Ah, goals. Last year, I had a nice string of goals I wanted to complete like traveling to Japan and Michigan. Life soon showed me that I have very little control over some of my goals, so I have decided to approach my goals differently in 2021. I’ve decided to make some concrete goals, but also a different type of goal. Here’s what my goals for 2021 look like:
Concrete Goals
Read 26 Books
I had originally thought I would set an audacious reading goal for myself, such as reading 50 books in 2021. (I set a goal to read 40 in 2020 and ended up reading 44.) However, as much as I would love to sit with a book for an hour or more a day, two things made me decide to create a lighter goal here. First, I have a feeling 2021 will be a busy year. Second, there are several other things I want to accomplish, so for 2021, I’m making the reading goal light. If I finish it, great.
Complete Half of The Bible in a Year Program
My spiritual life has gotten seriously off track during the pandemic. However, I saw that Father Mike Schmitz is offering a podcast this year, The Bible in a Year. I plan to use this program to jumpstart my spirtual life and to read through the Bible. However, rather than doing this in a year, I plan to do this over two years. I want to complete half of the program in 2021.
Complete & Utilize Two Trainings for My Blog
This year, I want to focus on increasing SEO for my blog & having more of a Pinterest presence. To that end, I plan to complete two courses–Neil Patel’s SEO Unlocked and Pinterest with Ell.
Live a Healthier Life
Sure, live a healthier life is vague, but here’s how I break it down:
Track my points on WW’s Green plan every day
I really, really need to get consistency and recognize that healthy eating is something I have to do every day, not every day unless I’m emotionally eating. To that end, I’m going to commit to tracking my WW Green Plan points every day.
Exercise at least five days a week
Lose weight
I’m really not going to focus on the losing weight. Instead, I’m going to focus on tracking and exercising, which I think will naturally cause the weight loss.
Watch videos and read books on how to stop emotional eating
I still have to do some research to find which ones I’ll watch.
Find and Eliminate Time Wasters
This year I plan to be more efficient. This means finding and ruthlessly eliminating time wasters. One huge one I’ll have to tackle is the social media time such. Making meals and doing dishes are also taking a lot of my time now that we’re home all the time, so I’ll tackle those, too, and whatever other time sucks I can find.
Research My Ancestry
For Christmas, my family got me a 6 month subscription to Ancestry.com. I previously did some ancestry research 17 years ago before my oldest child was born, but now that the kids are older, I’d like to delve into the research again. I have currently researched back to my great, great, great grandfather, but I’d like to go back further. I think some of my relatives were among the first English settlers in the United States, so I want to see how far back I can go. My goal will be to work on Ancestry.com two hours a week or more.
Declutter the House
We’ve lived in this house for 6.5 years, and in that time, we haven’t done a thorough decluttering. So, every week, I plan to set aside one hour to declutter until it’s done.
Complete Home Improvement Projects
When we moved into this house, the living room was painted in an ugly brown and rust colored sponge paint (which you can see in the background of this picture). The carpets were worn, and the kitchen cupboards were worn. They also had a coating that made them slightly pink. We couldn’t do any work on the house intially because money was tight and then because our schedule was too busy. But now, the time has come.
This year, we’d like to:
- paint the livingroom,
- paint the kitchen cupboards,
- paint PB & J Girl’s ceiling,
- replace the carpet,
- replace the sliding glass door handle, and
- paint the outside of the house
There’s more we’d like to do like replace some light fixtures, fix our rusty wrought iron gate, put in back splash, and replace our bathroom mirror, but we’ll wait on the other items.
Maybe Teach Bookworm to Drive
Bookworm is now 16, so we may teach him how to drive in 2021. It will just depend on when he feels ready to start.
Weekly Goals
Since I know life can change so much, I’m going to focus on weekly goals. These goals will initially be processes that I set up to help me achieve the concrete goals listed above. I’ve been reading Atomic Habits, and I’m hoping if I can follow the advice there and set up routine processes, that I will naturally achieve my goals because my life is set up for success.
Look for my weekly goal posts every Friday.
What are your goals for 2021? Are you changing how you approach goals based on how 2020 went?
Best wishes for a wonderful new year. Are you familiar with a ‘nourishment menu’? It is basically a list of things that give the same emotional response as eating; i.e. call a friend, go for a walk, meditate… doing something from the menu serves to replace the emotional eating response. Each time you pause and choose a non-eating response, it reinforces choosing a non-food response for the future. Perhaps this is an area you can try.
Hope you have a good new year, too. I have not heard of the nourishment menu. Now I’ll look into that, too! Thanks.
I’ve heard about that book Atomic Habits what would rate it? You’ve got a good set of goals. Im going to read more about financial information is one of my goals.
I’m only about halfway through Atomic Habits, but so far I’m finding it valuable when it comes to setting goals. He offers a new way of looking at goal setting to help you become more successful. Reading more financial information is a great goal!