Goals and getting to them

I posted a while back about wanting to lose some weight. It was before Thanksgiving and I resolved to lose the extra 15 pounds I put on.Resolution doesn't count worth squat for me. Unless there's a concrete target that I'm aiming for I lack the resolve to just get there. Doing something abstract doesn't get me motivated enough for it.The moment I declared that I want to start in the Dakar at some point things switched in my head. Even though this is a far away thing that might never happen I'm sticking to the caloric goals I'm setting for myself. If I don't get to go at some point, it won't be for lack of trying.This is something that I'm found about me. When I want to do something concrete I get an almost bizarre single-minded focus on getting there. Not to the exclusion of other things mind you -- I can be single-mindedly focusing on a bunch of things. When I set out to get my amateur radio license I declared that I would pass all three tests in one sitting: Technician, General and Extra. I sat with books studying for the better part of two months. Of the 120 total questions I missed one. It's not that I'm necessarily that good, but the fact that I was damned if I wasn't going to pass. I took practice tests until I was blue in the face and could pass every time. The target was my ticket.If I had to generalize, I'd guess that this is why new year's resolutions wear off so quickly. Abstract goals are something that are hard to attach to. If you give yourself the ability to see the goal and can measure your progress towards it then it gives you something to focus on.But I think it's more complicated than that.You can say I want to lose 20 pounds. That's concrete and measurable, right? I don't know. What happens at the end of that? Are you a different person? If the goal is to "fit into the dress" however, that's concrete. Weight is the measure of progress, the goal is to do something with that progress.It just seems that most people, myself included, are awfully bad at doing something just because it's good for you.