to sit down and do it. Write it down and put it in a place that you can see often and you might surprise yourself at how much you will accomplish that you decided you wanted.

My attitude is that I just turned 52 this year. Many people never really make it until they are my age. People like Dave Thomas (Wendy's), Regis Philbin (Who Wants to be a Millionaire), and Colonel Sanders (Kentucky Fried Chicken), were all over 50 before they actually became successful. Goals, planning, hard work, and perseverance ultimately pays off.