My goal for 2021 has been to walk 1200 km (approx. 746 miles), which includes kilometers ONLY from a specific walk outside or walking on my treadmill. As of Dec. 23, 2021, I have just over 59 km left to meet my goal.
I’m so close, but if I don’t get on my treadmill 1-2 times a day, I’ll be VERY busy on New Year’s Eve!
Woman on Treadmill created by Mohamed_Hassan, Pixabay
With 2022 about to greet us, it’s time for me to decide on a goal for 2022. It’s important to me to continue moving my body regularly.
Without a goal, I’m much more likely to hang out in lazyland; my walking goal this past year has made a huge difference in getting my ass moving.
If I want to be successful, I need to do more than just think about my goal. It’s easy to say we’re going to do something, but it’s not as effective.
If you want to achieve a goal, it’s best to:
- write it out and post it somewhere you see often in your daily life
- be specific (what exactly will you do and how will you do it?)
- set a timeframe/deadline
- establish some way to measure the goal
- set some kind of accountability (state publicly, like me, or have an accountability partner)
You can use the S.M.A.R.T. acronym for setting a goal.
Make your goal: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timebound. I’ve also seen this type of goal list the “R ” as Realistic.
I personally don’t relate to the S.M.A.R.T. acronym because I don’t think the “Relevant” part is necessary for me, or if you use “Realistic”, that seems the same to me as “Achievable”.
Even though I don’t use the S.M.A.R.T. acronym myself, I do agree any worthwhile and effective goal should be:
- Realistic, but challenging
- Accountability-driven
- Written
- Exciting to you
- Specific (what and how)
- Time/deadline -centered
Hey, that turns out to be an acronym too: RAWEST. It might not be the perfect acronym, like SMART, but it works for me.
Use whatever works for YOU, but think about what you want for 2022. What is an important year-long goal you could set? What would you be really proud of one year from now?
Something you CAN do. Something you WANT to do.
Before deciding on a goal for 2022, I considered NOT including another walking goal since I’m just finishing a walking goal for 2021. After reflecting though, I realized if I didn’t have a walking goal, I would probably NOT get my butt out the door for a walk very often.
For 2022, I’m going to change things up a bit, but I’m still going to track my walking.
For 2022, I’ll use my Fitbit to track my new goal of walking 3000 km (approx. 1864 miles)! …with a twist.
I won’t be tracking just my outdoor walks and treadmill walks. My 2022 goal will be to track ALL my walking in km (to and from the car, walking from room to room in my house, walking in a mall/store, walks outside, walks on my treadmill, etc.).
It’s not a perfect system. The Fitbit might pick up my shoveling or extensive house cleaning as km conquered, but that’s ok! It’s still me moving my body.
Why is tracking my overall walking on my Fitbit so helpful?
I won’t have to record my km for every walk I take, and I won’t have to add up my km for the day or week. The Fitbit will do all that for me and send me an email with my weekly report.
All I’ll have to do is tally the weekly km that have automatically been recorded.
How awesome is that?
If you don’t own a Fitbit or other device that tracks your steps, etc., here’s a screenshot of how the Fitbit app shows me my km (on Dec. 22).
One Day (around mid-day)
Each Week (Sunday through Saturday)
(the stars beside each week show I met my goal, which I set in the app)
Weekly Progress sent to me by Email
(includes all the other things that my Fitbit tracks, which are not all shown in this screenshot: sleep hours and quality, active zone minutes, # of days of exercise, average # of hours with 250+ steps, resting heart rate, etc.).
So, how did I come up with 3000 km for a walking goal for 2022?
I looked at my Fitbit app to see the number of km I’ve walked in the past. Most weeks this year, I was in the 50-65 km range. My lowest walking week was about 34 km, and my highest was 70 km.
Any goal I set should not be too easy, but it also shouldn’t be too difficult.
I figured 60 km a week would be suitable, which comes to 2880 km per year. I wanted a nice round number for the year, so I rounded it up to 3000 km.
So, my 2022 goal of 3000 km (approx. 1864 miles) of walking will look roughly like this:
- Monthly average: 250 km (approx. 155 miles)
- Weekly average: 62.5 km (approx. 39 miles)
- Daily average: 8.93 km (approx. 5.5 miles)
Remember, this will be ALL my walking in my daily life, and not just purposeful walks outside or on the treadmill.
The daily, weekly and monthly numbers will help me see if I’m on track. If I walk only 150 km in January, for example, I’ll know that I’m about 100 km behind and will have to make up for those km in another month.
My goal is not rigid. I don’t have to walk a certain number of km each month. I’ll walk more in some months than others, which is why I set the goal as a yearly one.
calendar image by idgmart in Pixabay
I don’t know if 3000 km is the right number for my goal, but I think it will work. Of course, the only way I’ll know is to do it! In 2023, I can reevaluate my goal and see if I need to bump it up or not.
One of the things I’m most excited about with my 2022 goal of walking 3000 km is that I won’t have to track it! My Fitbit will do it all.
If you don’t have some type of app or tracker that monitors how far you walk in a day, I highly recommend you get one. Having my Fitbit has helped me tremendously, and not just with showing me how many km I walk/move in a day.
My Fitbit reveals the quality of my sleep each night too. The aha moments I’ve discovered from my average daily resting heart rate data have been huge for me as well….I’ll save my insights about sleep and resting heart rate info from my Fitbit for another post.
So, now it’s your turn. Have you got a goal for 2022? What’s important to you? Take some time to make a commitment to YOU.
I wish you great success in whatever goal you set for yourself.
In my next post I’ll share a simple and effective tool that’s helped me keep track of big and small goals throughout the year.
Live your true life,
alisoncarrey.com 