Do You Have Realistic Expectations of Goal Setting?

As many of you know I am not a "New Year's Resolution" girl.  However, I am a goal oriented gal that made a few goals at the beginning of 2013.  I try to look at these goals at least every other month.  (I should make it a goal next year to look every month!)  As I look at my list I am happy to cross things off, but I am seeing that there were many goals left to accomplish.  I don't think that I was very realistic at the beginning of the year in setting so many goals for myself.

I have accomplished a few things and I feel like I did them well.  I have exceed my goal for gardening this year.  Even though it was not as productive as I was hoping, I am glad I committed myself to this and will continue to have a vegetable garden each summer.  I also smashed my goal of running a 10K and completed a half marathon instead!  I exceeded my deadlifting goal by 5lbs.  For a whopping 205lbs!  I also committed myself to reading 5 books this year.  Well, after getting sucked into the Game of Thrones series I crushed that goal too.

I also realize that some of the goals have been started and not completed.  This list would consist of some home improvement projects, organization, and an unassisted pull up.   

Then I have my I never even started it list!  I won't bore you with the details of this list, but there were plenty of things that I put zero effort into and accomplished nothing.  

So what do we do when we set such high goals or expectations and do not accomplish them?  Did we really give ourselves a realistic time frame to accomplish the goals we set?  

Here's my strategy for 2014.  Those things that have been started will be a priority.  I am then weighing the effort vs payoff of the things I never started.  Are they really important to me a year later?  Many things can change in a year's time and most of those goals are no longer things that mean something to me.  

I for my final goal TODAY I completed the last of my miles...300 miles of running logged between August 1st and today.  This happens to be the goal that I did not finish in 2012 and I was determined to finish this year!