2020 Goals Recap & 2021 Intentions
2020 Goals Recap
Last year I decided to try goal setting on my own, without a planner or guide to shape my work. I selected a set of goals to get to work on, which were:
Finish what I started - knock out my remaining $48,000 of debt.
Be honest with myself and the world about my relationship with alcohol.
Deepen my minimalist streak into a habit/intention versus a reactive solution.
Get healthy. Actually fucking healthy. Lose some weight, treat my body better, heal (or better manage) the early onset arthritis that I should not have at my age, and so on.
Be a better caretaker - of my intentionally curated friend group, of the romantic partner that I now live with, of my knowledge of the politics that make our world go ‘round, of this Earth that I love to voyage across so often.
Read a diverse array of books by completing the “read harder” challenge notebook.
Transition my business fully from its current iteration to its future state.
The end result was “pretty successful,” which I’ll share more about below, but I still felt like I missed more than I won. Just like in 2019, I had seven goals to focus on. Looking back, that’s a lot of things to achieve in one year, even for an achiever like me. This definitely changed the way I approach goal setting for 2021. On to the results:
I completed my goal of becoming debt free in May 2020!
I officially became sober on February 25th, 2020 and as of this blog post, have been sober for 329 days.
I didn’t really achieve much on the minimalism front.
I made some major decisions for my health, which will set my 2021 up for incredible success in this arena if I follow the plan.
I became a much better caretaker - of myself, those around me, and the world.
I blew my reading goal out of the water, reading over 100 books in 2020 and nearly finishing the Read Harder challenge.
My business transition, short of the rebrand at the beginning of 2020, generally got put on hold because….COVID.
All in all, I’m really happy with the outcome of 2020, especially considering all that 2020 gave us and we’re genuinely lucky to have survived the year at all.
2021 Intentions
In 2021, I returned to the goal planner life, using Hilary Rushford’s Elegant Excellence Journal. I’m still carrying over my three very strong intentions for relationships and social media use from 2019. Other than that, as I alluded to above, seven goals feels like spreading my focus way too thin. So for 2021, I have identified three goals: one professional and two personal (which really ladder up to the same personal goal as outlined in my EEJ).
Professional: Complete my career shift from marketing to HR. I’ve already largely transitioned my consulting/entrepreneurial life but my corporate life has not shifted. As I approach the 1year mark from completing my doctorate degree, it’s time to shift my corporate life as well.
Personal 1: Transform my personal health. As my granny will tell you, I have been so meticulous and organized about every single aspect of my life…except my personal health. I have a major life change happening in February (that I will share more about later, but for now you can go follow @halftheoldme on Instagram to learn more) that will kickstart this journey, but I look forward to making meaningful changes the whole year through.
Personal 2: Lay the groundwork for FIRE. FIRE is the “financial independence, retire early” movement. I don’t know that I will retire early, but I do want to lay the groundwork for financial independence. Since I became debt free in 2020, phase one is done. Phase two is ramping up my savings goals and priorities in order to be able to live the life I want in retirement. Of course, this won’t be completed in a year, but by the end of 2021, I want to have a clearly defined path to FI and have laid out all the automated savings rules and yearly targets to get there.
By honing in on these three goals, I hope to really succeed at each of them well. Studies show that by reducing the number of goals, (a) they are more obtainable and (b) you are able to dedicate more time, energy, and focus, therefore achieving them “even better” than you might have with additional priorities on your plate. Focusing on three goals will also allow me to set monthly sub-goals that I can truly achieve as well, meaning each of these goals will have a 12-step plan to completion!
Just like the past two years, I’ll be posting monthly roundups on Instagram talking about what progress looks like for 2021. I hope you’ll follow along with me! Let me know in the comments below what your 2021 goals are, how I can cheer you on, and whether or not you’ll be doing Instagram accountability with me.