Happy new year! 2018 was a good year. A lot of crazy things happened in the world, but this isn’t about those things. This is about reflecting on myself, what I accomplished in 2018, what goals I didn’t reach yet, and what goals I have for the new year.
I did quite a few things in 2018. Here’s a quick list of the things I can think of for now:
Let’s take a look at the goals that I set for myself in September to see whether I achieved them or not:
By October 17th, I’d like to finish my website for ngLou (the name of the Angular meetup I’d like to start). It needs to have an upcoming events section along with a place for highlighting speakers. Also by October 17th, I’d like to have the infrastructure in place for the meetup. I need to ask a few people if they would be interested in speaking at this meetup, and plan a meeting between my leader and the head of the security team at work to determine the feasibility of using our building for a meetup and to secure funding for food and whatnot. To meet this goal, I should have everything I need to schedule the first meetup.
I finished a majority of the website, but I never deployed it. It only exists on a domain that I know about. I’d consider this a failure in terms of reaching this goal. I’ll talk more about this in my 2019 goal planning below.
By the end of October, I would like to finish the primary functionality of my freelance project. There are two (or three?) primary pieces of functionality left, and in order to meet this goal, they need to be implemented and function as intended.
While I finished the functionality I had in mind for this goal, the project continues to grow in scope. I’d consider this goal met, but the project is still ongoing.
By the end of the year, I would like to have planned at least two date nights with Julie. These should include somewhere decently fancy to eat accompanied by some sort of activity.
I definitely did this!
By the end of November, I would like to have my portfolio finished. I need to have a place to write technical blog posts, an about me section, and a place to showcase my projects.
This is not even close to complete. I’ve scrapped two or three designs before I went and left it behind to work on other projects. I’d consider this a failure.
By October 17, I would like to have asked all of the men that I would like to be in my wedding to be my groomsmen.
I accomplished this one.
I would like to regain control of what I eat. At the beginning of the year throughout approximately a month or so ago, I was eating relatively healthy. Since then, I’ve started eating a lot of junk and I’m starting to feel the effects of that. I’m a bit more sluggish and generally unmotivated, and I’ve started gaining a bit of weight. Not a lot, but enough to realize that I need to correct my course before it gets out of control.
I failed to do this by the end of the year, and it’s showing. I’ve gained a bit more weight and I can tell that I’m out of shape.
There are several people at work that have started discussing the stock market and have done a lot of research into investing. I would like to get involved in that, and I need to start doing my own research as well as find a way to start investing myself.
While I did invest a few hundred dollars in the stock market through an app called Robinhood to play around with, I lost quite a bit of money. One of the stocks I invested in got delisted and I lost all of my investment as it crashed when the delisting was announced. I’m a bit more careful now, but I’d consider this goal met anyway.
I’m not calling these new year’s resolutions because no one ever follows through with those. These are just goals that I am incorporating into my habit of setting long-term goals for myself that happen to be at the beginning of the year :). Here’s some things I want to accomplish this year.
Get married. There’s a bunch of things that Julie and I need to do before the big day in less than 6 months. We need to schedule tastings with our venue, book a florist/DJ/bakery, send out remaining save the dates, send out invitations, handle RSVPs, and more. This is my number one goal for the year – I will absolutely accomplish it, but it is my priority for the year.
Get healthy. I need to retake control of my terrible eating habits. They have started getting out of control. I will track at least 3 days worth of what I eat every week to help in recognizing patterns and start being more aware of what I put in my body. I also need to start an exercise habit, which I started a couple of weeks ago. For at least 5 days out of every week, I will do at least 30 seconds of stretching by attempting to touch my toes, and at least 10 pushups. I want to get back into weight lifting and some form of cardio, but I don’t want to set a specific goal for that for now because I need to build the habit before I overwhelm myself with larger goals.
Make money. I will dedicate at least 10 hours a week to my freelance career. Whether that’s working on an existing project, seeking new clients, or learning new skills valuable for it, I will dedicate that time every week. I got a significant raise last year, and I want to do that again. I want to try to negotiate at least a 9% raise by March when these things occur at my job. I’d also like to consider starting an auto-detailing side gig, but I won’t set a specific goal for that yet because I’m not entirely sure what that would look like.
Educate. I will mentor at least two of the three sessions of Code Louisville this year. It’s an excellent way to give back to the community and gives me the opportunity to learn more about my industry and share it with passionate people. I will also fiddle with the idea of making a course on something I’m knowledgeable about. I wanted to do this last year, but it fell down from the top of my projects list because other things took precedent.
Personal development. I will track how I spend my time every day, down to the hour. I’ve made a spreadsheet to make this easy - taking 5 minutes out of my day at the end of the day shouldn’t be too hard to do. It will help me understand patterns in how I spend my time on average. I will also find a better way to track my finances. Maybe writing down everything I spend money on will help me understand where my money goes. I will also start reading more books. I have a lot of books on my list of books to read, and I won’t ever read them if I don’t start somewhere. At least three days a week, I will read at least 10 pages in a book I’m interested in.
Improve my house. There are quite a few projects around the house I’d like to accomplish. I would like to fix the broken fence in my backyard (which I’ve already made one failed attempt at). I would like to paint our bedroom, get new furniture for the living room, and fix the leaky faucets in the ktichen and bathroom. There are plenty more things I can do around the house, but these are the ones that come to mind now.
Goals are dictated by habits, so I’ve tried to write out my SMART goals as habits here. Reading 10 pages in a day could be considered a habit instead of read three books by a certain point in time. If you’re planning goals for the year, I’d suggest you try framing your goals in this light too. It’ll set you up for success in building better habits.