How's Your Focus?

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Last year about this time I set my New Year's Resolutions.
I know, I'm like that.
This was nothing fancy or well-thought-out, I just did it. I took a piece of scrap paper and wrote down the five things I wanted to focus on improving. They're a little bit private, but I can tell you this: four concerned some aspect of my career, and one was an athletic goal. Family, friends, spiritually - thankfully, I feel very good about those aspects of my life. Your areas of focus might include those, but mine didn't.
Here's how I did:
#1 - Nailed it. Blew my goal so far out of the water, it's impossible to even compare.#2-4 - Did somewhere between well and okay.#5 - Oops. Didn't even touch it. Abject failure.
This list, written on a scrap paper, lives in a drawer in my bathroom. Every few days I come across it as I search for the toothpaste or a nail clipper. It's a handy reminder of what I decided to work on last February.
This worked pretty well for me, but around the start of this month I decided it was time to update my list. Not start a brand-new one, because most of those items are ongoing concerns, not "do it and done" type things. They involve getting better at something, and that's a journey.
So Saturday, I retired the first list and replaced it with another. Three items this time, all in some way related to the original five.
This year, as with last, I'm judging everything I do by this standard: Does it promote one of my three goals? Specifically,
1. Does it help me write my next book?2. Does it help with the career move I'm making?*3. Does it help me train for the Naples 1/2 Marathon next January?
This post isn't about me, though. It's about you. What are your goals - not for the year, but ongoing? Try to have only a few. Aim for only one. Write them down. Put them someplace where you have to actually read them - preferably, someplace where they're in the way and you need to move them (and thus read them) as you search for the toothpaste.
And judge every action you take, all year long, by how effectively that action supports your quest for those goals. Cut out fun stuff that doesn't clearly promote those goals. Do more of what does.
Let me know how it goes.

*Career move? I've been eluding to this for a couple of months now. I'm only 44. If my role models are any indication, I have at least 40 more years of active work ahead of me (thank God!). So I'm going to continue to evolve and reinvent myself again and again. I can't wait to share my next step!