Ah yes, it’s that time of the year again. Everyone makes some promises for the year to come. Some make it until the end of the year. Others, well… To make sure my promises do make it until the end of 2017, I’ll try to make them SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound.

First things first, my personal health. Back in 2015, I tried to change my diet by removing all sugar. I kept it up for a little over four months, until I had to travel to the US for my job. Since then, I went back to eating (and drinking) sugar. It starts showing in my weight, which is somewhere close to 85 kg and on the edge of a “moderate risk” BMI. Time to get back at it, but a little less drastic.

So the main goal is to get to get to a stable 75 kg. To achieve this, I have a couple of subgoals. The first is easy, no more soda on drinks at work. The rest of the subgoals are related to working out. Bike at least 6000 km in 2017. That’s about 190 days commuting to work by bike. With 231 total working days (251 – 20 days vacation), that should be very doable. And I want to run 2 10km races, one in the spring in under 50 minutes, the other one in the winter in under 45 minutes. I ran a 10km race in just under 50 minutes in the past, with a very basic fitness. So the first target may be easy enough, if I get my condition up with daily bike rides to work. The winter goal may be a bit of a stretch, but resolutions aren’t meant to be easy 😉

The next big theme is varivoor.be. I’ve written about Varivoor before, about how hard it is for me to actually build it into a business. Well, no longer. Let 2017 be the year in which Varivoor becomes a real business. By December, I want Varivoor to make enough money to pay for the server costs. This may seem like an easy goal, given that the server cost is something like €10/month at the moment. But I have no experience sales or marketing, let alone in running a business. To help me achieve this goal, I signed up for the BRYO info session. The BRYO program is designed to guide young entrepreneurs who want to start a business in the next two years, organized by the Flemish chamber of commerce (VOKA). Let’s see if they can help me out.

So to put them all together, my list of resolutions:

  • Get to a 75 kg weight at the end of 2017
  • Drink no soda at all at work.
  • Bike at least 6000 km by the end of 2017
  • Run the “Stadsloop Gent” 10km in May in under 50 minutes
  • Run the “Midwinternacht run” 10km in December in under 45 minutes.
  • Varivoor income for December 2017 must be equal or bigger than the server cost.

And you, what are your new years resolutions? Whatever your aspirations are, I wish you all the best in 2017!