We had an awesome roast dinner on Tuesday night, and it caused a weird thought to pop into my head.

With a roast dinner, it is all about the pre-planning and preparation, and then the cutting it all up to be served at the end. The middle bit, where it sits in an oven for a few hours, is the easy bit.

And the end result of this effort is an awesome dinner.

But without planning ahead, getting the right vegetables, defrosting the meat, setting aside the time early enough in the day to get started, there would be no roast dinner, and you will be eating 2-minute noodles…again.

For me, a cooking of a roast dinner is kind of like the formula for success.

If you do sufficient planning and preparation, the results, like the actual cooking of the roast, tend to take care of themselves. And you just need to make sure you are there at the end to enjoy the result.

Bon appetit.

It is easy to think ‘not much’ when you wonder what you did with the last 12 months. But give it a little more time, and I bet you will find that you actually achieved quite a lot in 2010.

On reflection, here are a few of the things I am happy to say I did last year:

• Travelled to Morocco, Canada, Spain and the US
• Explored more of the UK, including Cornwall, Cambridge, Inverness and Stratford upon Avon
• Went back to Australia to see family and go to a good friend’s wedding
• Completed an Olympic-distance triathlon, raising £600 for Macmillan Cancer Support in the process
• Had a coaching session on long-distance swimming coaching from the British head swim coach
• Tried snow skiing for the first time
• Got to the verge of launching a business (due to launch this month hopefully, after 8 months of preparation)
• Ran a time management clinic, teaching others how to best manage their time
• Sponsored a tiger
• Hosted a murder mystery night
• Got much closer to being married…just four and a half months now
• Learnt how to play bridge and canasta and found some great new friends in the process
• Project managed the launch of a brand new website for Tru
• Learnt more about wine, and how to cook
• Bought a kindle – my new favourite thing in the world

Do yourself a favour – take a good look back at your life in 2010. I find it quite a nice feeling to look back and say ‘I did that. Awesome.’

Enjoy!

Loved this video when I saw it today, and had to share. Good reminder never to judge a book by its cover. I feel like he will not be homeless for much longer.

With lots of people no doubt planning to start of list of to-dos for 2011, I thought I would share a couple of tips that I have picked up along the way, which may help.

Make it measurable: Keep the goals measurable (don’t just say ‘lose weight’, for example) otherwise you will have no way of knowing if you have achieved it or not

Short and sweet: Don’t strive to create a big list (something I think I might be a little guilty of). Start with a list of between 5 and 10, give yourself 6 months to achieve them, and then assess after the 6 months

Share your list: Tell people about the goals you have set – for me it gives me a little push along to know that other people are going to ask me about my list progress next time I speak with them

Take new experiences over new toys: From my experience, when I think about new activities I have done, they get better with time (I tend to remember mostly the good parts, not the fact that I may have had to wait in a queue, or got a little wet in the rain). On the other hand, material possessions can become less and less enjoyable to think about over time (it got rusty, or it broke and needed repairs, or there was immediate buyers remorse). So, if you are looking for things to put on a list, go for trying new things, rather than buying new things, every time.

Good luck to everyone making a resolution this year, and happy 2011.

Just found out about Epic Win, a totally awesome iPhone app for turning your to-do list into a quest. Check out the video:

You can find out more at their website. I really wish they made an Android version of it – hopefully it’s on their to-do list.

Good (and surprised) to see the 15 minutes of fame I had from achieving goal 143 (riding the entire Melbourne train network in one day) is not over just yet. Click the image to see why.

(And no, it wasn’t me who wrote this forum post!)

Sometimes I get frustrated when people say something is good or bad, without having any first hand knowledge of it. They just take other people’s opinions and adopt them as their own.

Which is what I did with bullfighting.

Having never been to a match, I automatically assumed that it was a barbaric, unnecessary event that should be archived into the pages of history.

So, on a recent trip to Madrid, Nat and I decided to actually see what bullfighting actually was all about, and to form our own first hand opinions. The below is one of the photos I took of the first fight – we had quite a good view.

Now that I have been – has my opinion changed?

No. Not really.

It was gruesome to watch the poor bull be teased by the team of matadors (there was one leader and about five side-kicks), then slowly killed over a series of minutes via about 20 stabs (contrary to my belief, it isn’t a one-shot kill). Finally, once the bull is dead, he is unceremoniously hooked to the back of two donkeys and dragged out, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

There were three fights, but we only stayed for the first, as it was just too awful to watch. Many others did the same.

It is definitely something that no longer should exist in this day and age, and the small crowd of locals was a good indication that even the Spanish are losing their interest in the ’sport’.

Am I glad I went? Absolutely. Now I have the first hand experience to back up my opinion, which is how I think any opinion should be formed.

This talk just appeared on TED (a fantastic website if you have never been).

The gist of the talk (which only goes for a few minutes) is that the best way to achieve a goal is to keep it to yourself. Take a look and see if you agree.

Personally, I don’t tend to agree. Having this blog and speaking to many people about the project has been very beneficial in keeping me motivated to keep achieving. Each to his own I guess.

If you have been following this year’s Wimbledon, you would have heard about the epic, world-record, longest ever match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, which lasted over 11 hours. Read about it here.

The final score, in Isner’s favour, was 6-4 3-6 6-7 7-6 70-68.

How many games is that?

That’s right – 183!

This coming Wednesday night (June 2, between 6-9pm) I am presenting at a goal setting workshop in London. As you can tell from this blog, I like to work towards achieving goals, no matter the scale, and I also like to meet and talk to other people who are starting, or have completed, big goals of their own.

It’s free to take part, so if you are keen to get involved, you can find out more here.